A Batty Adventure

On a Monday morning, in the not too distant past, with sleep dust still in the corner of my eyes, I make the babies a bottle of warm milk, spoon some stinky wet canned cat food onto a dish and head out to feed our two baby kittens, Smudge and Cleo.
Our cat room has two people doors and two pet doors. One of each opens from the garage into the cat room, the other opens to the outside.
The morning sun streams through the glass of the outside door and I don’t need to turn any lights on. As I open the door into the cat room, the older kittens Rascal, Spitfire and Feisty scoot in the door with me, then it’s a kitten rodeo as I try to wrangle them and get them out of the cat room so I can feed the babies. I pick two up and toss them out. I capture the last one and as I open the door, two come in and I toss one out. The whole time I’m trying to get the older kittens out — and keep them out — the babies are crying and getting under my feet, making this job just that much harder.
Once all of the older kittens are on the other side of the door, I turn my attention to the babies.

“Good morning, good morning, good morning!” I sing-song to them.
“Mew, mew, mew, mew, mew, mew,” Smudge answers standing on my foot.
“Mew, mew, mew, mew, mew,” answers Cleo already climbing my leg.

“Where’s my babies?” I ask like they aren’t right there.
“Mew, mew, mew, mew, mew,” they both answer.
“Alright! Alright!” I say shaking the babies off. Then I tiptoe and sidestep as I try to make it to my chair without stepping on or kicking a baby. It’s amazing that two kittens can seem like ten! Every time I pick my foot up they scamper in circles looking for where mom went. And in case you don’t know it, this can be an especially tricky maneuver when you’re an old woman and your balance isn’t what it used to be!
I get to my chair and Smudge and Cleo try to climb into my lap. I set the dish of food on the floor, pick up Cleo and set her near it. She is so focused on me that she either doesn’t see me set the food down or she hasn’t yet associated the dish I carry with food, but once she gets a whiff of it she dives right in, getting her front paws on the plate and in the food.
Smudge, truly a baby, doesn’t want anything to do with soft food yet but I keep trying. I put his nose in the food, he licks it off, turns his back to the dish and cries for his bottle. And I give it to him.
Maybe if he’s really hungry he’ll eat it, I think this morning and instead of putting his nose in the food, I reach in to take a little piece from the edge of the plate. Cleo wasn’t having any of that. She pounced on me so fast! She grabbed my invading finger with her sharp little kitten claws, and bit me with her sharp little kitten teeth, growling the whole time. Lucky for me she is much too small to do any damage.
“You stinker!” I scold, but I am smiling at the same time. Protecting the food she has is an important survival skill; one I’m pleased she knows.
Smudge ate the piece of food I’d held for him and cried for more. I reached for another piece from the plate and Cleo growled and slapped my fingers. I snuck Smudge a couple of more pieces then he started to refuse them, crying for his bottle instead. I gave it to him. Cleo ate all she wanted from the dish and cried for some milk. I pulled the bottle from Smudge’s mouth and gave her some.
I try to stay and cuddle with the babies for a few minutes after they finish eating and that’s what I was doing as Mike stepped from the house and into the attached garage.
I hear a click and the light comes on.
“Peg,” he calls. “Come here. You gotta see this.”
I groan. “Don’t tell me you found more kittens!” I exclaim. Taking care of these two was enough!
“No. Come here.”
I put Cleo and Smudge down and opened the door. Three kittens run in looking for leftovers. “What?” I ask Mike as he was standing close by.
“Look,” he says.
Not knowing what I was looking for, I’m looking on the floor and into the far reaches of the garage.
“What!”
“Right there,” he says and points to a bat hanging from the pull string of the light right in front of me.
“Oh my!” I exclaim. “I’ve got to get a picture of this!” and I went for my camera. The bat had hung on the end of the string for who knows how long, two more minutes wasn’t going to make any difference.

“What are you going to do with it?” Mike asked.
“Turn it loose.”
“You need a glove.”
“I’m going to get a towel,” I said. I didn’t know where there was a glove, but I knew where there was a towel. I went into the house and grabbed a hand towel from the kitchen. Carefully I gathered the bat into it and went to work unwinding the cord. I’ll tell you what. I was so afraid of causing more damage to his wing, but it looked like in his struggle to get free, the string was deeply embedded. Gentle wasn’t working. I couldn’t see how it was wrapped. I tugged a little harder then I could see how it was twisted and the whole time this little bat was squeaking. I had to work at it a little to get it unwrapped from his thumb but I finally got it. Then I took the bat outside, opened the towel and give it a little pitch to help him get airborne. He went about two feet and landed in the grass. I’d gotten a glimpse of his outstretched wings and the one that had had the cord wrapped around it looked like it might be ripped. I quickly picked him back up with the towel. If he couldn’t fly, he would just be cat food.
  Now what? I wondered to myself. In my mind’s eye, I saw me putting him on one of the rafters of the patio. Maybe he’ll fly away when it gets dark. But if he can’t fly and he falls down, he’ll still be cat food!
Having just moved here six weeks ago, empty cardboard boxes weren’t hard to come by, at least until I can get to the recycle center. I put the towel with the bat in it into a box, opened the towel and closed the box.
Squeak, squeak, squeak, said the bat.
Angie will know what to do with him, I thought thinking of the owner of the Second Chance Wildlife Center in Tunkhannock. It’s the only place in the whole northern tier of Pennsylvania that rehabs sick or injured wildlife and she took some baby possums I found a few weeks ago.

