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Mouse In My Shoes

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mouseinmyshoes

I am going to admit right now that I used this photo because it is so ridiculous to me that I had to use it.  Who would do this?  Also, they are stripper shoes. I found this out later when I am trying to figure out why “stripper” comes up in my documents used today.

All that to tell you this terrible story because for whatever reason I share my terrible stories with all of you.

My husband, bless him, never really knows what he is going to get with me.

Take yesterday for example.

It was my day home that I had been looking forward to since my last day home last week.  I know that sounds silly but seriously, I was so excited to be home that I had my clothes laid out on my unmade bed just waiting for me to have my day of wearing yoga pants, my sweatshirt from the #CabinAdventure and my L.L. Bean moccasin slippers (I live in these slippers).

I love days home.

This the point in the story when I remind you that we have adorable kittens, Waylon and Hank.  They moved in to our home at the beginning of summer and they have throughly taken over this house.  These two brothers run us and we don’t mind a bit because we love them so.

All summer they have been attacking each other and house flies.  My husband has been giddy as winter approaches.  ”They will be great for mice,” he says with a gleam in his eye.

And here is where I admit another truth.  We get mice.  Every year.  This old farmhouse is like a beacon of warmth and safety to every field mouse in every field surrounding us.  They invade us as soon as it gets cold.  I keep things packaged and covered all the time but they still come.

Waylon and Hank feel that mice are their new favorite play things.

This is so embarrassing to admit.

What Waylon also did this week - this week.  This is an upstairs window.  Please note I no longer have a screen.  These kittens rule this house.  The end.

What Waylon also did this week – this week. This is an upstairs window. Please note I no longer have a screen. These kittens rule this house. The end.

 

They have been catching one mouse a day lately.  They leave it where they know we will walk when they have come to the conclusion that the mouse just isn’t playing with them anymore.  Thankfully, they do not feel the need to leave the mouse on, say, my pillow.

I was writing on my computer when I heard Hank growl.  Hank doesn’t growl.  Ever.

Waylon crouched down in the doorway of the bathroom where I heard the growling.  What on earth? I wondered as I turned to watch, slightly fearful.

Then I heard a squeak and I knew.

I quickly sent a text off to my husband.  ”Hank has a mouse.”

He felt the need to call me.  It’s like he must be there for my most embarrassing and traumatic moments just so he can laugh at me.  He is sweet like that.

He also likes to talk so there is that too.

I am trying to ignore the fact that kittens are playing with a mouse until it is dead and I am very glad that the mouse is going to die before it eats all my food in the pantry – what if it were to find my one lone box of girl scout cookies that I have in case we are snowed in for days on end and I am out of all treats? .

I noticed the kittens acting oddly, as though fetching me to get me to follow them so with Jake on the phone with me, I followed them to the bathroom where they were pacing and…

…moving my shoe around.

Earlier today I had put on two pairs of pants, three shirts, a jacket, wool socks and insulated shoes to walk the track for an hour (well, less than that because Jake, again, was talking to me on the phone for like 15 minutes).  Anyhow, I had kicked those shoes off when I got home to take a shower and there were my shoes still…and Hank was looking at the shoe and looking at me and looking at the shoe.

“Oh! Oh! Oh!” I began screeching into the phone, “I think, I think, I think, oh! oh! oh!”

“WHAT?!?!” says husband, all alarmed now.

“My shoe! Oh! Oh! Oh!  It’s. In. My. Shoe.”

His laughter did not help.

I carefully picked up my shoe and flipped it over.

Nothing.

I shook it, flipped it over.  A dead mouse plopped to the ground.

I shrieked.

My husband, with nothing to do but sit in a parking lot waiting for someone to unload his delivery, was dying with laughter.

“I’m so glad we have those kittens,” he said again.

I don’t think I can wear those shoes ever again.

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That’s How I Got Showered In Hamburger Juice

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Years and years ago when my children were knee high to grasshoppers and not six inches taller than me, my parents asked me if we wanted their deep freezer.

“We never use it now that you are all gone and so if you want it, it’s yours.”  It was at the moment that I realized I had become my parents with four kids and they had become some childless couple that could buy one of those frozen Schwan’s meals that would feed them and leave them with leftovers.

I was ecstatic to get the freezer.  Because when you have four boys you are trying to feed, another place to store food is celebration worthy.

