Of Mice and Cats

If you have never lived in a drought area, you might be surprised that one of the side effects is the attractiveness of your home to mice and other rodents. Yes, we live in a drought area.

We first became suspicious when our cats would sit very still in front of the refrigerator for 15 minutes at a time as if waiting for something to come out from underneath. But of course they could have also just been hoping we'd pull something out of the refrigerator to feed them.

St. Pauli Girl first noticed the mouse droppings in our pet food cabinet right before Christmas. We immediately went into the first stage of denial and assumed they had been there since before we moved in or the mice had gotten their fill of pet food and moved on.

A few days later, we were having happy hour at the kitchen table when I noticed a blur out of the corner of my eye. I looked around and chalked it up to an illusion. But then I saw the mouse scurrying across the kitchen floor and underneath the cabinets.

"I see the mouse," I whispered as I remained as still as possible. "It's under the cabinets and looking right at me."

St. Pauli Girl wanted to get closer to see, but I urged her to remain still as well. The mouse moved a few steps closer and looked at me again. I'm not sure why I waited for it to get closer. I doubted that I could dive on the floor and catch it.

The pet food cabinet had originally been the location of the kitchen sink when the house was built 50 years ago. So it had ventilation holes in the bottom of the cabinet that hung out over the floor. The mouse looked at me one last time then ran to the cabinet and climbed up inside through the ventilation hole.

"Ha! He's trapped," I shouted as I jumped up. "We've got him now!" I ran to the other room and grabbed one of our cats. "Dinner time," I told her.

I carried her to the kitchen and set her in front of the cabinet. I pulled the cabinet door open. "Go on, get the mouse!"

The cat just looked up at me as if to say, "why did you wake me from my deep sleep?"

She stood still, and if she smelled the mouse, she really didn't care. But then my plan backfired as our dogs, old Bo and puppy Bonny, saw the cat on the floor and immediately charged. They all took off running, screeching and barking to other parts of the house. We were on our own.

We pulled the various pet food containers out only to find an empty cabinet. There were more ventilation holes in back through which the mouse had probably gone back into the wall.

Now that we had an actual mouse sighting, we went from the denial stage to the hunting stage. We bought several mouse traps and placed them in strategic spots throughout the house. But three days later, the traps remained empty.

A few nights later, we sat at the kitchen table again when I once again saw the mouse creeping along the floor beneath the cabinets. This mouse was huge; he made Gus from the Cinderella movie look like Dolph Lundgren. Apparently he enjoyed our generous servings of pet food. He tried to climb up into the pet food cabinet and got stuck. But this time, the dogs were on it; I didn't even bother to wake up the cats.

Bonny immediately latched onto the mouse's tail and tried to pull it out, but the mouse put up a fierce resistance. After several minutes, the mouse finally came out of the hole in a desperate attempt to escape. But the resilient Bonny kept at it, grabbed the mouse in her mouth and appropriately carried it to the dining room.

We didn't want Bonny to dismember the mouse in the dining room so we encouraged her to take it outside. Big mistake. She lost her grip, and the mouse scurried away.

A few nights later, we were relaxing in front of the fire in our living room with Bo and Bonny sleeping at our feet. Our cats were sleeping somewhere far away, probably in the lushest chairs they could find.

Suddenly St. Pauli Girl yelled, "The mouse!" as it scurried out from behind a curtain.

Bo and Bonny jumped into action chasing the mouse back behind the curtain. But this time they would not be denied. The mouse darted about, but they kept after it. Finally, Bo, who is about 98 in human years, managed to grab the mouse in his mouth. Sensible Bo headed straight for the door where we let him outside to finish up the grisly business.

Later we hailed Bo the conquering hero while making sure we didn't make enough noise to wake up the cats. So apparently you don't have to teach an old dog new tricks which is great because you can't teach cats anything.

Flying on the Ground

We continue from the previous post with more "Great Moments in Customer Service."

