snakes, mice, dead birds, oh my!

It's fall maintenance time and I've enjoyed some nasty surprises along the way.  Snakes, mice, dead birds and bad smells.

Twice a year I apply some perimeter pesticide around Chez Green Girl.  Yeah, it's mildly toxic, but it keeps the ants, flies, spiders and crawly things OUTside instead of INside, which complies with the rental agreement I've drawn up with nature.  The perimeter spray goes around the edge of the basement walls and around the foundation of the house, I squirt a double application by outside doors.  While wading through the hostas on the north side of my house, I disturbed a snake family.  By the look of them, they've eaten well all summer.  Really well.  They normally hole up by the pool, not near the house, but maybe the unusual heat coupled with the dry weather made them move.  Anyway, snakes only freak me out because they, like zombies, are SILENT.  You have no idea they're even nearby until they slide past, brushing along the edge of your foot (or rise out of the night and start chewing on your arm).  And then the silence is broken by a gasp followed by loud screaming.  Screaming by me, not the snakes.  They just gave me a look before continuing through the bed of hostas.

Twice a year I double down on the laundry/mud room.  This involves dragging out the washer and dryer to clean the floor beneath.  This time I noticed the venting for the dryer was ripped and shredded.  Upon closer examination, I realized that MICE were trying to break into my nice warm house (chew marks and mouse turds, I'm a regular CSI agent).  This was a safe mode of entry since I don't use the clothes dryer for at least half of the year.  I pulled off the torn venting tube and blocked the hole with a bowl from the kitchen, the rationale being that mice can't chew through a bowl.  It still didn't explain how the mice got this far through the vent, however, so I went outside to check out the other end of things.  That's when I saw a GIANT mouse run down a hole right beneath the "out" end of the dryer vent.  Shuddering, I bent down and peered up to find the vent flap stuck open.  Glued open with dried dryer lint.  With a butter knife and my fingernails, I cleaned it off satisfactorily.  Then I went to town to buy replacement tube to connect the dryer to the wall.  Things look better than they did before, but that mouse living so close to the house gives me the willies. 

I'd like to straight-up poison the mice, but the damn dog would probably eat the poison before the mice got to it. (Mind you, the "carnivore" dog wouldn't go after the mice, of course.) Those dinky traps freak me out worse than the mice, the way they SNAP shut when you try to set them.  Which leaves me with those sticky pads that trap the mice (Mr. D calls them inhumane, I call them safer than a mousetrap) or pouring boiling water down the hole repeatedly until I find no trace of a mouse.  I've got the kettle on.

I'm thinking of hiring a cat before I clean the garage next weekend as a preventative measure.

After repairing the dryer vent and spraying bug-repelling chemicals around the house, I began cleaning up the patio and porch, which is when I found the dead bird (smelly!) that seems to have flown into the living room window as part of a kamikaze attack on my house. I can't bear to just toss a dead bird into the weeds, so I had to dig a grave and bury it on the edge of our yard which has become an informal bird graveyard.  Coincidentally, the grass grows quite lush on that end of things.

I'm tackling the refrigerator next, which is a guaranteed stench-fest, but hopefully I don't find anything alive other than a mold colony when I empty it.  I'll keep you posted.

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white meat

Last night I spent 4 hours at the park between Mr. T's soccer game (tied) and Mr. G's coach pitch game (tied).  (Poor Mr. B had to hitch a ride to his scrimmage in another town since Mr. D was coaching.  He's still making me feel guilty about that.)  The winds were gusting at a balmy 37 MPH and I tethered myself to the turf to watch the excitement.  Fortunately I wasn't blinking the sand from the baseball infield out of my eyes the entire night, just for half of it.

At the soccer game the one lady brought her extremely hostile dog like she always does.  What's with the little dogs being so obnoxiously loud and aggressive?  It's like the canine version of Short Man's Disease--they're always jonesing for a fight, talking big and getting in your face.  Our 60-pound mutt, on the other hand, barks once approximately every 85 days.  He's passive and only lunges towards food or cars.  Anyway, I clung to my lawn chair while Yippy growled and complained a few feet to my right, lunging towards the field, tenuously held back by a leash.  Why do people insist on bringing animals like that out in public?  This dog's been on the sidelines for years, so it's obvious that this method of socialization isn't getting anywhere.  (Yes, I confess to indulging in a few fantasies, like Jax eating Yippy in one bite, or a bald eagle swooping down to eat Yippy in one bite.  Or me stepping on Yippy, silencing him forever.  Shut up.  Even the most devout dog lover would agree that this beast has no redeeming quality.  I speculate this dog's half AM talk radio host and half demon.)