My husband and I have a list of things we want to accomplish every month of the year this year.  Jake says he doesn’t remember agreeing to this but I have promised him he did indeed agree and doing so would make our lives (in theory) run a bit more smoothly.  On the list he had added, “Clean out deep freezer.”

Cleaning out the deep freezer means eating the food that is in there so we can then defrost it and refill it with lots of fresh food.

Over the years, it has collected a lot of various unknowns.  The boys go to a game ranch, return with “free meat” and add it to the deep freezer.  My husband takes the boys to clean up leaves and the home owner realizes we have four boys so they send us home with a bag of frozen meat from, one can only assume, their deep freezer.

I have added the “buy one get one free” loaves of bread, the great sale on veggies, blueberries picked in summer heat, chunks and bags of cheese, coffee in case I absolutely run out.

But the deep freezer is no longer a place I “shop” anymore.  I more or less know what’s in there and send one of the boys to go fetch something for me from it’s frozenness.  (And then I hear my mom’s voice in my head sending me to get something from that same deep freezer as a little girl and her adding, “And don’t you tell me you can’t find it because if I go down and find it….” she trailed off while giving me “the look”. We made sure to find what was in the freezer, even if our hands become frostbitten.)

And knowing what’s in there is what keeps me from going to get anything from the deep freezer.  In the deepness of that frozen box are hides and dead things.

Nothing freaks you out more than digging for that box of girl scout cookies and your hand rubs against the soft hair of a deer hide.

Or, say, you go to grab a loaf of zucchini bread and a squirrel is staring up at you.  This happens to me, people.

They have plans to tan the hide of the deer AND the goat that are in there…but it I won’t let them use our one shower and home to do it so there the hides sit in the freezer.

And just so you know, Tanning a Deer Hide in the Bathtub is a real thing and the article is push-pinned in our bathroom just above the towel holder for drying our hands near the sink.  It could happen.  I live in fear that one rare day I’ll be gone all by myself for coffee and return home to all the boys in the bathroom tanning a hide.  It could happen.

They didn’t have time to gut the squirrel so the freeze it so they can at least use it to try out their taxidermy skills. And then I find it’s beady eyes staring up at me from under the zucchini bread.

So I have to send the boys out there to find things for me.  Today they found me a package of unknown meat from a highly reputable meat processing place.  But when I picked up the package from where it was thawing in the sink, it began to shoot hamburger “juice” out at me.

There was no stopping it.  I just picked it up and it began squirting at me as though it wanted to be put back into the deep freezer!

The deep freezer is dangerous to me, people.  And not having a set menu plan and instead just a “what can we find in there and what can you do to make it taste good” dinner plan we are doing is tough on my nerves.  I am not a miracle maker of meals.

There is one bright side to all this.  The Schwan’s man got my order wrong the other night and so Friday night is PIzza night – that I know is good and since the pizza is right on top of the deep freezer, it should be really safe for me to retrieve it.

No being attacked by frozen hamburger on that meal!

PS My mom is absolutely delightful and my siblings and I never sustained frostbite.  We just thought we were and that our mom was being mean to us…until we had kids ourselves and find ourselves saying the same thing to our children.  One day I hope the boys look back at me with fondness when it comes to the deep freezer instead of torture.  Love you, Mom, you know I do!!! 

 

 

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Eating Snake

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I love our library.

This summer we have a Teen Theme of Survival at the Library and we are teaching the kids survival skills.  A local resident, Mr. K., is retired Navy and currently a substitute teacher at the school.  He is the boys favorite.  This guy demands respect and the kids all seem to give it to him.  He also can tell a story like few people can.

So when he offered to come in and talk to the teens about how to survive out in the elements if needed, Alicia and I cheered.

It was a talk I wanted to sit in on, but the room was so filled (and I was drowning in books to package) so I didn’t.  I had full confidence the boys would give me an over view.

When the visitors had left, Alicia and I asked out six sons how the presentation had gone and this is what they said…

“It was great!  He told us that snake is really good eating!  Soon we’re going to be eating snake for supper!”

You know, I did always used to like that Mr. K.  Not I am not so sure.

People laugh when they hear this.  They laugh as an adult who thinks this will never happen.  I am their Mama.  I know this will happen.  I have never hoped to not see snakes so much in my life…and I never ever want to see snakes!

Perhaps you think I am over reacting (I tend to be a wee bit dramatic).  To that I give you this story.  It is not for the faint of heart.