Several years ago, I made it a personal policy that a trip must be more than 1000 miles before I will consider flying. It's not that I am afraid of flying; it's just that I have found a 1000 mile trip in a tiny car with no air conditioning, screaming kids, bald tires and tornado warnings is just as pleasant as a 1000 mile flight. Usually we even drive the 1200 miles to visit my family, but I found some cheap airfare for the holidays, and we decided to fly instead.

The travel experience went pretty well even though we could only fly within 120 miles of our destination and had to drive the rest of the way. The final leg of the journey home involved a short flight from Dallas-Fort Worth to our small paradise here in the Great Republic. As we sat on the plane and neared our departure time, the captain came on the intercom and said, "Well folks, we're all set to go. We're just waiting to get fueled up. I keep calling for the fuel truck, but no one is answering the phone."

Although ensuring planes get the necessary fuel would be considered the primary part of the job of the fuel truck operator, I decided I would shrug off this inconvenience. Everyone has a bad day now and then. Plus, we're already on the plane for the last leg of the journey, not much else could go wrong.

The fuel truck eventually showed up, and we departed maybe twenty minutes late. After a short flight, we touched down an hour later at our home airport.

"Isn't it nice we live so close to the airport now?" St. Pauli Girl asked. "We'll probably be home in ten minutes."

The plane taxied from the runway then stopped just short of the gate area. The captain's voice came over the intercom, "Well folks, there's another plane currently at our gate. He should be on his way shortly. We'll have to wait here a few more minutes."

Let's review our time dictionary:

If you say:                               I hear:

Just a second                          1 to 5 seconds

In a moment                           5 to 30 seconds

In a minute                             30 to 90 seconds

In a couple of minutes            1.5 to 2.5 minutes

In a few minutes                    2.5 to 3.5 minutes

In five minutes                       4.5 to 5.5 minutes

15 minutes                            Oh no

A long time                           I'll never hear from you again

Even if you don't totally agree with my chart, I think we can all agree that "a few minutes" is a lot less than "30 minutes" which is how long we waited for that plane to move. And this is a small airport. There are only eight gates of which only five are actually used. How hard could it be to go to another gate?

Finally, the plane started moving to the gate area. You could hear the entire cabin sigh in relief. The plane maneuvered toward an empty gate 8. Then suddenly, the plane did a complete 180 degree turn back to where we came from then stopped again. The captain's voice came on again, "Well folks, we're not quite there yet, we just had to move out of the way for another plane that just landed."

I watched in awe as the other plane pulled up to an empty gate. I could see passengers standing up, ready to disembark. About five minutes later, our plane started moving again. This time I could see a crew set up to guide our plane to a gate. We finally managed to get off the plane 45 minutes after having landed.

I went to retrieve the car while St. Pauli Girl waited in baggage claim for our lone bag. I pulled up to the baggage claim area only to find a long line of cars ahead of me. They were all idle and no one seemed to be exiting the terminal. Another twenty minutes passed with no sign of action. I tried to call St. Pauli Girl but she didn't answer. I noticed a few people with baggage come out of the terminal. I pulled out of the line of cars and decided to double park by the door. When I got there I saw St. Pauli Girl with no luggage. She reported our luggage hadn't come off the plane yet.

Turned out that our wonderful airline had only two people working that night. They had to load up the plane that we had been waiting to clear the gate and handle our plane after we parked. At the same time. I'm pretty sure those flights had been on the schedule for a few months. I'm pretty sure a smart cookie supervisor could have scheduled enough people or called in someone on fear of losing his/her job or death.

We eventually got our bag and made it home two hours after having landed. (Did I mention we live five minutes from the airport?) But to top it all off, we paid $25 for the expert handling of our luggage! I'm pretty sure I could have offered anyone in the terminal $20 to go retrieve our bag from the plane, and we'd have gotten it within five minutes.

So I've decided to update my policy: 1500 miles or less, we drive.

Carjacking Versus Valet Parking

Like a lot of people, we did some traveling over the holidays. That can only mean one thing: another episode of Great Moments in Customer Service!

