Oh RATS!

I need a vacation.  Right now.  Away from my house.  Away from my neighborhood.  And preferably away from this PLANET.  If I say the word 'DISGUSTING' one more time my family will wash my mouth out with soap and I wouldn't blame them.  In the backyard my husband is in the process of ripping out some old railroad tie walls and replacing them with huge 80-lb. landscaping bricks.  There's dirt everywhere, some stacks of old wood, and bricks from one end of the yard to the other.  No problem there, and we're happy to finally be doing it.  I say "WE" because someone has to be the photographer.

As I previously posted, a favorite hobby of mine is feeding the birds.  I hand-pick several different kinds of food to attract the different birds I want.  Plus they have a sweet little bird bath and I give them drinks with little umbrellas in them and massages every day at 4.  My backyard is the Club Med of birdland.  The birds where YOU live talk about their vacations to Club Russo and my backyard oasis.  

 

"But Beth," you're asking, "That doesn't sound so disgusting - why the distress?"  Well, feeding birds doesn't just attract birds as I DISGUSTINGLY found out the other day. I was having a pleasant conversation with my mom on the phone, and looking out at the backyard.  I saw something walking under the steps.  Was it a big squirrel without fluff on his tail???  UHHHH, not quite.  In other words...A...RATTTTTT.  "No, Beth, surely it was a mouse," you say.  I'm TELLING you this thing was the size of a small country or a pony and the MOST disgusting thing that has EVER been in my yard, not counting some weird neighbors, but that's another story.  We live near a creek and that combined with the backyard buffet makes it the perfect RAT hang-out apparently.  This thing was not only chowing down on some bird food that had spilled out from one of the feeders, but he was drinking some rainwater that had collected in a tray that fell off the BBQ pit.

I did what any decent woman would do and hyperventilate and panic and start calling my husband on every phone number where he could possibly be and yell at my kids to call their friends and find out what to do.  OK, I know that now, why would their friends have even the slightest idea what to do in this situation??  And now their families know we have a rat.  Good thinkin' there, Beth.  That's when the word "DISGUSTING" started flying around like nobody's business.  I finally reached my brother who was very supportive and started laughing and said to let the dogs out.  Uh yeah, thanks Dopey.  


Finally I called the police (the local number, not 911 - I did maintain a sliver of composure) and told them to please connect me with whomever has a job in the city getting rid of gross, DISGUSTING vermin.  No problemo.  She sent the city health department out.  I somehow expected everyone to have the same reaction as I did, but he acted like it was no big deal.  He said with the creek there and the bird food, it's not uncommon.  YEAH, IN MY WORLD IT IS!  


He walked in with a little animal crate thing and a glove - a...glove.  I'm like, "Are you kidding me?  What are you going to do?"  He said he was going to try to catch it and asked if I had a BB gun, while he, too, had a little chuckle.  Yeah, good one.  He put some poison in the hole in the deck where it was hiding (surprise, he couldn't catch it!) and then propped the crate up while he went to get a trap.

The professional set-up is amazing isn't it??  I told him it was hard to take him seriously as a professional with an "I ♥ Hooters" sticker on his clipboard - where someone humorously put "Jenny's" above the "Hooter's", as in "I ♥ Jenny's Hooters"!  Yes, it's true.  I feel like I'm trapped in an episode of Green Acres and they sent Cousin Eb to try and catch my varmint.

He went and got the trap and we had to set it up just so, with heavy bricks around it, otherwise our dogs would get into it.  In the morning...no rat.  By the afternoon, the dog was going crazy at the window and what do we see but Mr. Rat quietly eating his dinner where??  In front of his trap of course!  I spend a lot of time just shaking my head, I really do.  I know he doesn't look very big in this picture, but I'd say he's about the size of a house phone. 

So tonight we'll make another go of it and hopefully we'll have him caught in the morning.  Then what?  Who knows.  What if it has babies?  Who knows.  Here's what I know - CLUB RUSSO IS NOW CLOSED!  Sadly, my bird feeding hobby is a thing of the past, and so is ever setting foot in the backyard again.

Sunbathing poolside

Uh mom, I'm old enough now that you can't fool me anymore.  This isn't really a pool is it??  I think my friend was on to her.  This was probably around 1966 or so.  I'm pretty sure this is the same girl that was in my bikini picture, too.  And that bouncy horse in the basement - not from a real farm, was it?  She really pulled the wool over my eyes!  

For more pre-digital flashback fun, visit Alicia at More Than Words and have a great weekend!  

Birds on the block

It's been so long since I've blogged regularly, I've missed several of Angela's Tuesdays Show & Tails lately.  One little hobby I developed several years ago is bird feeding/watching.  I don't walk around wearing khaki shorts and binoculars around my neck, but it's fun when I see something out of the ordinary or maybe something that's not overly common.  That really doesn't happen too often but I thought I'd share some of the birds that are around my house all the time.

You know the expression that someone "eats like a bird"?  I think that's supposed to mean they don't eat a lot.  Well, if you've ever fed birds, you know they eat like elephants and you can quickly go broke keeping their little stomachs happy.  Plus finding just the right blend to keep out the grackles and squirrels that will empty a feeder in 2 seconds flat is a trick in and of itself.  However, it's still fun and gives us countless hours of free entertainment.

I feel like making the dogs a bowl of popcorn so they can kick back and watch the show out back:

I'm such a novice, even though I have a lot of bird books.  Many of them look the same to me, so after scouring the pages, I'm giving you my best guess as to what it is you're seeing.  I think these are mockingbirds.