I digress.  Yippy annoyed me but the barn swallows were pure entertainment.  Like Blue Angels, they swooped and divebombed the turf, eating bugs and demonstrating how aerodynamic they could be in 37 MPH winds.  I envied them while I spat strands of hair out of my mouth.

Then I noticed a couple of girls approaching the game to my left.  One cradled something in her arms--a baby? I wondered...  But it looked pretty small to be a baby.  And no one in their right mind would bring a 5 pound preemie out in this wind without a blanket. 

Two of the skinniest legs and feet stuck straight up and then I wondered if the girl wasn't carrying one of those practice babies they give you in school to scare kids straight about using birth control and abstinence.  But no, the legs seemed to move.  Or get tossed around by the wind.  A couple of other people approached to look at what the girl cradled in her arms--their response assured me that whatever it was, it was alive.  No one would spend that much time admiring a baby doll. 

Wait a minute!  It occurred to me that this girl might have a pet monkey.  That would explain the size and the freakishly thin legs and long toes.  A pet monkey--that would be something to see! 

I was too far away to get a clear view from my spot where I'd staked myself in the grass, so I leaned back and pretended to stretch.  Still couldn't see it very well so I uprooted myself and took a few casual paces around my lawn chair (which blew over the second I stood up). 

I shit you not, I nearly fell over when I realized what the girl had brought to the soccer game (and not because a gust of 47 MPH directed it's full impact at me).  She set it down on the ground and sat next to it, petting it's back.

Just when I thought I'd seen it all.  That girl had brought a pet chicken to the soccer game.

Thank goodness she was sitting upwind of Yippy.  I know how Jax would've behaved, catching a whiff of a chicken dinner.  I think he'd even bark to say, "Pass the mashed potatoes."

You bet I gave Jax an extra scoop of kibble when I came home after last night's games--just to our good dog some extra appreciation.

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thank goodness for bumbles

Because this woman needs a little shot of estrogen right now.  And a shot few glasses of wine and good book talk wouldn't hurt, either.  We read The Night Circus and it was really wonderful.  So I'm totally dressing up in all black and white with a red scarf (tres theatrical, like a true rêveur) and ordering something dainty.  Don't wait up, boys.

why so eager for book club tonight, green girl?

Well, I passed my karate module test last night, nailing the kama form (perfection, truly) and adequately passing the fan form.  Because my son is easily embarrassed, I backed down from the Kimono Challenge.  The boy and I share dojo space, I need to respect his need for me to blend into the woodwork and not make a spectacle of myself.  However, the boy and I do NOT share blog space, so I'm totally making a video of the fan form in a kimono for all to witness and enjoy.  Plus I'll demonstrate the level of dexterity required to manage a darn fan.

Mr. G woke me up for the 2nd time this week out of a dead sleep--nightmare.  Again.  And I can never fall back asleep once he does that, so I'm feeling a bit cranky.

Evidently Mr. G felt cranky this morning, too, because when I asked him to read today's lunch menu for us (normally a cool thing since he's learned to read so well), he read "We're having fat f*cking chicken patties."  OH MY!  Like any good mother would do, I promptly jammed a bar of Ivory soap between his lips and turned my back so he couldn't see me stifling hysterical laughter.  Grouchy, foul-mouthed kid.  Where the f*ck does he get off, talking like that?

After shooing the gang down the driveway to catch their bus, I strolled to the back yard to discover this grisly find (please don't look if you've got a weak constitution--this is really, really gross.  I swear.):

That, friends, is some unidentified animal skull. 

Bigger than my foot.

Either the work of that varmint-eating dog of ours or the Yeti, I imagine.

Bumble Book Club, take me away!