 

S3 and I were sitting on the couch talking about some deep thing.  What it was, I cannot now recall and when you hear this story you will realize why that part seems a bit of a blur.  But it was a great mother son moment when all of the sudden he sat straight up and whipped around to look out the large picture window behind the couch. 

“Rabbit!” he uttered, his body tense with excitement.  “I’m going to shoot it!”  He ran to get his pellet gun and the screen door slammed behind him as ran out the door.

“He’ll never get it,” S2 laughed, hurrying in after hearing S3 call out.

“Maybe we should try to catch it for a pet,” S4 added, jumping on the couch and looking out the window.

But he did shoot it.  We were all sort of in shock by that.  He then dressed it out and got in my desk drawer to haul out all my push pins where he push pinned the hide onto a crate I use as a table on the front porch.  Then he used up all the table salt to salt the hide so he could keep it always.

therabbithide.jpg

But the meat?  Well, the meat he washed in the kitchen sink and his mama (that would be me) put it in a pot and baked it for a long long long long long time.  I wanted to make sure it was really really really dead.

When S3 was hungry for supper, he asked me how his rabbit was and I knew it was well cooked.  In an act of overwhelming generosity, S3 offered to share the meal with his little brother.

I scooped out the pitifully small rabbit and placed it on a plate for S2 to divide up between he and his brother.  They got out the Sweet Baby Ray’s (the only way they eat meat) and sat down to eat.

Excitement was high between them until S3 used his fork to pull away some meat and his fork pulled away (brace yourself…) rabbit poo.

“Oh, I guess I didn’t get it quite cleaned out.”

S1 happened to be walking by right then.  “Oh, it’s fine.  It’s been cooked.  I wouldn’t eat it but it’s fine.”

My smile was a wane one as I told him what a great hunter he was and how cool he made his own dinner as I grabbed the phone and hurried to my closet – the safest place to have a can’t be overheard conversation.

I dialed the phone and did the whole “please be home please be home please be home” chant when I got my parent’s voice mail.  But just hearing my mom’s voice had me confessing this awful horror on her voice mail.

But my mom must have sensed I needed her so she was calling me and I answered the call waiting to rush this story out.  “He shot a rabbit, I cooked it a long time but there is poop in it.  Is it safe to eat?  Or poisonous?  I don’t know!  How do I call the pediatric office with this one?  How would they know?”

My mom answered firmly, “You need your father for this one.”

My Dad, bless him, does not find my frantic calls unusual and does not get flustered by them.  He assured me that they would be fine.  But mom said his face said this was as gross as we knew it to be.

I hung up quickly and went out to the dining room where the boys were finishing up.  I knew they ate fast and there wasn’t much meat there, but this was super fast!

“It was really bony,” S3 explained.  “It tasted fine but it was too bony to eat.”

Thank goodness.

 

I tell you you all that to tell you this…

These boys know their mama will cook them anything.  ANYthing.  And if their hero substitute teacher assures them that snake is “darn good eating”, that means this mama will be cooking snake this summer.

Survival Adventures at the Library just became Survival Adventures here on our farm.  Because this mama just isn’t sure how she’ll survive that moment.

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Preparing for Hunter’s Safety

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I am sneaking away to write this to you.  If the boys find out…oy.

The boys and I are preparing to take hunter’s safety this weekend.  It’s a two day course.  Since I have never taken it I thought it might be wise for me to take it with them.

When we picked up the Hunter’s Safety book there was a note inside each one that said, “Read entire book and answer all chapter questions before class on Friday.”

I wish I had picked the book up earlier.

Wednesday afternoon was the first day I was finally able to crack open the book and see what it had to say.  I have been making the boys do study groups at the library the last three days so that an older boy reads to the younger boys and explains what they just read so they can answer the questions.

Note: saying “the boys did study group” sounds so idyllic and all but there was a lot of “how much longer?” and “where are we?” and “why do we have to do this?” and “are we done yet?”  

S1 took Hunter’s Safety years ago with my dad.  I have been looking for two years for a hunter’s safety class for the boys and this is the first one I have found.  They are rather tricky classes to get into because they are so sparse.  I told S1 he had to retake the class just to help with his brothers.  He is fine with this because he is really into guns and is someone who is super safety conscious.   S2 and S3 are old enough to take the class and while there is no age limit on the class I do think S4 is a little young for all the information.  But it’s still good knowledge for him to have.  I figure we’ll just do a refresher course again in a few years for especially S2, S3 and S4.