One night, my brother and his wife treated the entire immediate family to dinner at an upscale steak house which we shall refer to as Ruth's Chris because that was the name of it. After a fantastic evening of great food, drink and cheer, we ambled to the parking lot where the alert valet had already brought our cars up. Except for one.

My brother and sister-in-law were the last to leave. As they looked around for their car, the valet mumbled something like, "I'm sorry. I can't find your keys."

Now I'm not an expert, but I would think that the most important thing they teach you in valet training is to always secure the keys. Sure, parking and retrieving the car are important, but really, the whole enterprise falls apart if you don't secure the keys. Instead, his training apparently consisted of:

A. How to burn rubber

B. How to fishtail the car in reverse into a parking space

C. How to jump curbs and do wheelies in SUVs.

D. Always remember to change the radio station to something awful and crank up the volume

E. Scour for loose change in the seats

F. If we have time, we'll teach you how to store the keys

You might think, "Yes, that was an unfortunate incident, but you just get the spare keys, and it's just a minor headache."

But it was much worse.

Imagine Monty Hall came into the parking lot during dinner to play "Let's Make a Deal" with the valet. Monty tells the valet, "I will let you pick any car on the lot, and you will give me the keys to that car. If by the end of the night, that car owner is still able to leave in a timely manner, I will give you what's behind door number three. If not, you get the goat behind door number two, and you're fired."

A smart valet would probably pick an older vehicle which perhaps he could get into with a coat hanger and then hotwire so the owner could eventually leave. Unfortunately, this valet picked my brother's car which was probably the worst possible choice because:

A. The car was very expensive

B. It had one of those new fangled computer programmed locks where you can't even insert the key in the door (much less a coat hanger)

C. The spare key was 400 miles away

D. My brother had to leave town the next morning (preferably in his own car)

E. My brother and sister-in-law are lawyers

After awhile, there wasn't much more the apologetic valet could do other than grovel. My brother approached the manager of the steak house to notify him of the incident. Having just spent a few grand on dinner, he thought maybe the manager of an upscale joint would send out some cooks and servers to search the parking lot for the missing key. But apparently upscale does not translate to this steak house's service. The manager responded more like the manner of service you could expect from an airline, the DMV, Leavenworth prison, or maybe North Korea.

The manager simply noted that the valet service was a contractor, and the restaurant had nothing to do with it. Sure that's all nice and legal, but you're pretty much admitting that one night you might have valet parking and the next night it just might be carjackers. You just never know.

My brother ended up with a rental car to drive home. They towed his car to the nearest dealership where it had to wait three days to get a new key properly programmed. Then the car had to be transported 400 miles to his home where it now happily resides once again.

On the bright side, I learned that you are not necessarily being cheap by avoiding valet parking, because apparently what goes on in a Ruth's Chris parking lot, stays in the parking lot. Unless it's your keys.

Up on the Rooftop

We didn't put up outdoor Christmas lights this year. (Not that we have ever set up a spectacular winter wonderland in the past; we have always put up a modest string of lights or two just so the neighbors didn't think we were a family of Scrooges.)

Simply put, I looked at the outside of our new house and realized lights could not be put up without climbing up on the roof. Longtime readers will think this is because of my recent ladder incident. Although there may be a smidgeon of truth to that, the real reason was that in my old age, I have become scared of heights.

My 12 year-old self would never have believed this. Although I certainly never did handstands on the edge of tall buildings, heights never bothered me, and I sometimes very much enjoyed them.

Back in the day, my family annually put up a somewhat elaborate display of Christmas decor including lights, wooden reindeer pulling a wooden sleigh carrying a wooden Santa Claus. After getting vandalized one year, we started putting the reindeer and sleigh on the roof as appropriate. Our two story split-level house had a lower roof on one story and a higher roof on the two-story side. Originally we put the reindeer on the lower roof but decided people might miss it if coming down the road from the opposite side. So my brother amazingly convinced my parents that we should put the reindeer on the higher roof.

