Plywood and Death

So, this was kind of going to be a teaser post. Noel is away this week, being Mr Squeezy Box for a crew of happy campers, so I decided that a nice thing to do would be to surprise him with a neat little home improvement project that I could half-finish and have to beg him to help me finish when he comes home, exhausted, and has to go to back to work.

Only, of course, this time he's not cut off from net access, so I didn't want to give away the whole game right away. I was just going to post this:

And be all cryptic about what I've taken apart now. Just imagine how much of a mess I can make in eight days alone in the house.

Except, after I took that photo and went off to clean up the potting bench to do some potting up, I discovered the squirrel.

I'm not going to post a picture of the squirrel, which looked much like any squirrel would look in its situation, which is to say dead under my potting bench. You're welcome. I'll just tell you all about it.

A couple of weeks ago the dogs and I were in the yard and a squirrel kind of fell off the fence into Goldie's mouth. I wish I could describe it better but basically that is what happened, and she looked as if she'd won the dog lottery. Then she did what she always does (OK, what she did once before, the one other time she caught a squirrel, which was also due to poor judgement on the squirrel's part) and set it down to take a look at it, whereupon it ran away as any sensible squirrel would do.

My assumption about this situation was that the squirrel ate some of the bait the various pest control people have been leaving around to control rats on neighboring properties. I can't think of any other way that a squirrel could be so completely pwned by the canine equivalent of a Chesterfield sofa. Dazed and dying, it tripped and fell off our fence, and later it snuck under my potting bench and died. This is why I'm generally not a fan of poison-based rat control, though I totally and completely understand why my neighbors would resort to that, trust me. Rats in the kitchen would make me change my mind about a lot of things I hold dear.

I was already cleaning up the potting bench area, anyway (which is how I found the little bugger in the first place), so it was no big deal to scoop it up and bury it. It was an undignified burial in a poop hole, which is kind of a pauper's grave in our yard.

Anyway, I did get quite a bit of the trashed stuff thrown away, and the good stuff sorted out to be cleaned and put away, so the afternoon was a win. Maybe tomorrow I'll take a break during the day and go wash pots for a while, if I can figure out how to hold the hose in a good spot so I don't have to be bent over the whole time.

Also, I ate this raspberry. First of the season and plenty more to come. Must remember to order and plant some red raspberries this year, too.

And there's a secret project unfolding, as well. More on that tomorrow when I figure out how to get those sheets of plywood out of the truck without killing myself.

posted by ayse on 08/10/11