Until Angie told me what to do with the bat, I needed to keep him safe. I set the box on the picnic table. I know from past experience with cats that they can get down into an unsealed box if they want to. I needed something to put on top of it. I looked around and there in a corner were some scraps of wood that were leftover from a project Mike had completed the day before. I picked up a couple of them and stacked them on top of the box.
That should do it.
Then I went in the house, to the computer and sent an email to Angie. “I’ve got a bat. He had a string wrapped around his wing. I wrapped him in a towel and got the string off and I let him loose, but he can’t fly. I’m afraid my cats will get him so I picked him up with the towel and put him in a box. He must have hurt himself hanging on that string from the light all night. Angie, what do I do? How do I help him? Thanks, Peg.”
“Hi Peg,” Angie replied back a few hours later. “Does anything look broken? He just may need a few days to rest. He will eat mealworms and drink from a shallow dish. I can take it if you can get it to me. Or if you want to see how he does, just keep it quiet and wear gloves when feeding.”
Well that doesn’t sound too hard. But what am I going to keep him in? In my mind’s eye I can see my dog kennels and cat carriers but the holes in those wouldn’t keep a bat in. And what if his wing is torn? I won’t know how to take care of that. Maybe I should just take him down to her.
I sent Angie another email and outlined my worries. Besides saving the life of the bat, I had another, ulterior motive. I’d really like to see what the wildlife center looks like, especially since I have it in the back of my mind that I’d love to do the same thing one day, but they do not permit visitors. Taking an injured bat to her didn’t make me a visitor, it made me a rescuer, and just maybe I’d be offered a look around.
“Give me an address for the GPS and I’ll bring it down to you tonight,” I told her.
“I am at my regular job today until 5:30,” she said and gave me an address.
I’m in! I think. I’ll get to see it. “Okay, I’ll see you after 5:30.” Then I wonder how I’m going to get Mike to go along with my scheme. Food! It always works with either one of us. “We’ll have dinner at Twigs then see you. Is that okay?” I added and sent my email off.
Mike was on the couch watching TV. “Oh honey! Do you want to go to Tunkhannock for dinner tonight?”
“I don’t know. Why?” he answers sleepily.
“We can take this bat down to Angie and have dinner while we’re there.”
“The whole way to Tunkhannock for a bat!” Mike asked incredulously. “Just give it to the cats.” But I think he was just teasing. He knows my passion for all things living, he even calls me when there’s a spider that needs relocating to the outdoors.
“NO!” Now I was incredulous. “If the cats get one on their own, then it’s fair and square and they get to keep it. But not like this. Not one that is hurt because of us.”
A ding sounded from my computer, alerting me to a new email. It was from Angie. I opened it up. “Ok as long as I can get it at 5:30 and head back to feed the critters. I have to hurry to get done by dark with all the outside ones.”
I was crestfallen. That sounded like I was meeting her at her job. I reviewed our previous emails and wondered how I could have gotten it so wrong. “I am at my regular job today until 5:30. I can give you the address here if you want to drive him out. It’s…”
Oh. The word here is a dead giveaway, it’s just that I didn’t realize she was already at her regular job. Or maybe I was reading into it what I wanted to?
“Oh. Okay. I thought I was taking him to the sanctuary but I’m dropping him at your job, right?”
“Yes, I would like to get him as I get out of work. That would work best for me. Thanks.”
I’d seen Angie’s picture on her Facebook page, but I was worried I wouldn’t recognize her in person. It rattled around in my head for the rest of the day until it was time for Mike and me to leave. Then I thought to send her an email. As my computer was hooking to the internet I remembered that I would need the address too.
Can you imagine making plans to go someplace and not taking the address with you? Well, it’s happened to me. More than once, I’m sorry to say. Only when it’s happened before I usually don’t even remember to copy the address from the internet. That means Mike has to wait for me as I connect to the internet and navigate to the website to get the address. So this time I was way ahead of the game and when Mike asks about the address I can proudly pull it from my pocket with a triumphant flourish.
I found the email that included the address, pulled a notepad in front of me and wrote the address down. Then I hit reply. “We are in a white Jeep,” I told Angie and I also included my phone number. I hit send, closed my computer, grabbed my purse and joined Mike as he sat in the Jeep waiting for me.
“Got the bat?” he asked.
“No. Didn’t you get it?” I’d have let Mike drive out of the driveway and gotten halfway to Tunkhannock before I would have remembered why we were going. Then I thought he might be teasing me but I glanced over to the picnic table and there sat the box.
“No,” he said at that same time.
I unbuckle my just fastened seatbelt and jump out. When I came back with the bat box I opened the lift gate and put him in the way back, as I call it, then I got back in the Jeep, buckled my seatbelt and we head out the driveway. We are driving down the dirt road, cross the single-lane open-grate bridge and are almost to the blacktop when Mike reaches for the GPS and asks, “Where are we going?” He was going to put the address in at the stop sign.
I gasped in horror. It flashed in my mind’s eye; the address, sitting on the table, on the notepad where I had written it, right beside my computer. “I forgot the address!”
Mike frowned, but he slowed the Jeep and turned around in the neighbors driveway.
Well that sucks, I think to myself. I’d been so proud of myself for remembering to write it down too!
Tunkhannock is about twenty-five miles from us and we left early in case we had any problems finding the address Angie gave me. We chatted as Mike drove.
“I don’t really care if we eat at Twigs or not,” Mike said. “I’m okay if we just eat at McDonalds. They have breakfast all day and I can get a sausage egg McMuffin.”
We get into Tunkhannock and not only did we have problems finding the address, we had problems finding any numbers on any of the houses or businesses. When we do finally spot one, we had gone way past where we needed to be and had to turn around and go back. I had better luck finding numbers on the mailboxes at the road, and I was finding just enough of them to keep us going until I spot a great big 230 on the front of Wisnosky Jewelers.

