Back to Nature

I got an e-mail yesterday from my neighbor, Julie. It was basically a note to let folks in our subdivision know that there are lots of deer running around the neighborhood at night. The guy next door to her has been taking a count, and according to Julie, he's counted 17 with night vision goggles, some pregnant.

Now I ask you, how is it that deer can afford night vision goggles when I can't? Do all 17 need a pair? Couldn't they share and maybe leave me a pair over where the hibiscus that they ate used to be? Maybe just let the pregnant ones wear them. Imagine what a herd of deer would look like in this:

I found another dead squirrel yesterday! This is the first casualty since Chauncey Le Nuts bit the big one a few months ago. As happened the previous time, I neglected to bring along my Hello Kitty CSI kit, so I just made a perfunctory examination. There was no sign of foul or fowl play. No arrow, bullet holes, little tiny pantyhose wrapped around his neck.

He looked rather content, for being dead, so I figure it was just natural causes. Or more likely from eating all of my rose buds. Too much vitamin C. I had to use a plastic Albertson's bag to pick it's little body up. I have a special place behind a bush where I stash animal corpses until trash pick up. I made the mistake of putting a dead fish in the garbage can in the garage once. This IS Florida, after all. We have garbage pick up twice a week here in the sunshine state for obvious reasons. The garage usually being a comfortable and consistent 110 degrees. (That's Fahrenheit) (We Americans haven't figured out the metric system yet so we sure as heck would be scratching our heads trying to work out Celsius.)

I'm sorry, but I don't do little animal funerals. You have to be licensed to do funerals in Pinellas County. I can marry people if I want but I can't bury stuff.

Let's go back for a minute to the sentence about garbage in the garage - I just noticed that except for the b they are spelled the same. Huh. That explains a lot about the state of several of the garages in our neighborhood. You know the ones. There's so much "B" in the garage that after 17 years they still haven't been able to put a car in it.

I think I have mentioned before that our daughter Jennifer in San Francisco uses the Mister as her personal private alarm clock. Either she texts him by 10:00 saying she's awake or he will call her. The Mister has to have the alarm on his phone set to go off at 10:00 am every day. That's because, in my unemployed state our schedules have gone to pot, and we just might still be asleep at 10:00 (so what!). Anyway, the texting is sometimes amusing - like yesterday for example - we're still snoring away when her text comes in. It says "wakey wakey" The Mister looks at it an laughs and then he mashes it close enough to my face so I can see it, and I laugh. Wakey wakey is one of the still used vestiges of our years as parents of young children. It's a nice way to start the day - laughing

I like the alarm idea - we know every morning that Jennifer is alive and well in SF. That's very reassuring.