And we’re jumping right in today, Internet! Monday, bullets-style!
– Since my tentative declaration Wednesday that I had seen no silverfish since Monday’s extermination, I have seen TEN SILVERFISH. They seem to concentrate themselves heavily in the master bath area, so you can imagine the intensive inspection process my towels go through before each shower.
The consequence of seeing so many – TEN, in four days! As opposed to one or two a week! – coupled with the exterminator’s Words of Doom hanging over my head means that I am a nervous wreck. Every time my foot itches, my heart rate jumps into the danger range and I scrape violently against the nearest surface. I feel Ghost Tickles as I imagine dying silverfish crawling up the insides of my pant legs. And every speck on my floor makes me leap onto the nearest chair or husband. And my floor has a speck every few feet, Internet. (We’re talking speck of dirt here, not the kind of speck you’d find on an appetizer plate.) (LOL – lame attempt at trendy-cured-meat humor!) Perhaps I need to invest in a robot broom.
– Before you become embroiled in this bullet, allow me to warn you: This is an “update” that you likely a) won’t care about and b) won’t remember the original “date” in order for this feel like and “up” or anything but a boring. Yes, I just used boring as a noun right there. I don’t know if the nounage is working so well, but I’m too tired for real English. ANYWAY, back to the non-update… To catch you up to speed (a slow stroll in this case), I once noticed a cat saunter through our yard and I asked y’all if a cat’s appearance in our yard meant it was our cat.
So! The cat came back! So I tried to go out in the yard to pet it, or something – I really can’t remember my EXACT motivation. I guess I just see a cat and I have to go over to it, much the way tweenagers react in the vicinity of Justin Bieber. – and it ran away.
If you are thinking, “Wow, that was TRULY the most boring non-update I’ve ever read,” just wait! It gets slightly less boring! Or not! Just please withhold your judgement! The cat came back the (very) next day – two sightings! In two days! – and I tapped on the glass door and it flopped down at the far end of the yard and looked at me. So I took it some milk in a Tupperware.
It ran away.
The next evening, I saw the cat walk right past the sliding door out to the yard. RIGHT PAST! As in mere inches from my living room! So I put some turkey out on the step to sort of, well, LURE is not the right word… let’s say ENCOURAGE it to come closer so I could pet it.
The very night that I put the bait gift turkey on the step, I looked outside and there was a BABY BUNNY just chilling right outside my living room!
Here – look at the baby:
And I suddenly realized that the cat was not interested in ME. He was interested in having a nice fresh bunny mignon for dinner.
I no longer want to encourage the cat to stay in the yard, even though I DO. Because obviously I cannot have the untimely demise of a BABY BUNNY on my hands. But I want a kitty to pet and to hold! It’s like Sophie’s Choice over here.
– They just sort of APPEAR places. And since they’re mostly dead (“He’s just mostly dead.”) I have no idea how they GOT to where I find them. Do they know how to apparate? Oh, by the way, I’m back on the silverfish.
I haven’t seen any of them MOVING, is what I’m saying. Even if I (cruelly) poke at them with the edge of a toilet paper wad before I smush them and toss ’em in the toilet. So they must be trying with their last breaths to escape the poison (gah. Now I am feeling SORRY for these buttercuppers!) and end up dying out in the vast unconquerable open space of the bathroom floor. But… I can’t see any HOLES from which they could have arrived.
Okay, here’s where I stop you Internet. If you have any knowledge of where insects DO come from, I don’t actually want to know. I SWEAR.
– You have seen this, right? The Ricky G. one kills me. He looks like David Bowie’s non-sexy teenage twin.
– One of the best parts of moving to this house is the excuse to explore a new neighborhood. And our neighborhood has a lot to offer, especially in the way of locally-owned businesses. Well, and there’s a Dairy Queen within walking distance of our place.
One of the local businesses is a little Italian bakery. INTERNET. The tiramisu they sell is phenomenal. It comes in squares that fit into a cupcake wrapper and the mascarpone cheese part of it is so light and creamy and perfect and the lady fingers are so perfectly moist with coffee liqueur and there are chocolate shavings on top.
As if that isn’t wondrous enough, the bakery also sells homemade pizza dough for $1.50 a bag. Now, I’ve been buying the Betty Crocker kind in the bag. You know – just add water. It’s about the same price and it makes perfectly adequate pizza. But this Italian bakery dough? It’s REAL pizza dough! I can get at least two pizzas out of it, and it’s SO GOOD.
Clearly, with this bakery in my life, I am going to be needing some more generous pants.