“There it is,” I say pointing.
“Where?”
“On the jewelry store.”
Mike parks and we get out and go inside.
“Can I help you?” a young lady asks as she approaches us.
“We’re looking for Angie,” I say.
She turns to the other lady in the store who had her back to us and I think the other lady must be Angie. The gal that greeted us looked to be barely out of her teens so I didn’t expect her to be Angie. But instead of saying, “Angie, these folks are here to see you,” as I expected her to say, she said, “There’s no Angie here.”
“Are you sure?” I asked because her glance to the other lady looked suspicious to me.
“Yeah. What do you want her for?”
“She has a wildlife rehab center and we’re supposed to meet her here. We have a bat for her.”
“No. There’s no Angie here.”
“Okay. Thanks,” and we leave.
Out in the car, Mike asks, “Now what?”
“I don’t know. She said she’d meet us here, maybe this is on her way home from work and she doesn’t want us to know where she works. She doesn’t know us and in this day and age with stalkers and wacko’s you can’t be too careful.” I understood it, but my feelings were hurt. I’m not a stalker! A wacko? Well, I do have my idiosyncrasies.
As I was thinking out loud, Mike was looking around. “Maybe she works in one of the other business.”
For the first time I take note that 230 wasn’t just a jewelry store, it was a strip mall with several other stores in it too!
“What do you want to do?” Mike asked.
I looked at the time. It was just going on five; we had half an hour to wait. “Do you want to go down to McDonalds?” Mike starts the car and we go down the street. “Do you want to get it to go?” I was afraid of being late to meet Angie.
“Nah. We’ve got plenty of time. Let’s just go in and eat.”
Mike ordered his sausage egg muffin and it was awful. The English muffin was so hard I could hear him crunching from across the table. From now on we’ll just get those at breakfast time and have our McDouble’s the rest of the time.
Mike was right; we did have plenty of time. We were back in the parking lot with five minutes to spare.
We talked about it and decided to park at the end of the one-way drive around the strip mall. If Angie was coming out, she would see us. If she was driving past, she would see us. After that there was nothing to do but wait.
Five thirty-five my phone rings. “Is this Peg?”
“Yes. Is this Angie?”
“It is. Are you here?” she asked.
“Yes we are parked at the very end of the parking lot.”
“Near Wisnosky’s?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, I’ll see you in a minute,” and we hung up.
We watch both the road and the parking lot and we see a lady in scrubs walking towards us. “I bet that’s her,” I said to Mike, pulled the door latch and got out of the car.
“Hi Angie,” I greeted her and stuck my hand out.
“Hi,” she said and shook my hand.
“It’s nice to meet you.”
“It’s nice to meet you too,” she responded.
I took two steps back to the Jeep and opened the back gate. I pulled the box toward me and opened the lid. “There he is.”
Angie peeked in the box. “He looks healthy.”
I closed the box and introduced Mike. With pleasantries out of the way, I asked, “So what happens now?”
“I’ll check him for any broken bones, then I’ll check for white nose too. If he’s had it, I’ll be able too see the scars under a black light.”
“I didn’t know that.” However, I did know that white nose syndrome has killed a lot of bats. Five point seven million since it arrived in North America in 2006. Some colonies of bats have been completely — 100% — wiped out.
“What is white nose?” you ask.
Good question. White nose syndrome, WNS for short, is a disease caused by a fungus that invades the skin of hibernating bats. It disrupts both their hydration and hibernation cycles. The bats wake up repeatedly during the winter, burning up their limited fat reserves and have to go in search of food. Since they eat mostly night-flying insects, and there aren’t too many of those in the middle of winter, they end up dying.
“I love bats,” Angie said. “I didn’t used to, not until I started working with them. I’ve got a broken wing male in residence that will never fly again and he loves when he gets visitors.”
“Does it bother them to be relocated?” I asked. I know bats live in colonies, but I didn’t know if it would upset him to be taken to a different area.
“No, not usually.”
“How are the baby possums?”
“Great. I think they’ll be able to go out before it gets too cold. I don’t usually release any animals after Halloween but it depends on the weather.”
“Where do you turn them loose at?”
“We have a big field and woods where we live but we take them all over the place. People like to have possums around because they eat lots of mice.”
I was surprised. “Really! I didn’t know that.”
Angie gives talks on wildlife in schools and parks and anyplace she is invited and often takes her resident possum. “But she’s getting old and I’m training a new one to take her place.”
“How long do they live?” I wondered.
“Not long. Out in the wild fewer than ten percent live past the first year and most of those die before they’re two years old. Mine is three and a half and not looking good. Four is the max life span.”
“Were the babies still on the mama when Officer Kelly got them to you?” I wondered.
“Let me tell you! I smelled her long before I ever saw her. I don’t know how he ever stood the smell. ‘Let’s take the babies off,’ I told him. ‘Okay if you’re comfortable doing that,’ he said,” and here Angie laughed. “They really hold on with some good suction and you have to put your finger in to break it. Then he was going to take the dead mama back with him! ‘Oh no! I’ll just throw her out into the woods,’” she told him. “I think he was relieved he wouldn’t have to smell her anymore.”
I learned a lot in our conversation with Angie but I was conscious of keeping her too long and she had critters to feed before it got dark.
Angie promised to let me know what she finds out about the bat and the next day I got a note from her. “It’s a female bat, probably this year’s baby. Her finger is broken on the right hand/wing. That is not a bad spot for a break though.”
“Is her wing torn? Did she have white nose?” I wondered.
“No tears, no white nose. Since she is so young she was not exposed to white nose yet, I would guess. Maybe she has some immunity from her mom but that we can’t check for.”
A couple of days later I asked Angie for an update.
“She is doing very well. She loves my broken wing male bat and they are always snuggling. Thanks for getting her to me.”
Angie sent me a picture of the two bats and that got me to wondering. “Does your broken wing male have a name? How long do bats live?” I asked.

“My broken wing bat does not have a name. He was found after some careless workers knocked down a dilapidated bat box at Lacawac Sanctuary. He happened to be inside the box. They should have looked in first. His wing was broken in the process in so many places that it would never heal properly. He is so happy to have a friend, but she will be able to go back out before the bad weather sets in. They are cute together, especially when she steals his mealworms. Bats can live for 25 years. I had one come in this spring who was so old he had no teeth. He died a few weeks ago but would have died before that out in the wild.”
And thus ends A Batty Adventure. It’s been almost two weeks ago now that I found the bat and got her down to Angie at the wildlife center. But I’d like to give you an update on Smudge.
Smudge is doing much better at eating soft cat food. I had to hold the food in my fingers and keep moving it closer and closer to the food in the bowl but he’s finally eating like a big boy and I’m thinking of weaning him off the bottle this week.
The other day Mike and I were working on the house and I happen to look out the window and who do I see wandering around on the front patio all by himself? Smudge! That rascal! He had to come though the cat flap into the garage, navigate the whole way around the garage to the front and through that flap and out onto the patio. He’s such a brave little guy that I worry he’ll get himself into trouble.
Mike was passing the door to the garage and happened to look out. “Peg, come and see this,” he called.
There, on the rug outside the door was Rascal, (the yellow one) Smudge, (the little black and white one) and Spitfire, (the tabby). Rascal and Spitfire were trying to nap but Smudge couldn’t seem to get himself comfortable and eventually he saw me in the window.

And with that we will call this one done!

How Smudge Got His Name

The kittens.
Our new kittens.
The little black and white one is a male, the larger tabby is a female.

