The unwanted guest (s) #ThursdayDoors

June 13, 2024JT Twissel 24 Comments

We live in a two story house that was built into a hill. There’s a large deck on the upper floor and a much smaller deck below:

In order to keep rain off folks sitting on the lower deck, we installed metal slants between the two decks.

Can you spot who has moved into the narrow space between the metal slats and the upper deck?.

Yes, the mother raccoon and her babies. I haven’t been lucky enough to get a picture of the babies yet but I can sure hear them.

Here is how they make their exit. I guess you could call it their “door.”

They used the old climbing rose to get down to the garden. At least the mother does.

Hopefully once the babies are big enough they’ll go away!!!

Check out other legit doors over at Dan’s place!

Hello Stranger

May 25, 2024JT Twissel 25 Comments

A friend of mine invited me to a “Postcard Party.” The purpose of the party was to write postcards to voters in battleground states urging them to vote. I’ve never gotten a personalized postcard from a stranger asking me to vote one way or another and so I was extremely curious. What does one say?

We had another visit from the raccoon. This time I could clearly see that she’s a lactating mama.

How about:

Dear Stranger:

I’m an old lady now; hell, even my kids are kicking middle age (all five of them). I know what it’s like to be a single mom with bills she can’t pay and, through my work with the Make-a-Wish foundation, I’ve seen how quickly a family’s world can fall apart because of a medical catastrophe. For those reasons, I urge you to vote with compassion in your heart.

Of course I might be writing to someone who feels it’s compassionate to shoot puppies you don’t like! Maybe I should appeal to their pocketbooks.

Dear Stranger:

I’ve been earning my own lunch money since I was eleven. At sixteen I got my first paycheck. The amount was not what I expected but what I could I do? I needed that steady paycheck. I remember thinking I wasn’t going to need social security or medicare because I was going to be filthy rich. Well guess what? It didn’t happen and now I’m horrified that some politicians have been talking about ending either program. Or cutting them.

But it turns out, I worried for nothing. The organizers had boilerplate text ready for us to just copy onto postcards. But not in cursive. It seems many younger people were not taught to read cursive. Anyway, it was a lovely day at the organizer’s lovely home with lovely people. It’s hard to believe that Amy Lauren will actually read my postcard and decide to request an absentee ballot. What do you think? Would getting a handwritten postcard from Jan the Volunteer get your attention or would it go right into the recycling?

Maybe it’s a Drunken Kangaroo

May 9, 2015May 10, 2015JT Twissel 26 Comments

From Bing Images

My husband just told me we have a “large” animal living in the cellar beneath our house.

Me: “How large?”

Him: “Well, it wasn’t afraid of me. It just kind of waddled away swishing its fluffy tail in my direction.”

Yikes!

“Do you think it was a raccoon?” I ask hopefully.

The only other animal small enough to get into the cellar is, yes, you’ve guessed it – a SKUNK. Double, triple yikes. (Faithful readers will remember the unrelenting Skunk Siege of December 2014.)

He seems to read my mind: “Maybe that’s why our house smelt so bad for so long – a skunk confronted our raccoon.”

Now it’s our raccoon. I must nip this idea in the bud, immediately. Hubby has already adopted several squirrels and chickadees. “It’s not our raccoon!”

He has another idea. A few weeks back he left the door to the cellar ajar and of course Pretty Kitty with his little furry paws managed to pry it open and romp around in the dark, dank and dirt of the storage area. Of course we didn’t realize it until three in the morning when we heard a piteous yowl and practically fell out of bed. “What the hell was that?” We both asked in unison. The resulting search of the house failed to locate Kitty and, after coming to the conclusion that he was hiding in some deep crevice and would come out when he was ready, back to bed we stumbled to try to get some rest. In the morning Kitty still could not be found, until around noon when I looked out the back door and there he was.

Playing peek-a-boo

Snubbing his nose at us as if to say, “Aren’t I a clever cat”?

Hubby’s new idea is that the cat ran into the raccoon. “Maybe that’s how he got outside.”

“Wait a minute. If it’s been under the house for so long then what’s it been living off?”

“Hum. I haven’t caught any rats in a while.”

Great! Apparently while I sleep there’s a party going on beneath me. Cats, rats, raccoons and skunks. Did I mention that we keep our wine in the cellar?