– Speaking of pants, I went to J. Crew the other day to look for something for that horrible mid-range of clothing. You know. The stuff that’s dressed up enough for a casual workplace but not so dressy that you look stuffy. The stuff that’s casual enough to wear shopping for more mid-range clothing but not so casual that you’d feel uncomfortable doing brunch at an upscale restaurant. I have NOTHING in that category, and so always feel either over- or under-dressed and wholly inappropriate. Especially in the shirt area.
Hence J. Crew. Just past the tables full of underwear-length shorts and Betty Draper dresses was a stack of pants. The Minnie pant, a sign declared. The pant that makes EVERYONE look fantastic, it boasted.
Ha! I thought. No way in hell this teeny pair of pants will look good on me. Skinny pants are for skinny girls.
I bought two pairs.
– My husband’s last rotation had him doing overnight stints in the intensive care unit. Leaving me alone and, well, bored out of my skull. And that kind of boredom can turn the corner quickly into melancholy. So the best part of my weekend was reading your When I Fell in Love/When I Knew I’d Marry That Guy stories. I even got EMAILS that were long and detailed and WONDERFUL and oh! such fun. Thank you for sharing. If you haven’t done so, please do! Or at least go read the other stories. So lovely!
– In addition to the cat and the bunnies, we have a possum. Do possums eat bunnies? Hot ham sandwich I hope not. I can’t deal with hosting a Hunger Games in my backyard.
Well, there’s no arguing that THIS is a very lackluster post, Internet. I mean, it only has EIGHT bullets. (It’s driving me crazy, too, I promise.) I am deeply sorry for disappointing you. But I must don my middle-range clothing and go forth on a business trip.
Please, tell me something random about yourself. Especially if it involves the magic Perfect for All Occasions wardrobe or possums.
There has been some serious Hunger Games action in by backyard since January. I have a 65lb dog that likes to chase and bark, so you’d think that the neighborhood wildlife would get the hint and steer clear. But we also have coyotes in the neighborhood, so the small woodland creatures have decided that being on the inside of the fenced yard with the Fierce Dog is better than outside the fenced yard, where the coyotes can get them.
Except my dog is faster than a coyote. I saw him RUN DOWN A MAMA RABBIT and if that wasn’t bad enough, he then tracked her moves to find the nest of baby rabbits in the brambles. We no longer have any baby rabbits, and I had to pick brambles out of my dog for like an hour. Ew.
Then, I find freshly dug/buried holes all over the yard. My dog isn’t a digger, so of course, I put him inside (where he WHINES LIKE A BABY) as I go out with The Shovel and un-dig these holes. Mouse corpses. 13 of them.
We also have turkeys, which he hasn’t caught (yet), a family of squirrels that throws acorns at my dog from the top of the fence, and deer that sit on the other side of the fence from my dog, just to torture him. Oh, and a few foxes (though they look a lot like the coyotes we’ve seen, so could just be skinny red-headed coyotes).
I’d take your stray cat/bunny problem any day.
Holy moly woman. That sounds AWFUL! 13 mouse corpses? Your poor dog must think he is doing SUCH a good job of protecting his territory, though.
“Dr’s wife”…Love the cat/bunny story….even here in NYC, I find myself feeding cats, squirrels, birds, raccoons and possum! Yes, it’s true! Its like I am mother nature in my own little kingdom(and I do mean little…small NYC style back yard!)
As far as I know–possum will not eat bunnies….think they are pretty gentle creatures.But please do check out the facts…
Jackie…the dog, fox, coyote,bunny , etc. issues….oh boy! not envying that situation!
I’m gonna need your address pronto so I can come gorge myself on tiramisu and pizza. I adore tiramisu and the only place around here I have to get it is OLIVE GARDEN. Can you imagine?
NO. That is unacceptable. I will clear out the guest room for you STAT.
I dislike rabbits with a loathing that can only be described as somewhat unnatural. They are evil beasties and I am forever attempting to run them over with my car (on purpose). I am the aunt, who when reading Easter stories to children, always puts the adjective “evil” in front of the word bunny or rabbit. So, um, I suggest you put MORE luring goods in your yard and hope the cat takes care of your rodent problem.
(P.S. I am not a psychopath. I have had some BAD experiences with rabbits. Biting and allergies are all you need to know. Except that rabbits ARE NOT CUTE. That is all.)
Silverfish come out of the woodwork -literally! That’s really all I know.
I have a vegetable garden. Bunnies and chipmonks are my enemies! I encourage snakes and hawks to visit my yard, in my mind. I may be crazy, but I prefer fresh, cheap produce to little rodents. The animal world IS the Hunger Games, remember?