I was keeping the kittens in a box. Just an old corrugated cardboard box. And I was feeding them four times a day.
I gave them evaporated milk that first day then I worried it wouldn’t be nutritionally complete for them so the very next day I went out and bought kitten milk.
Holy cow!
They don’t give kitten milk away. Five dollars for an eight ounce can of the stuff. And once you open it, it’s only good for four days. I bought it anyway. I wanted to give the kittens a good start in life.
I would heat water in the microwave and put the baby bottle of cold milk in the hot water to warm it up. I carried that and some paper towels out to the cat room. They were hungry. They are always hungry. And when they hear me coming they start crying to be fed. I’d pick the babies from the box and set them on the floor. I’m mom now and they would follow me outside where I’d set the warming milk on a stump and take my seat. They climbed up on my feet and tried to claw their way up onto my lap. At a month old their little claws are already sharp and don’t feel good on a bare leg. When the milk was warm enough I’d start feeding them. First I’d feed one until I couldn’t stand to hear the other cry anymore then I’d switch and give the other one some milk. Sometimes I let them fight it out for the one and only nipple but as is the way of life, the bigger and stronger one always wins, and that was the tabby.
It took a couple of days for the kittens to get comfortable sucking from the bottle and even then the tabby did more chewing than sucking. I started bringing a plate of canned cat food with me and the tabby was happy to suck and chew the soft food. That left the bottle free for the little black and white one.
Once the black and white one had his fill I’d offer the bottle to the tabby. I think that milk is good for her too and even though she is still more interested in chewing than sucking, I’d squeeze the bottle and she’d drink her milk that way.

One morning I’d opened a different kind of kitten milk and I couldn’t get them to drink it. After trying for a while I gave up.
“They don’t like the new milk,” I told Mike when I came back in the house.
After having had the milk in the fridge for an hour or so, I warmed it before taking it back out and trying again. This time they tore right into it. Now I’m wondering if the problem was they wanted warm milk. It was room temperature so I didn’t think I had to warm it. Now, even if it’s a new can of room temperature milk I warm it anyway and they’ve never refused their milk again.
Besides eating a lot, kittens poop a lot! I had some puppy pads around and I used those for the bottom of the box. Then I got an old tee shirt for them to lay on. Several times everyday, every time I fed them, I had to change the pad and refold the tee shirt to give them something clean to lay on. And I had to clean the babies too. Once their little tummies were full, I’d dip a paper towel in the warm water and give them a bath.
After about a week of this and five tee shirts later I knew I had to find something else to keep them in. They were active enough that they moved the pad around and the poop wasn’t just on the puppy pad anymore and the box was starting to stink. I had to move them into something I could keep clean, but what?
I let the babies stay in the cat room all day while I tried to figure out what else I could keep them in. I took a pet bed and made them a little nest and I put them in it. They could climb out if they wanted to and I leave the outside door open during the day so I worried about them. I checked on them often and I was surprised to see that the older kittens were spending time in the cat room with them. The babies seemed much happier.
Maybe I didn’t have to keep them confined during the day anymore, but I felt like I needed to keep them safe during the night.
The only thing I could come up with to keep them in, that I could keep clean and they couldn’t climb out of was my yellow recycle tub. I took my recycles out of it and carried it around to the cat room. I lined it with a puppy pad and a fresh tee shirt and after their nine o’clock feeding I put them in for the night.
What a disaster that turned out to be! The plastic wasn’t absorbent like the cardboard box and the next day the babies were covered in poop! It was even in their ears!
I fed them first then I took them in to the bathtub and gave them a bath. I set them in the back of the bathtub as I got the water warm and as soon as the water started coming from the tap, the tabby started hissing at it.
Needless to say, neither one was crazy about having a bath. Afterward I put them in the sun to dry. When I checked on them a little later the tabby had gone in to her bed but the black and white one was still sitting in the sun.

That yellow recycle tub was NOT going to work. I let it rattle around in my head all day and I start to think that I’ll just let them stay in their bed at night and not confine them. They were happier and they weren’t fouling their bed.
Mike and I were working in the garage that very same day. We chatted as we worked and I looked up in time to see the little black and white baby come through the cat flap and out into the garage. I put him back in the cat room and before I had the door closed he came back through the flap again. That little stinker! Now there would be no keeping him in!

I expected to see the tabby come through the flap too but it was days before she was brave enough. I find it amusing that the smaller kitten is the more adventurous of the two.
But now I had something new to worry about. I didn’t want the babies to get lost in the garage at night or follow one of the cats through the outside flap and get lost in the dark or worse yet, fall prey to a predator. I decided I’d lock the cat doors at night.
The first night I did this something tried to dig under the outside flap to get in. It didn’t work. He didn’t get in. I think it was a raccoon. We have one that has been visiting in the night.
“How do you know it’s a raccoon?” you ask.
He’s left his paw prints behind a couple of times. Once on the floor with grease from the leftover chicken bones that I’d put out for the cats the night before and again in the bottom of the rainwater tub I keep outside the cat room as a drinking station for the critters.

Locking the cat flaps at night has been working pretty well. Spitfire is not happy about it though. He’s the smartest of the older kittens, either that or he’s the luckiest. He’s learned that there are some pretty yummy leftovers when I get done feeding the babies. He’s gotten so that he hangs out with the new babies all day long waiting for feeding time. Then it became such a challenge to keep him out of the food until after the babies were done that I had to lock him out of the kitten room. The door into the garage has glass the whole way to the floor and Spitfire will stand there, his paws on the window and cry at me. But I do open the door to the outside to let the fresh air in. One of these days he’s going to figure out that if he goes around the outside he can get in that way.

“Why don’t you feed the other kittens first?” you ask.
I do. But it doesn’t take Rascal, Spitfire and Feisty long to eat a can of food and they are always done with it before the babies are done eating.
The tabby is thriving on canned cat food. When I first started taking care of them, the tabby weighed eleven ounces, the black and white one weighed nine ounces. I weighed them yesterday and the tabby is almost a pound at fifteen point some odd ounces, and the black and white one is just ten ounces. The tabby likes the milk from the bottle but doesn’t suck often; content to lap at the milk as I squeeze the bottle. The black and white one only wants the bottle and has no interest in the canned food at all.
I know that besides food, living things need contact. A mother cat will nap and spend hours in the nest with her babies. I’m their mother now, or so they think, and I haven’t been spending much time with them beyond feeding them.
A few times I brought the babies around to the front while the Kipp’s were here. Maggie, their Bernese Mountain dog, is very good with all the cats and Rosie likes to help me feed the babies.