We set up our ladder on the lower roof only to find it didn't quite reach. I think we were going to try it anyway by climbing up as high as possible, grasping the overhanging ledge with a hand or arm and then pulling the rest of our bodies up. Luckily smarter minds decided we should borrow the neighbor's ladder instead.

Our house also had a basement which actually sat above ground on the side and in the back. This meant a three story drop from the top roof to the concrete driveway. Of course the first thing we did up on the roof was to glance down to appreciate the long drop. Then we sat and took in the panoramic view thinking we could see the entire world. Setting up the reindeer wasn't much fun, but I loved being up on the high roof.

Flash forward thirty years to find myself standing on a ten-foot step ladder getting ready to climb on the roof of my one-story house. From the step-ladder, I would have to throw my body onto the roof while I imagined myself quickly sliding down the slope and down onto the patio below. I stood on the ladder a long time before I finally talked myself into it. I survived and learned that using the step-ladder wasn't so bad.

Ten years after that, we now had an extension ladder which should have made climbing onto the roof even easier. After a big hailstorm, I watched roofers all over the neighborhood practically sprinting up ladders and stepping onto roofs. I decided I could do the same. After chickening out a few times, I climbed up the ladder without thinking and without stopping. I made it to the roof easily.

I spent about an hour cleaning up debris and cutting branches from an overhanging tree. As I cleared the debris, I realized I wouldn't get closer than five or six feet from the edge. The closer I got, a nervousness grew in my stomach. I imagined myself getting dizzy and threw branches from as faraway from the edge as I could.

"This is strange," I thought. "I've never felt like this before. I still remember running around on the top roof of my parent's house never worried about falling."

When I finished I walked back to the ladder and sat down on the roof. I realized I would have to go to the edge to climb down the ladder. I slowly slid down the roof from my sitting position until I rested next to the ladder. I turned and tried to set my left foot on a rung only to push the ladder away. Luckily it didn't fall but that made me sit back down and rethink my predicament.

After a few more failed attempts, I realized the ground was only about ten feet down. A jump wouldn't be so bad. Or better yet, if the gutter could support me, I could just slide down, hold onto the gutter then drop easily to the ground. I seriously contemplated this until I realized the gutter would never support me. Twenty minutes later, probably too tired to care anymore, I finally managed to slowly get my feet on the ladder and climb down.

There are other incidents which make me think I'm scared of heights now, but being afraid to go on the roof has mystified me. Maybe it's just a matter of age perspective:

Twelve-year-old self probably looked down and thought, "If I land just right and drop to the ground like a paratrooper, worst case scenario is a broken arm or leg."

Current self looks down and thinks, "If I fall, best case scenario is a broken arm or leg."

Rule 34A: Ladders Can Turn on You

I try to live my life by a few simple rules. For example:

1. The workday ends at 6:00 p.m. unless there's a life and death reason to continue. (Note: this mainly applies to weekends and finishing up household chores and duties)

2. Happy hour starts at 6:00 p.m. (this rule also helps St. Pauli Girl tolerate rule number one)

These are just a couple of examples, but I never know when I'll be adding a new rule.

Our new house has motion detector floodlights in the backyard. We never noticed this until one morning after a vicious thunderstorm, St. Pauli Girl saw the lights flashing like a strobe light on a disco ball.

"The poor dogs probably didn't get any sleep," she said.

"Yeah, well they were probably dancing."

She didn't find that humorous and later that day, I climbed up a ladder to disable the motion detector. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a power switch; instead I set the sensor to its lowest setting and aimed the detector at the wall. Unless we had an earthquake, the lights shouldn't come on again.

A week later, we went to put the dogs outside at about 11:00 p.m. For some reason, the lights were flashing, and no one was dancing. I pulled the ladder from the garage and set it against the house. This was an extension ladder where you could slide part of the ladder higher and some sort of locking mechanism would hold it in place.

I started climbing the ladder then paused to shield my eyes from the blinking floodlights above me. Suddenly, the ladder slid down by one rung. The locking mechanism must have failed. Luckily, I kept my balance and remained standing on the ladder. Then everything seemed to go in slow motion.

