Thanksgiving came; we invited Mark and Elizabeth over. Unfortunately, we'd vastly underestimated how long it takes to roast a turkey in an outdoor barbecue grill in the winter. It was delicious, it was hickory smoked, and it wasn't done until after 10 PM, when our company had already disengaged themselves from the situation as gracefully as they could.
Dad had started cutting trees from the property we were on. Obviously, you aren't supposed to do this on a rented place, so he tried to cut them in the woods rather than from the front yard. The wooden sled we'd made was getting plenty of use already.
I was having a blast collecting squash and pumpkins seed, my latest obsession. We got a really big pumpkin from someone (maybe the food bank?) and Raphah and I saved seeds from it, hoping to grow giant pumpkins next spring. The seeds were the biggest of any we'd collected so far, about an inch long with thick, heavy shells. We laid them out carefully on newspapers and paper towels; the entire table and part of the counter was covered. We left them there overnight, the oil lamp on the table turned down low. The next morning, we awoke to collect our seeds, and they were gone. The newspaper and paper towels were still there, and the seeds on the counter were there, but every single seed on the table was absent. There were a few tell-tale dark, oblong droppings, larger than usual. We couldn't believe it! Some rodent had come and taken all of our seeds!
We told this to acquaintances, and someone suggested it sounded like the work of pack rats. Mice were always a problem in our house, even with our huge cat population, so Dad bought some bait bar and we placed it all over in places we thought a rat or mouse might hang out. Mom found a chunk of it in her shoe one morning and remarked that the rats must be smart enough to know that the bait bar was poisonous, because they were trying to give it back! The roof leaked in a small area we called the pantry (although we never used it for anything to do with food) so we kept a glass gallon jar in there to catch the water. Imagine our surprise and disgust when, some time later, we found the jat packed full of dead rats! Bait bar makes them thirsty, and so they all sought out the only source of standing water in the whole house- that jar- and drowned.
Dad decided we had too many cats, so he took a bunch of them and dumped them alongside the highway. Colette was one of them, so once again, I had no cat. A month or two later, I was sitting at the table one evening trying to make a really good pencil drawing of a horse, when I heard a sound behind me. It was an insistent, nagging mewing. I turned to see a gray kitten with long, dense hair and green eyes rubbing against me, wanting attention.
"Where did this cat come from?", I asked.
Dennis just smiled. He said it was a Bradbury cat. Apparently the owners of the Bradbury mill had given it to him. I called the cat Andre. Later I learned that Andre was a female, so I had to change her name to Andrea. Andrea was, without exception, the most demanding cat I have ever had, but she was also excessively affectionate and very cute. To be honest, she was not a cat I would have selected for myself, but I loved her regardless. Besides, now I had a cat again.
Snow came and stayed, and I was splitting and stacking wood a lot of the time, unless we were on the paper route or trying to catch up on lost sleep after going on the route. We never really felt like we got all the sleep we needed back again. Dad slept until the early afternoon almost every day, woke up before dinner, and went back to bed after dinner, usually finding sleep with the help of our hands massaging him back to sleep. I had learned that if I started with his feet, which hurt him the most because he was so overweight, sometimes he would fall asleep before I had to do the rest of him. I'd heard that the feet have pressure points that affect the entire body, so starting with the feet seemed like a very effective time saver. Still, he also was sleep deprived and crabby a lot of the time.
One night Happy and Sonny were barking. Was it a moose in the yard? A bear? We'll never know. All I do know is that in the morning, there was a huge stain of blood in front of the house and both of the dogs were gone. Dad had shot Happy for barking at night, and when Sonny (who was already afraid of gunshots) saw his friend die, he must have figured he was next, because he ran for his life and never came back. It wasn't much of a consolation to get Princess back from Doug and Donna, because she wasn't attached to us and had to live on a chain. Happy had been our friend. He'd played with us and lifted our spirits. We stared numbly at that big red blot in the snow. Ours was not a very safe family for animals.
Dad had started cutting trees from the property we were on. Obviously, you aren't supposed to do this on a rented place, so he tried to cut them in the woods rather than from the front yard. The wooden sled we'd made was getting plenty of use already.
I was having a blast collecting squash and pumpkins seed, my latest obsession. We got a really big pumpkin from someone (maybe the food bank?) and Raphah and I saved seeds from it, hoping to grow giant pumpkins next spring. The seeds were the biggest of any we'd collected so far, about an inch long with thick, heavy shells. We laid them out carefully on newspapers and paper towels; the entire table and part of the counter was covered. We left them there overnight, the oil lamp on the table turned down low. The next morning, we awoke to collect our seeds, and they were gone. The newspaper and paper towels were still there, and the seeds on the counter were there, but every single seed on the table was absent. There were a few tell-tale dark, oblong droppings, larger than usual. We couldn't believe it! Some rodent had come and taken all of our seeds!
We told this to acquaintances, and someone suggested it sounded like the work of pack rats. Mice were always a problem in our house, even with our huge cat population, so Dad bought some bait bar and we placed it all over in places we thought a rat or mouse might hang out. Mom found a chunk of it in her shoe one morning and remarked that the rats must be smart enough to know that the bait bar was poisonous, because they were trying to give it back! The roof leaked in a small area we called the pantry (although we never used it for anything to do with food) so we kept a glass gallon jar in there to catch the water. Imagine our surprise and disgust when, some time later, we found the jat packed full of dead rats! Bait bar makes them thirsty, and so they all sought out the only source of standing water in the whole house- that jar- and drowned.
Dad decided we had too many cats, so he took a bunch of them and dumped them alongside the highway. Colette was one of them, so once again, I had no cat. A month or two later, I was sitting at the table one evening trying to make a really good pencil drawing of a horse, when I heard a sound behind me. It was an insistent, nagging mewing. I turned to see a gray kitten with long, dense hair and green eyes rubbing against me, wanting attention.
"Where did this cat come from?", I asked.
Dennis just smiled. He said it was a Bradbury cat. Apparently the owners of the Bradbury mill had given it to him. I called the cat Andre. Later I learned that Andre was a female, so I had to change her name to Andrea. Andrea was, without exception, the most demanding cat I have ever had, but she was also excessively affectionate and very cute. To be honest, she was not a cat I would have selected for myself, but I loved her regardless. Besides, now I had a cat again.
Snow came and stayed, and I was splitting and stacking wood a lot of the time, unless we were on the paper route or trying to catch up on lost sleep after going on the route. We never really felt like we got all the sleep we needed back again. Dad slept until the early afternoon almost every day, woke up before dinner, and went back to bed after dinner, usually finding sleep with the help of our hands massaging him back to sleep. I had learned that if I started with his feet, which hurt him the most because he was so overweight, sometimes he would fall asleep before I had to do the rest of him. I'd heard that the feet have pressure points that affect the entire body, so starting with the feet seemed like a very effective time saver. Still, he also was sleep deprived and crabby a lot of the time.
One night Happy and Sonny were barking. Was it a moose in the yard? A bear? We'll never know. All I do know is that in the morning, there was a huge stain of blood in front of the house and both of the dogs were gone. Dad had shot Happy for barking at night, and when Sonny (who was already afraid of gunshots) saw his friend die, he must have figured he was next, because he ran for his life and never came back. It wasn't much of a consolation to get Princess back from Doug and Donna, because she wasn't attached to us and had to live on a chain. Happy had been our friend. He'd played with us and lifted our spirits. We stared numbly at that big red blot in the snow. Ours was not a very safe family for animals.
posted by chamoisee at
4:17 PM
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