“So, have you thought about what to name the babies yet?” I asked Lamar.
“Let’s do what the Indians do and let them earn their names,” Lamar replied.
A couple of days later, again asking the question, Lamar says, “Mike called the black and white one cutie when he picked it up. How about Cutie?”
“He’s a boy. Cutie would be a better name for a girl.” Did that sound ungrateful?
On Wednesday Mike and I had some time where we weren’t doing much and I was feeling guilty. “Do you want to go out with me and sit with the kittens for a little while?” I asked him.
He said okay and I took my coffee and we went out. I set my coffee on our hillbilly side table, aka a tree stump. The black and white one made it to me first and I picked him up as he tried to climb my leg. I handed him to Mike and I cuddled with the tabby who came in second.
The babies were hungry. I’d fed them a couple of hours earlier and I wasn’t going to feed them now. They would have to wait another couple of hours until it was time. I tried leaving some dry kitten food for them but the other cats just eat it. The black and white baby wasn’t happy and was being very vocal. Mike had had enough and handed him back to me. The tabby was nosing around my chin and the black and white one, whom I just sat in my lap, came up behind her, stuck his nose in her butt and started sucking.
I know right! Gross!
I told Momma about it on the phone. “He wasn’t ready to lose his momma,” she replied and if she was grossed out, she didn’t let on. “Remember Babs, the little kitten I’d gotten from you one year? She was a little young and not ready to lose her momma either and she used to suck on my clothes.”
The next day when the Kipp’s came to feed the wild cats, I got a bottle for Rosie to feed the babies.
“Are you going to tell them what’s on his face?” Mike asked.
I told Rosie and Lamar the story and ended with, “We can call him Shitface,”
“You can’t say that in church,” Mike admonished.
I know. Not nice. But a name he earned.
Rosie was feeding him and she talked to him as he suckled. “You look like you have a smudge on your nose,” she cooed.

“Smudge,” I exclaimed. “That sounds a lot nicer than Shitface doesn’t it?”
Lamar laughed. “Yes it does.”
“And you can say that in church!” I said to Mike.
And Smudge got his name.
The very next day, I brought the kittens around for some social time and made a bottle for Rosie to feed Smudge, but the Kipp’s were early and Smudge wasn’t all that hungry. He was plenty squirmy though. Rosie set him down and picked up the little tabby for a little lovin.
“You  look like your eyeliner got away from you,” Rosie told the tabby. “That’s what mine was looking like and that’s why I stopped wearing it.”

“Cleo!” I said. “Like Elizabeth Taylor in the movie Cleopatra!”

And Cleo got her name.
And that is how, thanks to Rosie, both kittens got their names within a day of each other.
With that, we shall call this one done!

New Kits & Possum Update

Hello, hello, hello!

I don’t know about you guys, but the days and weeks and months are just flying past! We are more than halfway through the year and halfway through the month of August —
— and only 18 weeks until Christmas.
Yeah, I know. You’re welcome.

My current desktop is a butterfly. I had a dickens of a time trying to identify him but I believe I know what he is now. He is a fritillary and although there are several different butterflies with this last name, I think he is a variegated fritillary.

Do you see what he is sitting on? Yeah, it’s goldenrod. And just because the goldenrod has taken over my wildflower fields, I can’t be too upset about it. The butterflies and bees seem to enjoy the goldenrod just as much as they do any other flower.

Itsy had a rough few days after the surgery to remove the mass from her mouth and eight teeth.
The first day she was home she was so groggy from the anesthesia that she peed and pooped on herself a couple of times. I couldn’t be upset with her or blame her, you just clean it up and go on. But after that she was fine the rest of the day and didn’t have any more boo-boos. The next day she was much better and even seemed to get some of her old bounce back, And then surprisingly, that second night she peed on the bed.
If you have animals that sleep with you, it’s probably happened to you a time or two too! Still, putting your knee in a cold wet spot is not a pleasant way to be roused from your sleep.
What in the world… I wondered and patted around on the bed. Laying right there on top of the covers, wet with her own pee and sleeping on the wet spot was Itsy.
I crowded Mike so I didn’t have to sleep in it and in the morning all of the bedding got a wash and line dry — I love to hang my clothes on the line! — The next night Itsy slept in the kennel — with the door shut so she couldn’t come to bed with us. But she was dry the next morning and even climbed back into the kennel for a nap later that day. I thought she might have found the kennel comforting so I let it sit in the living for a few days but she didn’t use it again so I put it back in storage. Itsy is in her spot on the back of the couch once again and all is right in the world.

“How are the kittens?” you ask.
They are doing really well and they’re lots of fun to watch as they rough and tumble with each other, stalk and attack and practice evisceration on each other.

I normally give them a little food in the morning to hold them over until the Kipp’s get here midmorning to feed them and I give them a little food at night before I go to bed too.
Rascal, Spitfire and Feisty have been sleeping under some boards that are leaning against the garage wall just inside the garage door. There is a cat door right there beside the garage door and one advantage to sleeping there is they hear me when I come out in the morning and they shoot through the flap and are right there, crying, “Feed me, feed me!” And I am a well trained human. I feed them.
About a week ago I was putting a bedtime snack down for the kittens when the flap of the cat door opened. I was holding a flashlight. I took it with me to find my way through the garage without turning on the lights and when I heard the cat flap open I turned the flashlight on it and there was Anon, poking her head in, and in her mouth was a black and white kitten. She froze. I froze. Then she backed out and was gone. Anon is a gray and white cat; one of the three wild ones that only Lamar Kipp can get close to.
I could hardly contain my excitement as I went on a kitten hunt the next morning. Without doing a lot of hunting, I walked around the back of the mill where there are boxes and boxes in storage, but I didn’t find them. I got myself ready for an errand I had to run and as I was getting into the car I heard a tiny little, faint little, “meow, meow.” I tracked the sound and found the kittens.
See the picture of the garage? Do you see the three boxes stacked up on the bench? The top box, an old blue and white microwave box? Do you see it? That is where Anon put her kittens.

 There were two of them. The black and white one I saw the night before hanging from his mama’s mouth and a tabby. I reached in the box and the tabby hissed at me but is much too small to hurt me at all. I picked her up, scolded her for hissing at me, cuddled her, pet her and put her back. Then I picked up the other one and I could tell it was a lot smaller. I loved on him a little and put him back in the nest. Now I worried that Anon would know I had found them and she would move them so I checked them everyday and everyday they were still there. After about the third day the tabby gave up hissing at me.
We are in and out of the garage all day so I suspected that Anon was coming in the night and taking care of the kittens because in the morning they had fat tummies.
One morning, about a week later, I checked on the kittens. They didn’t have fat tummies and they were crying. I let it go that day and the next day they were even hungrier.
I don’t know why Anon brought her kittens in. With all of the rain we had been having, maybe her nest got flooded. Maybe something got one or more of her kits and she brought the two survivors in to keep them safe. Who knows.
And I don’t know why Anon stopped taking care of her kittens either. Was it because I had found them? Or was she just plain done? Again, who knows.
I had some canned milk in the fridge. I had a kitten bottle from years gone by. I dug out the bottle, mixed the evaporated milk with water and started taking care of the kittens. It’s been about five days now and based on their weight and the teeth they have, I guesstimate the kittens are four to five weeks old.
Here is a picture of the kittens with Spitfire, who’s around four months old. Spitfire is no dummy. He may not care for the babies but he knows there is some really yummy leftovers to be had when I get done feeding them.