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riddle me this

Monday night Mr. B and I rolled in from karate class. Mr. D was at a (very long and politically charged athletic association) meeting, Mr. G and Mr. T were home hanging out. When we pulled into the garage and exited the Momvan, we were assaulted by the most terrible odor imaginable. It took me a while to figure it out, but eventually I determined it was burning rubber. This led me to pop the hood on the Momvan and check all of the tires. You see, I was convinced the Momvan was about the spontaneously combust. It was definitely something burning. And this is just the sort of thing that would happen right after we decided to replace Mr. D's car with a salvaged hybrid. Right?

But the Momvan checked out. I went inside and kept getting hits of the odor. Basement? Everything was fine. I checked the tree, all the electrical outlets. We seemed safe from a house fire. I went back outside and kept getting the scent. I checked the electric Christmas lights and extension cords. There seemed no rhyme or reason for the cause or source, but I definitely smelled that burning blacktoppy-tar-rubber-plastic smell.

Mr. D came home an hour later and smelled it, too. We examined garage door openers, his car (about to get traded in the next morning), I even walked up the driveway to ascertain whether the stench was blowing in from somewhere else. I tore apart the laundry room adjacent to the garage--checked the dryer vent, the wiring, even pulled the dryer out from the wall and ended up vacuuming up a half pound of lint and dust bunnies. I confess I went to bed that night certain we'd be woken up by the screech of smoke detectors. I knew I'd missed something smoking, burning, combusting. What was that horrible smell? Where was it coming from?

Sure enough, the next morning we could still smell it. Strongest in the garage. Mr. D warily drove to his office and returned, checking his car once again and coming into the house exclaiming, "Smell my hand! I can even smell it on my hand!"

Reader, at this point I was certain the Apocalypse was upon us. My overactive imagination deducted that all plastics made in oh, say 1995, was melting and turning toxic right before us, creating a swamp of deadly chemicals that we'd inhale and die from--or cause electrical fires and we'd be caught up in the resulting inferno. Silly, but the smell was coming from all kinds of odd spots--Mr. D's phone, the laundry room, the garage, the Momvan, Mr. D's hand.

Tuesday, about 10:00 Mr. D calls me from work. "Jax got sprayed by a skunk!"

I gasped, "How do you know?" and run to the window to look outside at the dog who is sitting in his little house.

"I was thinking about it and you know every where we smelled that smell? Jax was right there. In fact, I even told him to move his head when I looked under my car, and that's when it smelled the strongest. I petted him--that's why my hand smelled. It all adds up, my dear Watson."

I walk outside and sniff. Now the top notes of burning blacktoppy-tar-rubber-plastic smell had worn off and sure enough, there was that sour, musky, raw skunk spray aroma. Jax trots up to me and I take another breath. Yep. Who knew? I guess the first blast of skunk smells nothing like the lingering odor we're all more familiar with.

So. We have a smelly dog, below freezing temperatures, a new car in which we will not put the dog, a house in which we will not bring the dog and a Momvan which I refuse to contaminate with skunk smell. We can't bathe him outside, it's too cold. We won't bring him inside, it's too cold to ventilate properly. Everyone's avoiding Jax like the Black Plague and I read on the internet that skunk smell lasts up to 6 weeks.

SIX WEEKS!

After reading the suggested remedies (none included, "let the dumb dog suffer and the smell will naturally fade and all will return to normal without any dire consequence"--and trust me, I searched hard for that advice) I finally suggested to Mr. D that he borrow a work truck with a metal cab (less likely to absorb the odor) to transport the mutt to a dog groomer's.

In other news, Mr. G woke up the other morning and went outside in 23 degree weather to take his morning constitutional off the edge of the front porch in bare feet. WHY? you may well ask.

I went into the boys' bathroom of preference to figure it out. He won't go upstairs because that bathroom is disgusting, even right after I clean it he won't use it--and it's his fault because he won't aim. Downstairs someone hadn't flushed properly (you have to hold the handle down for a couple seconds) and a pile of brown poo lay marinating in the bottom of the toilet. Of course it's easier to step outside and pee in bare feet while freezing to death than to just flush the toilet. Right???

Straight from stinky dog to funky bathroom. Which explains why I'm dressed like this lately:

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it's not all sunshine and roses here

Jax found the skunk.

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