I think I can take your attention off your silverfish problem. Last Monday we took our Siamese neutered cat to the vet because we thought he had a blockage or a urinary tract problem. He got pills and it cost us $91 for everything. He started to get better until Saturday when he went down hill. Today we took him back to the vet, got x-rays and learned his bladder was extremely large and there were questionable shadows. After talking to the vet, we decided even with some additionally treatment ~ there was no guarantee that he would be OK. So we had him put to sleep….and buried ~ which cost us $295. Then when I was on the computer back here ~ I heard a strange noise and found myself on my right side on the floor. The chair had broken off the pedestal. We are replacing the chair for another $85…. It hasn’t been a good day but I haven’t seen any silverfish.
Your silverfish stories make me shudder. I found a 8 inch redheaded centipede on my towel once at our old apartment and now I always check my towel before I dry off. Traumatic insect experiences can take a long time to go away—-I hope you never find one crawling on you!
I totally empathise with your kitty/bunny dilemma – I’d want both of them to stay around, preferably whilst gambolling together playfully!
As far as treats for the cat goes though, milk is absolutely not a good choice for cats. However much they like it, and look really cute with a milk moustache and droplets on their whiskers, they cannot digest it at all so those cats who can tolerate it will get no nutrition from it at all and a large number will be made physically sick. If you (or any other cat owners/feeders) are not going to spring for the specialised cat or kitten milk, then water is the way to go.
Your home infestation (is that the right word for that? our office just had a full lunch hour discussion around the infected versus infested…I’m not sure if this is the right one but I’m going with it) sounds awful. I hate bugs and I hate feeeeeeeling like there are bugs all over. YUCK I’m creeped (also not a word…) out just thinking about your bug situation
My yard has a bunny too! And every once and a while, when I let the dog outside, she suddenly goes speeding away as fast as she can. And I yell “sorry, bunny, I didn’t see you out there!” Luckily, the bunny is never right by the door and is faster than my dog.
An opossum would only eat a bunny if it was very hungry and acquiring the bunny required little effort. They aren’t much of hunters, but will eat just about anything. An opossum living in suburbia practically has a buffet to choose from every night, so bunnies aren’t high on the list.
A) I’m going to start using the phrase “hot ham sandwich” from now on and
B) TEAM BUNNY.
I have a solution to your cat problem? Maybe? I have a cat that is no longer a good fit for our family. I REALLY REALLY REALLY want to find him a good home – he is lovable and friendly and sweet. BUT. He needs to go to someone who doesn’t have two young children or a second cat, because his litterbox needs changed every other day at the most (scooping isn’t allowed – a full change) or he pees on things. Right now you are thinking I’m crazycakes. I KNOW NO ONE WANTS A PEEING CAT, I DONT EITHER. But seriously – he is a GREAT CAT. I just CAN’T take him to a shelter. I would totally LOAN him to you if you wanted to see if it might work out and take him back no worries if it didn’t. Feel free to tell me that I really am crazycakes and you don’t want my cat to pee on your new house. I’m just throwing it out there because I’m at my wit’s end.
This is the fourth time I’ve gone to leave a comment. Something always happens and keeps me from doing so! I’d better hurry…
I, too, hate when the bugs just appear in the middle of a room. From whence did they come?! Gross! What did they touch on their way to belly up? Gross!! I haven’t used our bathroom (with the exception of one time, in a Very Unusual Circumstance) in months. I use the kids’. (At first I typed “kids”…haha, that would be a different meaning.) And it’s because of a roach. I just can’t go back in there.
I have no advice on the other animal issues. I am not an animal person. I don’t mind the stray cats I see, because I’m thinking maybe they are taking care of rodents that I don’t know about. But I would never go out of my way to encourage an animal to stick around. I can’t handle the poo. In fact, there is a house on the end of our block and the front yard is always littered with dog poo piles. A lot of them! It is gross. I always think,”Do they just not care?!” I think it’s weird. And the other night I had a dream that I (for some reason that I do not recall) had to go up to their front door (I don’t really know them in real life) and I literally could not avoid the piles. I was about to die. I had crocs on too. GROSS!!
This is the grossest comment I think I have ever left for anyone. I’m so sorry. You will probably never want me to come back. You can delete it if you want.
I hope your bug problems vanish quickly!
And boy do I wish I had a pair of those awesome pants! It sounds like the Traveling Pants. 🙂
I hope you have not been attacked by silverfish.