Stephanie Robinson was at a yard sale and picked up a couple of new games for us to play. One is Chinese checkers, but some of the marbles are missing so we need to find some new ones. The other game is called Rummikub.
“I think I played it a long time ago and it was fun,” she said. “Here,” and she handed me the instructions. “You figure out to play it and I’ll be right back.”
I read the instructions but it was like Greek to me. “It’s too hard!” I whined when she came back.
“Well, let’s just start and we’ll figure it out together,” she said.
Taking it a step at a time and having someone to help figure things out with made it so much easier and oh my gosh! Before we even finished the first round, I was in love with this game. It is my new favorite!

On our weekly trip to Wal*Mart, Mike and I looked to see if they carried Rummikub. They don’t. But maybe they will when it’s closer to Christmas.
Rummikub is a rummy game played with tiles instead of cards. It was developed by an Israeli games inventor named Ephraim Hertzano in the early 1930s. It has many names and I bet there are just as many variations of the rules too, so you make sure everyone agrees to the rules before you start.

Daisy fleabane.

This little flower got it’s name because they once believed that the dried flower heads would rid a dwelling of fleas.
Does it work?
I don’t know.

This monarch look-a-like is a viceroy butterfly. You can tell because a monarch has two full rows of white dots on his wings and the viceroy only has a row and a half.
Did you know that the monarch feeds on the milkweed plant? And did you know that because they feed on the milkweed it makes them bitter to the birds, so the birds leave them alone?
The viceroy is hitchhiking on the reputation of the monarch. The birds can’t count spots so they leave them alone too.

One morning I went out and noticed that all of the flowers were gone from the milkweeds.
Every. Single. One.
“Those deer!” I complained to anyone who would listen. “They ate all my monarch food!”
Without the flowers, would there be any pods?
I didn’t think so.
Then I saw a few pods appear here and there. I don’t understand it, but I am certainly very glad for them. Now I’ll have milkweeds next year.

Some people will even plant milkweed in their flowerbeds for the monarchs. Actually, I’ve only ever known one person who ever did that and that is my beautiful sister Phyllis, whom I love very much, and not just because she cares about the monarch butterflies.

This is a bull thistle. He provides lots of critters with pollen. Can you see the bee? He’s straight up and down looking at me.

Elderberries.
The birds have gotten a lot of them already.

Lots of purple things bloom this time of year and another purple thing is the bittersweet nightshade.
A lot of the flowers have gone to berry but there are still a few blooms.

The leaves and unripe fruit contain a poison called alkaloid solanine. Even though this plant is sometimes called deadly nightshade, the toxin is not fatal; however the berries are attractive to children and can cause poisoning if eaten in large quantities.

The bittersweet nightshade got its name because portions of the plant first taste bitter, then sweet.
Long ago this plant was used in England to counteract witchcraft.
What do you think about that!


This one is purple loosestrife. It’s considered noxious in many states. It’s aggressive and tends to crowd out the native plants which are valuable to waterfowl and other wildlife.
When I checked the information about this plant on the Missouri Department of Conservation website they say if you see this plant in Missouri — contact the MDC right away.

And another purple plant is the pickerelweed, which I think you’ve seen before, but did I tell you that pickerelweed is an aquatic herb?
The seeds can be eaten like nuts and the young leaves cooked as greens.
I just think they’re pretty.

This one is called virgins bower. There is a Japanese species naturalized here that may be mistaken for virgin’s bower; it differs in having leaves with five leaflets rather than three. I checked mine out and there are only three so I have the real thing.
You will be seeing more of this plant because as it matures the seeds get feathery tails on them.

I’m going to wrap up this week with an update on the baby possums.
I did a Google search for wildlife rehab centers in Tunkhannock and I came up with Second Chance Wildlife Center. I emailed them.
“I turned over a bunch of baby possums to the conservation officer a couple of weeks ago. Officer Kelly told me he found a place in Tunkhannock to take them and I was wondering if it was you and how are they doing? Were there six of them? Can you give me an update?”
“Yes, Officer Kelly drove them out to me. There are 7 total, doing well and growing like crazy. I now have 18 total baby opossums. Officer Kelly is awesome, not all officers would be willing to do anything for them. Thanks for helping them live,” Angie replied.
I agreed with her that Officer Kelly was indeed a blessing. Then I went on. “I’d love to have picture of them to go with my blog update.”
“This is a picture from when they first came in. They have longer fur now.”

“Wow. Thank you! They’re kinda cute. Tell me, is 7 an average litter for a possum? How old do you think they are?”
“Mom gives birth to as many as 21. She only has 13 nipples. Only the strongest make it to the nipples and stay attached for about 90 days. These guys were very much attached, so I would guess that they were close to 90 some days when I got them. It is so sad when they lose mom, but they quickly adjust to eating from a shallow dish. I already have them litter trained, so it makes clean up easier. 7 baby opossums poop constantly and 18 can really poop tons. Lots of clean up.”
You can litter train possums! I didn’t know that.
  Angie went on to give me her Facebook page and website address. I’ll be happy to give you her Facebook page if you want it, it’s public. Her website is secondchancewildlifecenter.org if you want to check it out.
“I’d love to do what you do someday,” I told Angie.
“We need wildlife rehabbers up north here. I’m the only one in the whole northern tier now.”
That day on Facebook Angie posted that she got 7 more baby possums for a total of 25!

And with that we will call this one done!

Just Ketchup - Er - Catch-Up!

This cute young redhead is my younger brother with Angel, one of his daughters, back in the early 1980’s.