I know very very little about Hunter’s Safety.  I know very little about guns.  I have no desire to go hunting.  If a raccoon or an opossum are in the chicken coop, I have a passel of ready to shoot them and protect chickens and be all manly for mama boys (including my husband).

But I want to have a basic knowledge of this class for my boys’ sake.  And so I am taking this class.

I talked to another mom I know who is taking this exact class with her son.  “What if we don’t pass?” she asked, worriedly.

And that thought has been nagging at me.

I opened the book and the first chapter, breeze through it.  S1 is not quite hovering over me but keeping close enough tabs on me to know how far I am getting in the book and continually saying, “Just ask me if you need to know anything.”

Second chapter is all kinds of guns and ammunition.  My brain is staring to have a hard time computing it all.  It gets worse.  I don’t understand choke.  I don’t know how to sight it in or how to study shot patterns.  This is way more information on guns than I was bargaining for.

And yet my boys understand every word of it.

Somewhere in the middle of chapter three, my brain gave up and I fell asleep.

S1 emailed me while I was asleep…

here’s your inspiration for hunter safety

and sent me this video.

Sheesh, no pressure there.

So today they are determined to get me to finish this book.  They plan to take me shooting on Friday and who knows what else.  And then on Friday night, Hunter’s Safety class for the five of us.

Please oh please oh please oh please do not let me fail!

Hopefully updates to come throughout the weekend…..

 

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First Deer

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Today I am turning the blog over to S2 who harvested his first deer EVER today.  It’s opening day of Gun Season over here and I asked him to write the story of how the hunt went.  Here we go, in a 12 year old’s own words… 

Today I shot my first deer.  It was a buck.

My Uncle Jeff let me use his land, blind and gun (.30-06).  Dad, (S3) and me left the house at 5:00am.  We got up at 4:00am.  It was a long hour and half but we go there.  I sat in the box blind about 15-20 feet off the ground.

Ok, I was really nervous.  I got in the blind at 6:53 am.  Shooting hours stared at 7:03am.  I sat there and at 7:09am a doe ran in front of me.  I was mad I didn’t shoot it but 10 minutes later a deer came in with a limp.  I sat and watched.  It’s head was behind a tree.  It walked.  It was five yards away from the bait pile when I saw it, it was a Buck.  I brought the .30-06 up and shot him right in the heart.  He jumped up and kicked and fell down.  I took the safety off fire and yelled “YEAAA, I SHOT A BUCK!”  Dad and (S3) were about happier than me.  It turns out the Buck got hit by a car a few days/weeks ago.  I was so happy.  I brought it to my uncles and showed it to him.  He was proud of me.  I am very happy of what I got on November 15, 2014.

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The Rest of the Story

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Remember Paul Harvey?  Remember how he always had those great “The Rest of the Story” stories?

Well, here is mine.

S2 just wrote all about his First Deer the other day.

We are just so super excited for him, don’t get me wrong.  But to understand the whole of his story, we must go back to this summer.  Back when it was so hot we didn’t mind sitting in air conditioning.  Back when I took all four boys to Hunter’s Safety where I scored 100 percent on my test.  And in that class I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that I would never ever go hunting.

It happened when they started talking about gutting animals.  I had just reached down to grab my gourmet blueberry muffin when the talk of “field dressing an animal” came up as topic.  Field Dressing is not actually putting a dress on an animal, just so you know.  It’s taking the guts out.  All my boys were enthralled.  I was trying not to loudly gag.  And it was hours before I could eat that muffin.

Once upon a time I used to think that I could be a pioneer.  The older I get, the more I realize I am pretty sure I don’t have what it would take to be a pioneer.  I am all for harvesting your own garden and meat, I am all for teaching the boys where their food comes from.  But the actual act of hunting?  Um, I don’t think I have it in me.

Melanie Shankle has me beat on that.  But I did think of her as the boys washed all in their no scent shampoo and as I type this I am staring at a tote filled with clothes washed in the scent of dirt – that is a real thing – and left outside in the tote to take on the outdoor scent to make hunting better.  I think of her perfume samples and laugh. (You can read about that scene in her book.)

S4 was not going to go hunting so we decided we would go see Big Hero 6.  He and I worked on planning our day and were looking forward to doing non hunting things when Jake informed me I wouldn’t have a vehicle.

“Wait, what?” I asked, dumbfounded.

“I’m taking the suburban tomorrow,” he told me.

“Wait, what?” was all I could ask again because WHAT?!?!

