No, that’s not a new band!
This will never make sense without an understanding of how this house is put together (or isn’t), and I don’t know exactly what I could do to give you a picture. It’s just so weird.
But the southwest side of the old adobe is a semi-modern (35 years old) addition consisting of the kitchen and bathroom. This portion of the house is built with concrete blocks, stuccoed over with cement in the kitchen. In the, uh, bathroom, we’d have an utterly bare concrete block outerwall, except for the fact that rough boards are loosely “hung” down in front of it, so that there’s a mysterious black widow spider space where humans stick their hands between the actual wall and the would-be decorative boards. The salient point is that there could be a passageway for something small in there. And why is my mind going in this direction?
Well, my wife found cat food, the little pea-sized dry stuff we give him, in the bathroom. I hope you’re writing this down, because we don’t put kitty kibble there. It wasn’t even on the floor, but inside a little ceramic cup that sits on a shelf behind a curtain beside the bathtub. See, I told you this wouldn’t make sense. We had about a tablespoon of dry cat food, inside a small ceramic cup, three feet off the floor, on a shelf behind a curtain. The only cat food in the house that’s sitting out in the open is in the kitchen, so…
Uh-oh.
Behind the spot where she found the cat food is an old hot water bottle, a heating pad, and the box an old blood pressure monitor once came in. That stuff hasn’t been touched in a couple of years, perfect cover. In other words, I think we have a mouse: a very tiny, cute as hell, itty-bitty high desert mouse like I’ve seen once before, resourcefully caching pieces of cat food she probably had to carry one by one. It was nine below the other night, what’s a rodent to do?
[sigh]
Come daylight, I have work to do.
Comment by Pascale Soleil
1 January 3, 2008, 1:10 am o'clock |
Señor Buenopornada is living up to his name, I guess.
Comment by John Lay
2 January 3, 2008, 7:44 am o'clock |
My Mom was once rummaging in her store of pots and pans and picked up a big, old camping-type aluminum teakettle that was unexpectedly heavy. On inspection, it proved to be entirely full of dog kibble, stored by an industrious mouse and or family thereof.
This set off another round of caulking.
John
Comment by chris
3 January 3, 2008, 10:37 am o'clock |
well, it SHOULD be the name of a band! it’s perfect!! memorable, concise, and just vague enough for people to project all sorts of their own meaning and significance into it.
maybe you should trademark it while you can…
Comment by K.J. Webb
4 January 3, 2008, 4:10 pm o'clock |
Senor Buenoparnada is good. It’s what I aspire to be. Also good is “Wee sleekit cowrin beastie, what a panic’s in thy breastie”. My mother loved rodents, made her cry to see them caught in traps which my father gleefully laid. In Abilene in the years ‘57 to ‘59 the rodents migrated into town because of drouth in the country. People set traps and laid poison. Sometimes dogs and cats got hold of the poison and died excruciating deaths. I remember seeing my mother feverishly forcing some vile liquid (bacon drippings and baking soda?) down the mouth of our dog who had picked up the stuff somewhere. Didn’t help him, he died excruciatingly in front of our eyes. I myself never saw the harm in the wee creatures. My wife thinks otherwise, can’t even abide squirrels. The world divides between rodent-haters and rodent-lovers. When in due course the lion lies down with the lamb, I reckon I’ll lie down with a mouse.