The other night something set off the motion-detecting lights and lit up the yard. At the same moment, the same something set the dog to barking. I was awake with the baby and so peered out at the apparently empty lawn. But so pitch dark around the edges. … Impossible to see what lay beyond the pool of light. And then today I was out looking at our downed tree, which has turned out to be a huge cherry and may have valuable wood, and there I found some unusual poop. Or "scat" as we like to say out here in nature. It wasn't deer poop, which has a signature black jelly bean look to it. But I'm no scatologist and so I figured it would be some other logical creature.
This evening I was idling at the computer for a few moments and thought I'd look it up. Well, I ran through all the obvious ones, like raccoon, possum, groundhog, coyote, fox, etc., etc. and amazingly it looked like really none of them at all. So I took a moment to look a bit further. Then I came across this:
http://www.bigfootforums.com/index.php?showtopic=15227
The scat looked exactly like the scat in question! Finally a match! Only then did I read the page more closely. "The Web's Most Popular One-Stop Shop for Sasquatch Talk!" Oh great: BIGFOOT! Now we've got the Yeti roaming around out there in the dark. Just terrific. Setting off the motion detectors, making the dog bark, and who knows what all else out there in all those trackless woods.
Ah, country living.
A recent conversation:
Me: Do you think that's fireworks, or gunfire?
Ben: Probably just a hunter.
Me: But… at night?
Ben: Sure, if he's drunk.
reassuring!
Then there's the hornet/wasp situation. It's stinging insect season! Elias has been stung by a yellowjacket now TWICE. Seems they walk around on the kitchen floor, where he tends to crawl. Then he picks them up. Zap. Isaac got nailed when he set his hand on the back of his chair, and ZAP. For my part, I had the ill fortune to get some other sort of big nasty wasp inside my pajama bottoms. Unfortunately this happened to occur the other morning when Ben was leaving and we were having an uncharacteristically spirited and some could say hostile discussion. Well, my authority was greatly undermined when in the midst of the fray I suddenly was obliged to strip from the waist down and throw my pants out the door! I was stung seven times down one leg and a fine sight it was, I'm sure. I'm just glad that none of us is apparently allergic.
(Speaking of injuries, both these boys are hellbent on self-destruction. Yesterday while I was on the phone consulting about Elias's iron supplement, Isaac climbed up on the arm of the couch, carefully removed a lampshade, and stuck his finger in the light socket! Getting a nasty shock! Then today Elias was crawling around while I was making a tuna sandwich and talking on the phone and managed to cut his tiny finger on the metal part of a saran wrap box, such that blood got all over the place and it was a huge crisis. What no grandmother likes to hear on the phone: "Holy shit– he cut himself– he's bleeding– gotta go–" click.)
Something strange is going on with the ants in the basement. I can't tell whether they're gathering into some sort of convention, or whether they've all come there to die, or what. But one corner of the room seems to be really littered with a heap and pile of dead and dying ants, and the rest of the floor strewed with them in an oddly even way. Are they hatching? Breeding? Moving from one stage to the next? Did they run into some of the wasp poison I hired a man to distribute?
I can only wonder what the winter will bring. Lots of critters invading the house for warmth and food, I expect. The garage is actually a remarkable squirrel store house… they have neatly tucked walnuts pretty much everywhere.
Now– to refresh our memories… In the city we had a) squirrels who ate our siding repeatedly; b) mice who at times ran laps around the room in track teams; c) ants going marching across the kitchen floor; d) a vole or two bumbling around; f) LOTS of fleas… so I can't really blame the country for all the vermin.
I'm sure the Bigfoot scat has some other logical explanation. I mean, Bigfoot's range is MUCH further West from here. (Then again, maybe global warming?) I need a field biologist here pretty much daily (what is the life cycle of the carpenter bees? when can I putty up their holes? is that spider venomous? etc.) and I'm sure that if I had one, he or she would quickly identify the scat as some totally normal harmless creature. I only wish I had one. Add that to the list of desired staff (friend number 1: "Can't you just get a really ugly au pair?" Mom: "Can't you get an Amish girl?")
Oh yes, and the other day I found a real dead snake in among the shoes by the front door. In a house dominated by boys, one gets used to toy snakes here and there on the floor. But this poor little fellow had come in and probably died of fear or thirst while trying to escape from the shoe pile. Isaac showed no squimishness at all, picked him up and toted him around to show people. Maybe I'll just have to train Isaac to be the staff biologist. I'm sure he'd take to it quite well. Although he's never heard of Bigfoot, he is already fascinated with Nessy.