“You could drive the truck,” he offered.  The truck is his pride and joy.  And it barely runs.  He would argue it runs great because it has so much Dodge power but I would argue against that.  You can hear this truck long before you see it, the windows don’t work and all we really use it for is hauling wood.  I had to tread carefully here.

“Does it even have gas in it?’

“You should have plenty to get to the gas station,” he assured me.  Except I wasn’t assured.

“Just don’t put the deer IN the suburban.  She wouldn’t like that.”  Because my suburban is AWESOME and I love her dearly and I knew she would go to bat for me so I had to for her.

“Oh, it’ll be fine.  You’ll never even know we put a deer in there.”

So when I got the text message of S2’s amazingly happy grin at harvesting his first deer while I was still in bed dreaming happy dreams, I am ashamed to say my text messages sent back were in this rapid order….

“NO WAY!!!!!! Awesome!!!!”

“Do NOT put it IN the suburban.”

“His grin is great.” :)

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Yes, dear readers, I said “do not put in the suburban” before “his grin is great”.

So then my husband sent me this photo….
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And said, “Makeup sales and deer extermination.  How can you beat that?” because he is clever like that.  And I saw all my Mary Kay sales going down the drain because in that moment I knew exactly what my next photos would be…

Yup.

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Dead deer in the back of the suburban.

And here is where I have more to admit.  My faithful wonderful suburban is home all these hours and I do not have the heart to even go out to check on her.  It’s as if we are both trying to make believe this awfulness did not happen to us so we are avoiding each other completely.  Jake even ran to get milk for me so I didn’t have to drive her yet.

But the boys were home and safe and cutting up deer meat and I pulled out the crock pot for our fresh meat dinner, congratulating S2 on putting meat on the table for this evenings meal.  I cut up potatoes that we had grown ourselves and added them to the roast.  And later I put my hands into the dough of made from scratch rolls to go with our meal.  We were making a big deal out of this for S2, as we should.

Except at meal time it wasn’t so great.

As we remarked at how amazingly tender the roast we were eating was, S4 suddenly let out a cry from the next room and began to puke in a bucket.  Not because of the dinner, no, because he was hit with a flu bug this afternoon.  And with that S2 began to gag on his food at the table and that pretty much ruined our moment.  Our moment that was going pretty awesome because it was just the three of us at the table (I don’t know if that has ever happened) because S1 was hunting with friends at their farm, S3 was zonked out asleep for a few hours at this point and S4 was on the couch watching the Jungle Book.  Well, watching until he began to puke.

On a bright note, S2 has a LOT of leftovers to make an great brag worthy lunch for school on Monday.

And that, dear friends, is the rest of the story.

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First Deer

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A day after S2 went out and harvested his first deer, S3 went out with my brother and harvested his first deer.  I have asked S3 to tell us his hunting story.  Without further ado, I give you S3….

My name is S3 and I killed a deer.  A buck/spike.  Uncle D said to hold still for the last hour but my toes were freezing.  Thirty minutes later Uncle D said “Hold Still”.  I froze.  Then he said, “Pick up the gun slowly”.  So I did.  I put it toward the lung and BANG!!!  I saw it drop and then get back up again we tracked him most of the night for about 10 or 15 minutes.  Then Uncle D said to come here and give me hand.  It was a spike buck.

 

IMG_5700Note:

When S3 shot set up to get a shot on this deer, they thought it was a doe.  When my brother called him over to where the deer was, apparently S3 went tearing through the woods.  My husband said he could have broken a leg and wouldn’t have known he was that excited.  “Do you have my deer? Do you have my deer?” he was asking and then he shouted, “It’s a BUCK!”  

S2 and S3 are not letting S1 forget he has yet to get a deer.

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Because Friends Don’t Let Friends Smell Like Skunk

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She looked me dead on, seriousness etched all over her face, took a deep breath and asked me “Denise, as my friend, tell me the God’s honest truth.  Do I (pause)…do I smell like skunk?”

Because REAL friends don’t let their friends they love smell like skunk, as we all know.

This is when I knew that I was about to get A STORY and as the days passed and I kept repeating it and laughing hysterically every time I thought of it, I asked my friend if I could share her story.  She has agreed and your day is about to get memorable because this is a story one cannot soon forget.  I have changed the names of my friends to offer them some privacy.

One sunny HOT (and hot is key to this story) Tuesday, I was thankful it wasn’t as hot as it had been the day before and was getting myself ready for work at the library.  It was an odd day where every one of my boys was gone save one, who happened to be sound asleep still in his bed.

