Tag Archives: Midnight adventures

OMG!

34 Replies

2:53 am here and just spent an hour dealing with dogs that got sprayed by a skunk! I was not equipped to deal with this…what a mess. Internet says to combine oxygen peroxide, soap and baking powder but I had no big wash tub, it is pitch black and of course dogs were not inclined to let me catch them. Yard and doggie domain smell like skunk, I smell like skunk. Used doggie treats to lure them and at first just got in pool in my nightgown with Zoe and dunked her and tried to scrub her face off.. Of course she ran like greased lightning the minute she got out of pool. Then I went in and mixed the concoction..rubbed it on each of their faces but of course they didn’t cooperate. I couldn’t really rinse it off well…then dried them off sorta with a good towel.  Really only dealt with their faces which seemed the smelliest. I’ve always been afraid of this happening and usually bring them in when I smell skunk but this time I didn’t smell it until they had already engaged.

Always a new thrill. I have students coming in 5 ½ hours for their English lessons. Need I say I’m not in the mood? I have the air purifier on thinking of sleeping in gloves so I can’t smell my hands.

I thought I knew how to say skunk in Spanish, but the internet says “mofeta” which doesn’t sound familiar at all. OK off in search of gloves and perhaps something menthol to put under my nose.

Now, to read the rest of the story, go HERE.

Thanks to Bryan Padron for the image.

Nightly Visit

37 Replies

Nightly Visit

Like those of a recluse aunt, both cloistered and suspicious,
her midnight visits to our house have hardly been auspicious.
Under the mask of darkness, she ends her nightly wait.
Inching along the garden wall to circumvent the gate,
far above the threat of jaws and the dog’s wild bark,
she comes for nightly dining in the protective dark.

The cats’ leftover kibble is her nightly fare.
She comes in brief installments, until the bowl is bare.
I hear her loud enjoyment, the bowl’s scrape and the crunching,
intent on my midnight screen, I can’t resist her munching.
I steal across the tile floor, shoeless in my glide.
How can she know I’m coming, sealed as I am, inside?

Furtive, I reach the door and hear her final mastication.
But all I capture when I look is her evacuation.
She cannot hear or see me, a glass door in between,
the whole room dark behind me, yet she remains unseen.
Just one time in the dozens I think that I may
have born witness to her shadow before she slipped away.

In the lamplight’s subtle glow, I thought I saw a tail
and a mounded body obscured my nighttime’s veil.
I snapped an unlit photo and it is it alone
that bears witness to the possum outlined against the stone.
She glides so silently away to some handy location,
waiting for my departure to resume her mastication.

I know that she’s no midnight dream, no figment of delusion.
She’s that shy part of our family who prefers her seclusion.
Within my nightly flood of words she’s a welcome diversion.
I welcome that slight mystery brought on by her incursion.
I don’t hold it against her, this  hide-and-seek revival,
as I pour a bit more kibble out to insure her survival.

Is it only my imagination, or can you, too, make out the mound of her body and a long, slender curled tail in the shadows of this photo—just behind the dish?

dPrompt words today are mask, auspicious, laud and family.

Midnight Safari

25 Replies

DSC00067 - Version 2

Midnight Safari

Tonight when I came into my house after a swim, maybe around 11:30 p.m., I went into the kitchen and there was a snake about a foot long and a half inch thick coiled in my sink!  It slithered under a plate and for some reason I ran water in the sink and he slipped down the drain onto the blades of the garbage disposal which were about five inches below the level of the sink!! It took some time for the water to drain, and then the flaps on the drain kept me from being able to look down and see if I could see him–and if he was moving. I put my ear close, trying to hear him, but heard no movement. Finally, I went to get a flashlight, put on long gloves and got a set of long-handled kitchen tongs. When I pushed back the rubber flaps on the drain and turned on the flashlight, I could see the snake coiled and it was moving! So it hadn’t drowned.  I went and got a wastebasket with a plastic liner bag and after 6 tries, finally picked up the snake with the tongs, dropped it in the can and released it outside. What a relief!!! This is only the second snake I’ve found inside in 19 years. No, it didn’t even occur to me to turn on the garbage disposal. Ew!!!

 

P.S. No, this isn’t a photo of tonight’s snake. There wasn’t time to take a photo. This is the first snake I found in the house, coiled behind the umbrella stand. The one tonight was shades of brown.  Always a new thrill.