Non-Human Friends

Sleeping on the job

February 22, 2010

I’ve had a cat for most of my adult life, and one of the benefits of cats is that they keep mice away. Even when I lived in a little house in the woods, I had no mice because my cat would play with them to death whenever one dared peek his little head out into Zack’s territory.

I still have a cat. But, Cally is almost 19, deaf and has lost all sense of smell or “mouse instinct”.

How do I know this? Well, I now apparently have mice.

Mice who steal the cat’s dry food out of her bowl and store it somewhere for a rainy day.

Let me repeat that: they steal cat food from her bowl. The bowl that is approximately four inches from her head which rests on her cute little cat bed.

I bet the first mouse to take the risk of being so close to a cat was pretty timid, but now, they are probably super bold, dancing up to her as she sleeps and sticking out their little mousey tongues.

I can’t even tell her how pathetic this all is. She won’t hear me.

Cape Co-ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!-d

August 31, 2009

Our quick jaunt to Cape Cod last week included time for one full beach day. I decided to take us to West Dennis Beach in, uh, West Dennis, because it looked beautiful, was nearby and had loads of parking for us fashionably late beach goers.

When we pulled into our parking spot, my oldest, Belly, screeched, “WHAT IS THAT!?!”

“That” were horseshoe crabs, most likely brought up to the parking lot by some excited child and left behind by a horrified parent who noticed them as they packed up the sand pails.

We walked down to the water’s edge and I started to get itchy because there were more. Literally, dozens and dozens of horseshoe crabs beached at the water’s edge, up and down the shore.

None of them were alive.

“What the hell happened??”, my brain asked in a high-pitched voice. Was there some sort of mass suicide of horseshoe crabs? And, why weren’t the lifeguards screaming and pulling us off the beach? Surely there must be something wrong with the water if all of these creatures were washing up, lifeless, onto the shore.

I started to feel a little panicky, especially when D tried to pick one up and I got the crab mixed up with the stingray that killed the Crocodile Hunter. “PUT IT DOWN!”

And then I noticed something. There were kids playing with the crabs. There were horseshoe crab sculptures made out of the little bodies. There were castles built to house the lifeless shells. There were sand pails filled with the critters.

And strangely, there were seagulls still pestering us for snacks. Hey, seagulls, don’t you see the crab buffet at the shore?

This, along with the strange color and small size of the crabs made me suspect that perhaps this wasn’t a mass suicide or death by poisoning.

(here is a “normal-looking” horseshoe crab)

I came to conclude, and perhaps correctly, that the crabs were molting and the little shells we saw everywhere were just their discarded too-small outerwear. Thinking of them in this way made it a bit easier to deal with their presence.

But, there was still no way in hell we were going in the water on this beach trip.

I’m Pretty Sure the Bus Driver Would Never Shoot the Pigeon

August 3, 2009

The book was supposed to be called Don’t Let the Turkey Drive the Motorcycle.

Instead it will need to be renamed, Don’t Mess With the Motorcycle, Turkey, or the Police Will Pop a Cap Into Your Feathered Behind.

Yes, Freddy the turkey met with the long arm of the law and was shot to death on Friday by our town’s police.

What was the crime? An unnatural, some say obsessive, love of motorcycles. . . and donuts.

Freddy loitering outside our local Dunkin Donuts and trying to look nonchalant next to the hunka hunka burnin’ love next to him.

But, when Freddy flew in anger at a motorcyclist who tried to kick him, the jig was up. Under advisement from our state’s wildlife organization, this turkey had become too much of a nuisance and was not recommended for return to the wild.

(memorial erected in honor of Freddy)

RIP Freddy. It’s too bad more people can’t slow down enough to see the humor of a turkey that love donuts, motorcycles and strolling down a suburban street in broad daylight.

Filed Under: Non-Human Friends, The Outside World 14 Comments

Sleeping on the job

Cape Co-ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!-d

I’m Pretty Sure the Bus Driver Would Never Shoot the Pigeon

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