It was an odd day as I was completely ready for work early and was attempting to not move too much to not sweat too much before heading to work.  I had just picked up a new kind of coffee from Mugshots (Summer Sunrise) and my tea kettle had just whistled when I received a text from my friend Jazzy.  “Are you home?”

I replied that I was and as I had about 20 minutes before work, she arrived soon after where I she commented on how she loved my vintage yellow dress and I poured her coffee in my two fiesta mugs.

This is when she took a deep breath, looked me dead on and asked, “Denise, as my friend, tell me the God’s honest truth.  Do I smell like skunk?”

This question took me by surprise and I am pretty sure it showed.  But Jazzy is my dear friend so I took a big deep sniff.  “No.  I don’t smell a skunk.”  Really, that is love because what if I HAD smelled skunk and choked and tears had sprung from my eyes.  Truly, I do love that Jazzy.  “Whhhhhhyyyyyy?”

“Well, we caught skunk.  Well, I suppose I should start at the beginning.  We have a woodchuck.”

Woodchucks are notorious for tearing apart gardens and wrecking havoc in yards.  So Jazzy and her nearing a century old father, Elmer, have been attempting to trap said woodchuck for quite some time.  Elmer believes in the old school way of doing things and so has been using conibear traps for all of time because that’s the trap that works.  But Jazzy just couldn’t take the conibear trap anymore and finally convinced her father to purchase a live trap.  Because when you must kill a varmint eating your garden, you want to do it humanely.  Anyhow, Elmer succumbed to his daughter’s pleading and against his better judgement, they purchased one.

Jazzy asked her big time farming friend what was her best plan of action for catching the fat woodchuck that was eating all their garden and she followed his instructions completely.  It was her idea to purchase the live trap and so she would do the work for it.  She felt it was only fair.

On Monday, Jazzy set the live trap right in the path (basically a woodchuck main highway) that it had into her garden and she baited it as instructed and went to sleep dreaming of catching that nasty varmint.

The next morning she could see from the window that he had in fact caught a big one.  For a brief moment she thought she spied white but then knew it was just the light and it was the big brown woodchuck.  But when she went out with her dad to get check the trap, they stopped far from the trap.  Because there, staring evilly, was a skunk.

Skunks are evil.

Elmer thought up the plan to throw a nearby tarp over the trap.  This should – should being the key word – keep the skunk from spraying them.  So, nearing a century old Elmer on one end and Jazzy on the other, they slowly and carefully moved to throw the tarp onto the skunk.   But at the very last moment, Jazzy chickened  out and the tarp didn’t cover the skunk on her end.

Elmer knew he had better shoot fast and he took aim to shoot the skunk in the live trap but as the day seemed to have it out for them, he missed.

All of this made the skunk very very very very mad and it sprayed a very very very very much amount of skunk spray.

Through the stink bomb, Jazzy said, “Well, now what do we do?”

And Elmer, tears streaming from his eyes from the terrible stench, answered with “Throw another tarp on the skunk!”

So they threw another tarp on the skunk and the thought was surely the skunk would not survive the 90 plus degree day.  Tomorrow the skunk would be dead and the skunk problem would be solved.

All day they stayed away from the live trap and Jazzy spent a restless evening thinking about how awful this all was through the lingering stench of the sprayed skunk.  So, early in the morning she gave herself a pep talk.  “Jazzy, you were the brilliant one who thought of a live trap.  You got us into this problem, now you get us out of it!”

At 5:30 in the morning, when it was just light, she went out to check on the skunk and the terrible evil thing was still looking evilly at her.  And she just didn’t know what to do next.  It was supposed to dead.  She was started by a banging on the inside of the house window.  Elmer, who was never awake at 5:30 in the morning, was banging on the window and hollering “Hold on!”

He stumbled outdoors with his gun and this time he shot that thing.

They stood there as the scent became overpowering again.

“Well, now what do we do?” Jazzy asked.  Because while she had given herself a pep talk, the pep talk did not include touching  the now very nasty live trap.

“We’ll take it to Sam’s farm,” Elmer said decisively.

Sam is Jazzy’s brother and he owns quite a large spread very near where they lived so Elmer tossed the live trap holding the dead skunk into the trunk of his car and they took off.

The ride wasn’t long but it wasn’t even half way there when Elmer said, “Boy, Jazzy, I knew I stunk but do I smell that bad?”

And Jazzy had to admit the smell was overpoweringly horrific.