The ladder slipped down another rung. I held onto the ladder but this time my left foot got caught between two rungs. A sharp stab of pain shot through my foot. At this point I realized the ladder would continue to collapse rung by rung, so I would have to free myself. Luckily, I noticed I stood only three rungs above the ground. Before the ladder gave way again, I stretched and got my right foot on the ground. This improved my situation, but my left foot remained stuck in the ladder.

I yanked my left leg hoping to pull my foot from the ladder. Instead the entire ladder pulled back from the house toward me. But the top heavy ladder shifted and started falling to the ground left of me, pulling my foot with it. I danced and hopped on one leg toward it as it fell. When it hit the ground, it spun me around, and I fell onto my left arm on the concrete sidewalk. As I lay on the ground cursing and wondering what part of me hurt more, Bonny the dog came over and licked my face in a friendly gesture. Either that or she hoped to eat my dead carcass.

The good news was that my foot was no longer stuck in the ladder. The better news was that my foot no longer hurt or maybe it just didn't hurt in comparison to the pain in my arm. I suffered enough injuries in my youth to realize nothing was broken. I self-diagnosed myself with a bruised elbow and sprained wrist.

After a sleepless night, I spent the next day wondering how cavemen survived. "I could hardly type much less kill a sabre-tooth tiger or even gather nuts and berries," I thought. "Stuff like this must have happened to them all the time."

After six weeks, I'm mostly recovered although I probably couldn't operate a tomahawk right now if I had to. Luckily I'm right-handed. But this incident forced me to add a new rule/caveat to my life:

Nothing good happens that involves a ladder after 11:00 p.m.

Where's Lassie When You Need Her?

As I had mentioned in a previous post, we recently moved again. During the first few weeks in the new house, a multitude of workers came and went fixing this and that or turning on utilities. One day, when I wasn't expecting anyone, I answered the door where an older woman waited.

"Hello," she said, "I'm your new neighbor. Sorry to meet like this, but do you have a grey dog? I just saw a grey dog I hadn't seen before running down the street."

"Oh that's impossible," I said. "He's locked in the fence in the backyard. I'll double check. Thanks for asking."

I walked through the backyard only to find no sign of Bo. I then ran to the front yard and wandered down the street. About three houses down, I saw a grey blur darting through a backyard. Luckily he stopped when I called his name, and I carried him home.

I inspected the backyard and noticed that the fence gates won't close completely unless you turn the handle while closing the gate. Some visiting worker must have left the gate open. From then on, I inspected the gates after workers left.

A couple of weeks later, we acquired a new puppy named Bonny. Her energy overwhelmed all of us including Bo. Bonny definitely believed she had the job of pack leader and couldn't tolerate Bo getting any attention.

One day as dusk fell, I realized I hadn't seen Bo in a while. I walked through the backyard and found no trace of him. I checked the gates, but they were all secure.

"Looks like Bo got out again," I told St. Pauli Girl. "We must have a hole in the fence somewhere."

We wandered through the neighborhood then drove around in the car but could not find him and at that point it would have been difficult to see our grey dog in the dark. I walked with Bonny through the backyard one last time hoping she might provide a clue. But she never left my side, and Bo never responded to my calls. We finally gave up and hoped someone had taken him in for the night.

The next morning I wandered around the yard hoping Bo had come back to the gate. Once again, there was no sign of him. I went out through the garage, ventured down the driveway but came up empty. As I walked up the driveway, I glanced at the well-house in the backyard and noticed a board sticking up out of the roof.

"Oh no!" I thought as I ran to the backyard.

Our well-house is a brick shed built into the side of a hill. The entrance is on top and drops down about eight feet. Unfortunately, the hinges on the door had rusted away, and the opening now was simply a board on top of the hole, and the well inspectors had failed to secure it with the bricks that had been on top.

I ran to the top of the well-house and pulled out the board that had been sticking out of the opening. I peered down and sure enough, Bo stood there looking up at me. Then he ran around a bit so I knew he wasn't hurt.

