Month: January 2011

This story originally appeared in the January 20, 2011, issue of The Trussville Tribune.

For those of you who have heard Jimmie’s and my critter stories, our current situation is just another chapter in a continuing saga. Over the past couple of years, we’ve been plagued with a series of incidents that have left us wondering if our house has been designated a wildlife refuge, and nobody told us.

Two Christmases ago, our gift to each another was payment for the removal of a possum from a dead space left by the builder between the master bath and a hall closet. The unfortunate creature tumbled there from a cozy bed she’d made for herself in our attic, and she couldn’t climb back up.

Ms. Possum was quite unhappy about her predicament, but I can assure you, she was no unhappier about it than we were. We first learned of her presence when she fell. The noise of her descent and subsequent efforts to scale the inner walls of the house threw the Chihuahuas into a yapping fit, which, in turn, set the parrot to screeching.

Amid the pandemonium, Jimmie called the critter control people, who came the next day and actually had to cut a hole in the closet wall through which to pull the furious rodent out. Two hundred bucks later, we were the proud, albeit poorer, owners of a possum-free home.

Not too many months after that, we came home from a Saturday breakfast out with friends to find a dead squirrel reposing on our den sofa. It took us while to think things through, but we finally figured the poor fellow had likely been ambushed and killed by the cat next door and later discovered by the Chihuahuas.

My little rocket scientists evidently considered the squirrel one heck of a fuzzy dog toy and brought him home. Our guess is they dragged him into the house when we let them out for a potty break, leaving the door ajar for them to run in and out until time for us to go. While we were gone, they laid their prize out on the sofa. It was one of the more peculiar things to ever happen around here, but one that was easily overcome by disposing of the carcass.

Our current problem, however, is about to get the best of us. Raccoons have invaded our attic, and they’ve made it perfectly clear they don’t intend to depart willingly. They created an entrance by prying a vent cover from an eave over the sunroom, which could easily be remedied. But until the area is guaranteed raccoon-free, Jimmie doesn’t want to risk confining an animal in the attic by replacing the cover too quickly.

In the meantime, he’s setting a live trap baited with sardines every few days and has actually managed to capture three of our masked squatters. Each time he catches one, Jimmie relocates his prey to an undisclosed location across town. But a day or so later, we’ll again hear a raccoon rambling around in the attic. Either the woods around here are teeming with raccoons, or the ones Jimmie hauls off are following him back home.

Downside of the live trap thing is, other animals are attracted, too. Last week, the neighbor’s cat caught a whiff of the sardine bait and suddenly found herself in confined quarters for the day. Talk about a mad cat. Jimmie was afraid to let her out.

And so it goes. But at least we can take pride in one thing: Word has apparently spread among the raccoon population that we offer five-star accommodations here. If we could only charge them accordingly, I’d install cable TV in the attic, set out some clean towels, roll out the red carpet and turn on the Vacancy sign.

This story originally appeared in the January 6, 2011, issue of The Trussville Tribune.

So here it is, the beginning of another year and as usual, I’ve made nary a New Year’s resolution. I learned a long time ago that for me, making resolutions is generally a waste of time and brainpower, both of which I have little enough to spare already.

Back when I did make resolutions, they’d be strictly followed the first two weeks of January, vaguely recalled by February and altogether forgotten by March. So I finally figured, why bother? But if I were to make any resolutions this year, here’s what they’d be…

Resolution No. 1: To shave my legs more than once this winter. If the length of the hair on my legs right now is any indication, I should have been born a sheepdog. But I rarely wear dresses anymore, especially during cold weather, so whenever the temperature outside drops below 65 degrees, leg shaving drops way down on the personal grooming list. (Guys, I know this is probably too much information for you, but believe me, the girls totally understand where I’m coming from.)

Last winter, I shaved my legs in February so I could wear a dress to a neighbor’s wedding without embarrassing myself. This winter? Well so far, we haven’t been invited to any weddings.

Resolution No. 2: To stop playing mind-numbing computer games. During the holidays, I stumbled upon an addictive Christmas-themed game, where the click of a mouse causes snowmen, gift boxes and trees to violently crash into one another then vanish from the screen.

The first time I played it, I was captivated by the power granted me to seek and destroy tiny Christmas ornaments. (I obviously harbor some unresolved aggression issues.) Before I knew it, I’d wasted an hour, but that didn’t stop me from playing a few more rounds and many more since.

As I mentioned earlier, time is not an unlimited commodity around here, so do I really want to waste it in a technology-induced trance? Maybe.

Resolution No. 3: To drink more water and less tea/coffee/soft drinks. This should be easy for me, and here’s why: A few weeks ago, I saw a Dr. Oz segment in which he gave tips for weight control. One of them was, “Don’t drink your calories,” meaning one should drink water, rather then all those high-caloric liquids I love so much. It occurred to me, not for the first time, that having a water cooler at the office would encourage me in such an endeavor.

Now my bosses are the best, always on the lookout for ways to make life better for their employees and rarely turning down a request for anything that might make our office an even more pleasant place to work. But for some reason, they’d always balked at the idea of a water cooler.

They happily supplied all the bottled water we could ever want, so it’s not like we did without. But several of us had long dreamed of filling our own larger containers with good drinking water, minimizing our carbon footprint by using fewer disposable bottles, and doing away with the onerous task of hauling in heavy cases of bottled water from the discount store across the street. Newly inspired by Dr. Oz, I felt compelled to somehow make that water cooler happen.

Long story short, the water cooler was installed in the break room last week. And all it took on my part was helping the bosses see that despite their initial reservations, they actually wanted a water cooler. If you call that being manipulative, well, you could be right. But hey, it worked. And that brings us to…

Resolution No. 4: To be less manipulative. Like that’s gonna happen.

So there they are, my resolutions for 2011. But remember, these are resolutions I’d make if I were going to make any – which I’m not – so I guess you could call these non-binding non-resolutions. Call them what you like; I call them forgotten.

Now if you’ll excuse me, my hairy legs and I are going to pour ourselves a big glass of sweet tea and play some computer games for a while.