Then Elmer said what Jazzy had been thinking but was afraid to voice.  “I hope I killed that skunk and it’s not just back there alive still.”

Because can you even imagine?

You are now so I’ll let you think on that nightmare.

They arrived at Sam’s farm and Elmer tossed that live trap and the yes it was truly fully dead skunk as far away behind the barn as he possible could.  Good riddance nasty skunk!

Except when the skunk landed they realized that they had yet another issue.

The farm is a working farm and there is a large pig pen out there.  And that pig pen was overflowing with water.

Sam was already gone to work and Jazzy, having the morning she was having, had forgotten her phone.  Elmer was about to wade into the pen but Jazzy, who had gotten them in this mess anyhow, waded into the pig slop and manure to get to the faucet that was broken and spewing water.

“We’ll have to shut it off at the well!” Elmer declared decisively and headed in that direction.

Jazzy, wading her way out of the pig slop, had all she could do to stop her nearing a century old father from “just gonna jump into that well and shut it off” as he planned.  Thankfully, they couldn’t find the well in an overgrown part of the field and so they decided the best thing they could do was return home.

So, back into the car that smelled of skunk sat Jazzy and Elmer who were both smelling of pig manure as well as the skunk smell and drove silently home where they then had this conversation on the phone.

“Hello, Sam?  It’s Jazzy.  Dad and I were out for a little drive this morning and we happened to drive by the farm and noticed that the pig pen looked flooded.  It was.  We looked for the well, you know how Dad is, but didn’t find it so you’ll want to get that taken care of sooner than later.  Oh, no problem.  And, oh by the way, there is a dead skunk in a live trap behind the barn. You have a good day now!”

Jazzy sipped her coffee.  “All this, Denise, before 6:30 in the morning.”

I had been spellbound by the story but started laughing so hard.  “Thank you!  Thank you for telling me this hilarious story!  This is just what I needed to hear today!”

Jazzy shrugged.  Like it was the least she could do for a friend.

I laughed to myself all that day.

But the story didn’t end there.

The next day I unexpectedly found myself at my parents home.  Long story.  We visited for about half an hour in which time I had to retell this hilarious story to them.  We were all laughing when my dad randomly said, “I don’t mind the smell of skunk so much.”

My dad also feeds turkey buzzards and they hang around my parents home.  But that’s another story.

The very next morning, my mom who had FIVE people staying over at her home for a tractor show, texted me to say that they had caught a skunk in the live trap last night.  That it has sprayed everywhere.  That the smell was awful and Dad even had to dig up the dirt to get the smell to tone down and Dad takes back what he said about the smell of skunk.  It must have been awful.  He didn’t even feed the skunk to the turkey buzzards.

I was laughing over my mom’s text when Myrna, Alicia’s mom, stopped into the library to tell us she was setting a live trap that night to catch a raccoon that was terrorizing her.  “Don’t do it!” we cried, “All anyone is catching this week is skunks!”

Because one thing Jazzy has taught us well this week…friends don’t let friends smell like skunk.

The post Because Friends Don’t Let Friends Smell Like Skunk appeared first on Life With Four Boys.


How to Catch a Seagull

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My husband keeps saying, “All my life I have wanted to catch a seagull and he isn’t even trying to and catches one!”

Yes, our son caught a seagull.  With a cheezit.

Here’s how you catch a seagull, in case you ever were curious how it can be done.

We recently spent a day a the lake.  S3 decided he was done with swimming and wanted to catch a carp in the worst way.  He wandered over the fishing area near the swimming area and baited his hook with cheezit’s and waited.

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My brother was fishing with him and had made little stick fishing poles for the littler kids.  The carp were so huge that they were snapping the fishing line off as they swam around everyone’s feet.  These were some huge carp!

S3 lucked out, as it would be, and snagged himself a big carp.  We were all shocked the cheezit actually worked!  He was all kinds of proud of himself and my brother was so impressed he told him he would cook it for him that night over a campfire.

Catching a seagull with Cheezit's.

Catching a seagull with Cheezit’s.

S3 was thrilled.

He decided two fish are better than one so he immediately baited his hook and waited for another fish to come by.

With all the stick poles out of use now since the carp had taken the entire line and ran with every one of them, S3 was the only one fishing and we were keeping an eye on him.

We heard the seagull and really couldn’t believe what we were seeing.

S3 was reeling the fish down from the air, his face utter and total shock.  We were all just dumbfounded that we were actually seeing him REEL IN A SEAGULL.