"Really Bo?" I said. "You couldn't have barked?"

He wagged his tail.

I went back to the house to get St. Pauli Girl and a flashlight. I would need help to pull Bo out, and I wanted to make sure I could see what I was climbing down into as the well-house seemed like a great home for snakes and scorpions.

I climbed down the ladder into the well-house, grabbed Bo and hoisted him up and out to St. Pauli Girl who gave the hungry dog a treat. Then I made sure I secured the top as best I could although I doubted Bo would ever run across it again. Bo survived the ordeal just fine.

Later that day, I played fetch with Bonny. She would fetch the ball then show it to Bo as if to demonstrate her superiority before she returned the ball to me.

"You sure weren't much help last night," I told her. "You're no Lassie."

She looked up at me and wagged her tail. She had a gleam in her eye; she definitely liked being top dog. Then I started to wonder, "Hmmm, maybe Bo was pushed?"

Bo Knows Ice Cream

We adopted our dog, Bo, from the pound almost two years ago. We used our special method of picking the dog that wasn't yapping its head off when you walked into the pound.  They told us his name was Bo which was fine with us. (On a side note, this is the first time I've actually written out his name. I always assumed it would be as Beau because he has a grey coat, tall regal ears and bushy eyebrows. He looked like he could be a confederate general. Unfortunately, his doofus personality reminds me more of Bo Duke from the "Dukes of Hazzard", and so "Bo" it is.) Bo has been a good dog and not caused any trouble up until this past August.

One day St. Pauli Girl got distracted while opening the front door. Stealthy Bo snuck out when she wasn't looking. Unfortunately, she didn't notice he was gone until about two hours later. She quickly posted an online ad knowing he probably couldn't get far without someone from the neighborhood taking him in. About an hour later, someone called with good news.

"Yeah, I'm calling about a lost schnauzer," said the female caller.

"Oh good, you found him?" St. Pauli Girl asked.

"Well, I found a schnauzer. This one doesn't have any tags so I don't know who he is or who he belongs to."

St. Pauli Girl slapped her forehead. "Yeah, we had just given him a bath and forgot to put his collar back on."

"Doesn't smell like he's had a bath recently..."

"Well he has one of those chips in his neck so he can be tracked."

"Yeah? How's that working out for you?"

"Look, where are you?" St. Pauli Girl asked in a rising voice.

"At the Dairy Queen on University."

"That's our neighborhood. That must be Bo."

"Bo! Bo!," the woman shouted in the background. "Well he doesn't come when he's called. Can you identify him? This one is grey."

"Aren't all schnauzers grey?"

"No, I had one that was brown once."

"Well is this dog brown?"

"No, like I said, he's grey."

"Then that must be Bo. I'll be right there."

St. Pauli Girl jumped into the car and headed to Dairy Queen. As she drove, she felt relieved Bo successfully managed to cross six lanes of traffic without getting hit by a car. Then she realized that was even stranger because Bo was basically afraid of his own shadow. She parked the car and saw an older woman with a couple of kids and Bo sitting at an outdoor table.

"Thank you so much," St. Pauli Girl said.

"He didn't come running to you. Are you sure he's yours?"

"He started wagging his tail when he saw me." St. Pauli Girl walked up to Bo and began petting him. Then she noticed a white substance on his whiskers. "What's that on his face?"

"Ice cream."

"You fed him ice cream?"

"He got into my granddaughter's. Or maybe she gave him some. I don't know, but you owe me three dollars for the ice cream."

"What? Who told you to buy him ice cream?"

"Well my granddaughter couldn't rightly eat it after he stuck his snout in it."

St. Pauli Girl sighed. "I don't have three dollars on me."

The woman just waved and shook her head. "Never mind. You just get right on down to Petsmart right now and get him a tag."

"Uh, thanks."

St. Pauli Girl loaded Bo up in the car and drove off.

"Well Bo, I hoped you've learned your lesson. You're not planning on more adventures are you?"

Bo just licked his lips and stared out the window at the Dairy Queen as they drove away.