Sometimes I call him Rick, sometimes I call him Richard, but my favorite name for him these days is Brother.
Since Rick’s beautiful wife Cindra died last November, I’ve been calling him nearly every day. “Hey Brother! What do you know?” I say when he answers.
I look forward to my chats with Richard. Most times we find things to talk about but once in a while, for whatever reason, our calls are little more than I love you calls.
Shortly after arriving in Pennsylvania, we were playing cards with the neighbors and I decided to skip calling him.
“You can go ahead and call him,” that beautiful neighbor lady Steph said, “we’ll wait for you.”
“No, it’s okay. He’ll just think I’m busy. I’ll call him tomorrow.”
Well! Let me tell you! I kinda got my butt chewed — lovingly, but chewed nonetheless!
“From now on, take one minute, call me and tell me you’re playing cards or busy or whatever and you’ll talk to me tomorrow,” Rick said the next day when I next talked to him. “that way I won’t have to worry.”
“You were worried?” I was incredulous. It never crossed my mind that he would worry and I felt bad about that.
Later, when I had a chance to think about it, I laughed. Not because I thought it was funny that he was worried, but because our daily chats have come to mean as much to him as they do to me.
One of the things that Richard and I had recently talked about was collecting rain water. He has four great big two-hundred-fifty gallon containers he calls totes. He has one on each side of his roof, collecting the rain water from both sides of his house, he has two more that he uses for water storage.
“Doesn’t his water get bugs or algae?” you ask.
Nope. Rick treats it with a little chlorine to control the algae and the totes are pretty well sealed so he doesn’t have much of a bug issue.
“The ones at the house I use to fill the swimming pool. The lower ones I use to water the melons. The whole system is gravity fed,” he told me.
During one of our rain showers, I watched the water pouring off the awning and I thought of Richard and our conversation. Sitting on my patio was the thirty gallon trash can that the kittens were born in. I’d washed it out and it was still sitting there. I grabbed the trash can and set it under the water coming off the roof and it was full to overflowing in less than two minutes.
“Two minutes!” Mike says. “More like one minute!”
The rain was coming down really hard.

I have found that having a thirty gallon trash can full of rain water around comes in pretty handy. There are lots of cleaning jobs that I’ve used it for and I also keep the outside cat dishes clean and full of rain water for them to drink.
And then, last Sunday, Mike and Gary put a new pressure tank and softener system in.
“You’ll be without water for a couple of hours,” Mike told me.
“Fine,” I told him. “I’ve got rain water I can flush my toilet with and I’ve got bottled water for my coffee.”
Well! A couple of hours turned into more than a day as something was wrong with the newly installed system.
“I’ll have to have a well guy come and find out what’s wrong,” Mike said. And Mike worried all night long that our well pump may have quit on us.
Monday afternoon the well guys show up. Two of them. They checked here and they checked there and they checked this line and they checked that line — ♫here a check, ♪there a check, ♫every where a check-check♪♫ — and determined the pump was fine; the new system was installed properly; all the electric lines were the correct voltage. The problem, they said, was in the water line itself.
Mike and Gary went to work tearing up the newly installed Advantech flooring they had just laid over top the water lines and found a kink in the pex lines. A snip here and a crimp there, a new elbow here and a crimp there, a connecter here and another crimp — ♫here a crimp, ♪there a crimp, ♫every where a crimp-crimp♪♫ — and we were back in business. We had water again. It just made me twice as glad that I had caught a trash can full of rain water.

<<<<<>>>>>

Just five miles down the road —as the crow flies, seven and a half if you have to drive it — is the little town of Laceyville. Early in July they had their little street fair and Mike and I went down with the Robinson's.

We walked around for a while, got some food to eat and cold water to drink, then stood and watched a water balloon game. You stood under the balloon and pumped water into it until it burst and you got wet. On a hot day like this day it was a fun thing to do.

Then they announced that the kiddy tractor pulls would be starting soon so we hung around and watched those. None of the kids were able to pedal very far once the weight started moving up the sled but there were a couple of ties that had to be broken.

It was a fun way to spend the afternoon.  

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Despite my knee pain, I have been interval running in the mornings and in this next section I’d like to show you some pictures from those mornings.
The neighbor lady decorated her tree line with an old headboard.

The salamanders come out on the black top or macadam as we call it in PA, to soak up the morning sun. Many of them lose their lives because of this habit too.

I saw this bunny laying beside the road and passed him up many times before I decided to pick him up and bring him home.

I thought the owner may see it and stop and pick it up, but eventually decided they probably weren’t going to do that.
Someone took the time, the materials, and the talent to make this bunny. It’s mostly felt but the head is some kind of covered wire they coiled up. Someone loved this little bunny and I hated to see it lost beside the road.
“Peg, what if someone threw it away on purpose?” you ask.
I don’t know then.
“What are you going to do with it?” you ask.
I don’t know that either. Nail it up on the wall or make a cat toy out of it or something.
A couple of mornings I’ve seen turkey up on the hill. It was much too far away for me to get a good shot of them, but I wasn’t completely surprised when I found a turkey feather on the road.

Oh dear!
Have I ever seen lots of deer?
Yes I have!
Here is a young buck and doe getting up from sleeping under our weeping willow tree. We planted three weeping willow trees and only one made it.

A little further down the road, on the same morning, I see another deer standing in the field.

The turkeys I spoke of earlier were even higher up in the field than this doe was so now you know why I couldn’t get a good shot of them.
Walking on down the road, with a slightly different perspective, this is what she looks like with full zoom. I snapped a couple of pictures and continue on with my walk.

 After only a few steps this doe comes running at me. I was surprised but she stopped a little ways from me. I fired off a couple of more shots then kept going.

I heard her moving again and as I turned around I saw her cross the road just behind me.
Another morning I was so enamored with this young buck standing right next to the road ....

....that I almost missed the three deer right across the road from him.

 Getting a little closer he crossed the road and joined the others before they all high-tailed it for the trees.
One more deer photo?
I have several more, but I’ll show you one more and then we’ll move on.
Two does getting up from where they spent the night. There used to be a house here that’s been torn down, but if you look close (just to the left of the picture) you’ll see and old hand pump — something I didn’t notice until I saw the pictures on the computer.

A bee with mullein.

Pickerelweed down by my pond.

Dock. You can use the young leaves with other greens to make a salad. They have a ‘pleasantly bitter, lemony flavor’ but I’ve never tried them.

The beaver dam on our creek. Lamar Kipp has told me that there are two more dams upstream a little farther.

I don’t know what kind of butterfly (or moth) this is, but he’s sitting on a Queen Anne’s lace.

Yarrow. I love making tea with the leaves of the yarrow. It’s even better if you add some bergamot leaves to it too.

Bergamot with a hummingbird moth on it.

Teasel. These plants grow really tall!

This orange and black striped guy is a banded net-winged beetle.

A pretty bird came and sat on a branch in front of me. I have no idea what it is. I’m much better with flowers and bugs.