“Dad!  Dad, I caught a seagull!” he shouted.

Jake, laughing, headed his way but he was out a ways.  You have to know my husband has the loudest, boomingist voice.  “Way to go, son!  We’ll fry it up with the fish!”

Totally.  Joking.

I was frantically looking for my phone so I could get this on camera because REALLY, he CAUGHT A SEAGULL.

While this is happening, a woman comes booking it toward our son and tackles the seagull right to the water.  I mean, she was on that seagull like the seagull was on that cheezit.  We were all right there with him and she beat us all!

When Jake bellowed out, “Way to go, Son!  We’ll fry it up with the fish!” she shot Jake a look that if looks could kill he would die a million painful deaths.

She began to pet the seagull and then catching my husband headed her way, she very very very dramatically reached her arms upward and released the seagull.

She then proceeded to tell S3 not to be fishing because this is a beach.  Keep in mind, he was IN THE FISHING AREA!  He looked at her, looked at his daddy, looked at all of us and was just dumbfounded.

Seriously, a stranger is chewing him out and DID HE REALLY CATCH A SEAGULL?

We were all just in shock over the whole thing.

“All my life!” my husband kept saying, “I have TRIED to catch a seagull and he isn’t even trying and he catches one!”

After things had calmed down a bit, we all headed up to get ice cream.  Because this day for sure called for ice cream.

When we returned from the short walk up the hill to order and walk back to our beach things, the same lady was in our stuff attempting to let S3’s fish go.

My husband wasted no time informing her that was dinner.  Kudos to my husband for keeping his calm.

And that was when we decided to end our beach day.

But what a memorable day it was!

Here is our son’s version of the story:

So, I was catching carp while we were out camping with cheezit’s.  I had already caught one and I was going for another one.

It took so long to catch the first one, that I had seagulls by my cheezit.

All of the sudden one seagull swooped in and took my cheezit.  I was just hoping that he didn’t swallow the fishing hook along with the cheezit.  So I knew I couldn’t find out with him up in the air flying away so I reeled him like a fish.

You couldn’t imagine how big of a fight a seagull puts on.

I started reeling him in and once I got him down, some lady I had no idea who’s name she is, started chewing me out about fishing as she took the fish hook from the seagulls beak.

(S4, “You missed key parts.  You forgot she dramatically tackled the seagull and then let it go like a flying dove all dramatically.”)

(S3, “That’s all.”)

 

The post How to Catch a Seagull appeared first on Life With Four Boys.

Why Did the Muskrat Cross the Road?

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Continuing the the theme that I am my own personal comedy, I thought I would tell you our muskrat story.

And why DID the muskrat cross the road?  Just so you could laugh at this story.

Here in our Village we have this bunch of houses around some ponds.  Jake calls them swamps.  I call them nature and a nice place to walk.

Last fall we were walking out there and I found my first muskrat.  Ever seen one?  They are like my two worst fears getting married and having a baby.  If an opossum and a rat bred, they would give birth to a muskrat.

I am also rather fascinated by them because they build these house things in the water.  These house things have names, I don’t know what they are called because I am not in any way a muskrat expert.

I was walking Liberty with my Mom one sunny day and I wanted to show her this new house that is being built.  It’s so Chip and Jo and I love the design of the white and black and it’s gush worthy.  It’s also worth walking to.

As we walked, I happened to catch out of the corner of my eye and there, there on the side of the road, was a muskrat.

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I have tried (and failed) to take photos of these things to share with others who don’t believe me that they exist in our Village and here was one RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME.

“Mom!” I squealed, “There is a muskrat!  I have to get a photo!”

And then I took a video.

 

The thing took off and Liberty was going crazy and the man whose driveway I was standing next to started laughing at me.

I am my own walking comedy show!

“It ran under the truck!  It’s headed to the pond!”

He laughed.  “You could take it home with you.”

“Um. No. Never.”

My boys were so disappointed in me that I didn’t catch it somehow that they have been scheming how to get me to catch one another time.

Because they know just like I know that I will find another muskrat who has to cross the road again.

My mom had been holding her breath while the thing ran across the road in front of us and when it had gotten a good distance she let it out in a laugh.

“See?” I said, “This sort of stuff happens to me ALL THE TIME!”

Seriously.  Tales will be told of me and my dog Liberty.

The post Why Did the Muskrat Cross the Road? appeared first on Life With Four Boys.





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