This next one is some kind of blackbird or cowbird or something like that.  It's all black with a brown head.

This is a house finch.  I know it's not a purple finch because the man at Wild Birds Unltd. spent a long time telling me the difference.  Don't ask me to repeat it because that store is filled with soft music and trickling water so I think he hypnotized me while I was there, or I dozed off while he was talking:

This is one of my favorites because 9 times out of 10 you'll find the mom and dad cardinal either together or close to one another.  They're sharing the feeder with a little finch.

I think this is some kind of woodpecker - he was a little thing but had a long beak:

This is just a regular robin taking a bath (I took it through the screen door so it's a bit fuzzy):

In the front yard, I have a small sock finch feeder and we do get the yellow or gold finches pretty often and they're my favorite because they're so bright:

I wish I could say I like the mourning doves but they're just not a favorite, and yep they do sound like they're in mourning.  They're ground feeders and they're big and I think the dog thinks they're squirrels so basically they are kind of a pain in the neck for me, but it's nice to have a variety I guess:

Finally, here is the Bozo of the backyard.  The acrobats any squirrel will do to get at the feeder will just crack you up.

We also get some blue jays and little juncos in the wintertime, but the blue jays, even though they're beautiful, are kind of mean and will scare the little birds away.  I tend to put their food in the back part of the yard.  So that's it - nothing overly exciting, but it's fun to share part of my regular day with my blog friends.  

If you have any animal stories (even if you don't own any) and want to share, pop on over to Angela's at West Virginia Treasures for her Tuesday's Show & Tail. 

Celebrate good times...

No more teachers, no more books...well, for now!  My youngest, Sara, has officially graduated from high school and I am now a mother to three college students navigating the murky, but often exciting, waters of young adulthood.  We've been through a very busy last few weeks ~ graduation on May 21st, foot surgery for her on May 28th, the party on June 6th, and wisdom teeth out on June 8th.  Thank you, Percocet*, for getting her (and therefore, ME) through this - I owe you one.   *Before anyone gets anti-drug on me, she was strictly monitored, and didn't take nearly as much as I would have.  In fact, since she still had pain meds from surgery, I never got the prescription from the oral surgeon filled.  Whew, that's off my conscience.  I am getting sidetracked, however, and wanted to share some pics of our last few weeks.

This is the church where graduation took place, The New Cathedral, in downtown St. Louis.  This is where most of the Catholic high schools in the area have their graduations because it's huge.  We actually do have an Old Cathedral in St. Louis, too. 

 

Here is the happy graduate - I love how she is just enjoying the moment! 

Now it's time to par-tay!  We had it at a local pizza place called Pirrone's and it was fun just spending some time relaxing with family and friends.  She's wearing a boot here from her surgery, but of course pictures of that were off limits.

Since we weren't allowed to hang anything on the walls, the decorations were very simple - school pictures from each year, some special things from her school days, and of course no party is complete without chocolate!

 A little advice if you order personalized M&Ms - the words don't show up real well on the red ones. 

 I cropped a picture from graduation, and with a little help from some clip-art on the back, I made little candy bar wrappers and wrapped them around some Hershey's Miniatures.  SO easy.

Now it's time to get settled into the summertime routine and then get her packed up and ready for college.  The other two went away for awhile and came home and attend school in town now.  We're curious to see if she'll stay away or want to come home.  She does have a dad who's really good with math homework, so we'll see!  Way to go, Sarapoo!

Don't Adjust Your Screen

This may bring out the uber-dork in me, but I've always loved matching outfits.  I'm sure God didn't give me twins for a reason, but if he had, I'd have taken that and flown with it!  When my kids were little, nary a holiday went by that they weren't dressed alike.  OK, I didn't put a dress on my son (you're welcome, Adam) but his outfit always tied in with whatever matching thing the girls had on.  

I remember my mom making doll clothes and Barbie dresses so I thought maybe that's where it came from, I wasn't sure.  I knew I wanted to see matching something, so when Easter rolled around each year, the sewing machine came out and I went to town.  This was 1991 and my first attempt at matching dresses for Meredith and me.  I realize now they look like someone's bedspread but at the time all I saw were beautiful flowers.  Poor Meredith, we used to call her "Mere Mere with no hair hair", but thankfully she's not bald anymore.

 As the kids got a bit older, and my girth warranted too much fabric, I went to making matching dresses for the girls and their dolls.  

Even my sister-in-law, who had all boys but loved to sew, joined in the fun and made the girls matching pajamas with matching pajamas for their Barbies, too.

I knew my mom was a sewer back in the day but I was child #6 and she was working full time by then so homemade clothes weren't too much of an option.  I'm sure I wouldn't have appreciated it at the time anyway.  Well, not too long ago when I was having all her slides made into photos, lookie there - my sister and I had matching outfits.  I'm the one in front with the totally natural smile.  I'm not sure if she made them or if they were store-bought but I bet I thought I was hot potatoes matching a big sister.

THEN....I saw it...peeking at me amongst the myriad of photos with bad hair-dos and tinseled Christmas trees...homemade matching outfits!!  Before I was born of course, but priceless nonetheless.  My sister on the right has a look of happy/sad/confused but who knows, maybe her ponytail was too tight. 

Now that everyone is older, I think I've gotten MOST of the matching out of my system, don't you think so, pups??

If you want to enjoy other flashbacks, visit sweet Alicia and More Than Words for another fun week of Friday Photo Flashback.