The old farm apron is my favorite cotton print, even if I don't feel like cooking. I like its pocket, with the round ric rac trim. Coleslaw for supper, with a Bloody Mary. Lost kittens found napping near their big project, Hole to China. Both are alarmed when Carl sets up a ladder to scrape and paint the peeling siding from past winters' ice dams.
Still feeling bored at the grocery, I see my friend and neighbor, Elizabeth. She said it's a distressing holiday so far.
She's been taking care of her neighbor's animals while they're gone.We are living through an epic magnitude of raccoons this summer. I read Sterling North's Rascal when I was 11, and for many years wanted nothing more than a tame raccoon for a pet, and a tame crow to live in a belfry of a church next door. I've always loved wildlife, and still do. But, I've discovered, there is a them and us, when it comes to numbers. A few lady bugs are charming, a wall full or a window full is a terrible situation for all of us.
Raccoons entered the chicken house of Elizabeth's neighbors, two nights in a row. The first night 3 chickens were killed and maimed, the next night the rooster disappeared. It was a bloody mess, she said, and there was a one-legged chicken that had to be killed. She had already trapped and killed 7 raccoons in her own yard. To tell you the truth, she said, it's kind of depressing. Boring seemed a better kind of hot summer day, actually. I didn't mention to her that someone had recently seen a mother skunk and a litter of babies crossing the road to her barn.
5 comments:
Cuuuute Kitties! glad they were found. I can feel the heat off that window.
gnats,gnats,gnats-they are driving me nuts--
Barb, Gnats are in your face. But thanks to your big dogs, you're spared the raccoon massacree of chickens and ducks. (Duck eggs were a huge hit tonight in corn buns!)
I have a rule with wildlife that works MOST of the time - I won't bother you when you're outside, but if you come into my house, you'll have to die. When it's something like raccoons eating my chickens, I consider their house my house. When it's a porcupine eating the siding of my house, that's close enough to inside for me. But I admit, if it's bigger than a fly, I, too, find it quite depressing to kill something. I can't imagine what it must take for our military to do their jobs.
Peg,
Sounds like a good system. If I weren't married to a person who acts swiftly when weasels, groundhogs, and raccoons are concerned, I'm sure I'd be like the ladies in "Grey Gardens" Jackie Kennedy's cousin and aunt, who lived with the raccoons in the attic, and even put bags of corn up there for them, as the house disintegrated around them, and they ate ice cream in bed. I've got to see that again.....
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