I went out early one morning and spent some time photographing webs in the morning dew.

>>>>><<<<<

My beautiful cousin Stacey came to see me.
“Peg, I can’t see Stacey’s face!” you say.
I know, right! Stacey, like many of us, doesn’t really like to have her picture taken.

“Get the one from the Penn Lines,” Stacey said referring to a monthly magazine her company puts out. “It was a good one. I actually like that one.”
Well, Stacey, I looked on the web site and couldn’t find it, so you are stuck with the ones I took.

We had a really nice visit and she even brought me a really neat present.
“What did she bring you?” you ask out of curiosity.
Stacey brought me a set of Sullivan County history cards. They show historic places and tell you a little bit about them.

Speaking of beautiful people, look at this good lookin’ bunch would ya!

Mike and I took his helper Gary along with the Kipp’s, Rosie and Lamar, out to the Wyalusing Hotel for a nice dinner one night.
“Where are you?” you ask.
I might be one of those kinds of people who doesn’t like their pictures taken either and since I’m writing this, I don’t have to show it to you.
“Peg, that’s not fair,” I hear Stacey say.
Alright, alright. Here you go. Here’s the photo the waitress took.

>>>>><<<<<

“How are the kittens?” you wonder.
They are great! Kittens are so much fun. I took this picture through the foggy window of the cat room door. Rascal is laying with his little sister Feisty on top of the cat box, Spitfire is laying close by on top of a cinder block.

Shortly after I had taken the kittens to the cat room I noticed that we had ants. There was a whole army of them marching to the cat food dish and back out again.
I’ll fix them, I thought and I went to the RV and got out a four pack of ant traps. I opened it up and set traps about the cat room.
The next morning I saw the traps had been batted around. I’m guessing the kittens were playing with them.
Later that day I noticed Rascal was having trouble walking. “I think he’s hurt,” I told Lamar when he came that day. But there was a niggle in the back of my mind, what if it was the ant poison?
The next morning Rascal wouldn’t get up and come out and play with me. By that afternoon Spitfire was having trouble walking too.
It’s the poison, I know it is, I thought but I wasn’t brave enough to say it right out loud, not yet anyway. I picked up all the ant traps and threw them away.
The next day Rascal was still having trouble walking and now Spitfire wouldn’t get out of bed either. I felt so bad I had to talk to someone. “Rosie, I think I poisoned the kittens,” I cried to Rosie when they came that day to feed the cats.
“Oh yeah?”
“I think it was the ant poison. I thought it was self contained and I didn’t think they could get in to it.”
“I wouldn’t of thought so either,” Rosie said. “I have ant poison right on my countertops and never gave a thought about the cats getting into it. Of course they don’t play with it either.”
Little Feisty, being more cautious than her brothers, never got into the poison, or at least never exhibited any symptoms anyway.
It was a few days of white knuckles and nail biting but Rascal and Spitfire both recovered and don’t seem to have any lasting effects.
The kittens were doing well staying close by the safety of the cat room, but as you may well expect, the older they get, the farther and farther they range away from it.
Pretty soon they found their way to the front of the mill where we spend a lot of time on the patio. Now the kittens pretty much stay up front, not going back to the cat room much at all. I even feed them up front.

Just inside the garage door is some wood stacked tee-pee style against a wall and they have made a new home there, under them.
And trust me, they hear us as soon as we come out the door and they come through the cat flap lookin’ for a little lovin’. Especially that little Rascal. He is by far the purring-est little guy ever! He loves to be held and if he catches you lovin’ on his brother or sister, he’ll give you a little nip.

Itsy, our little eleven year old Yorkie, had a mass growing from the roof of her mouth just behind her front teeth.

When I first saw it I thought it was her little pink tongue peaking through, then, just before our move, I realized it wasn’t her tongue.
Moving is hectic and remodeling is chaotic and I’m afraid that in that busyness, Itsy got put on a back burner. Then I realized her teeth were being pushed around and we got her into the vet. They removed the mass and took out eight teeth but she still has her molars so she’ll still be able to eat just fine. But honestly, it wouldn’t break Itsy’s heart if she had to eat soft food for the rest of her life.
Ginger, that stinker. I had her down at the pond and I’m taking pictures of flowers and bugs and spider webs and not really paying too much attention to her when all of a sudden I hear her hack. I turned and looked at her and her mouth was opening and closing and she seemed to be having trouble breathing.
“Ginger!” I called. “What’s wrong?”

She came up to me and I looked at her mouth and there was a mouse tail sticking out of her mouth. She obviously found a dead one on the path and was trying to get it down before I caught her.
“NO!” I yell at her. I grabbed that mouse tail and tried to pull it out of her throat and mouth but it was slippery and I lost my hold.
“NO!” I yelled again and got a hold of Ginger’s head with one hand and the mouse tail with the other and I pulled again. It slipped again. I gave her head a shake and yelled “NO!” one more time.
“ACCK,” Ginger went and a pretty sad looking mouse, with guts on the outside, landed on the toe of my boot.
“Aaaahhhhh,” I screamed and kicked it off.
Sorry, no pictures.
Now I try to be more vigilant when I take her to the pond.

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Eighteen and a half miles the way the crow flies, a twenty-four and a half mile car ride from Wyalusing is the town of Tunkhannock (pronounced ton-can-ick). Once a month they host an event called Food Truck Friday. A whole bunch of food trucks come from all over, and they line up in a semi-circle in a big parking lot. Other vendors set up tents in the center and there was a band playing on a grassy area. We met the Robinson's out there for a little fair-type food.

Mike found a food truck that had the best Italian sausage sandwich ever! It was so good that he got back in line and ordered another one. I kept him company for quite a while then I decided to get an ice cream cone for me and a chocolate malt for him and I hoped that by the time I got back with that, he would have his food.
No such luck.
It wasn’t all bad though, Mike had lots of people to talk to. There were a bunch of other people waiting for food too. Mike is good at making conversation and that helped him to pass the time.
“I wouldn’t have waited,” you say.
Yeah? Well they collect your money up front so you don’t have a lot of choice.
It was a hot day and my ice cream cone was melting faster than I could lick it. “Dang!” I said. “I dropped ice cream on my camera!” Which was hanging around my neck.
“Don’t worry, ice cream goes with every thing,” a lady standing nearby quipped.
And I had to laugh and thank her for making my boo-boo a little brighter.

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Some of you may know that I had a birthday earlier this month. My fifty-seventh one, to be exact.
Dang! I’m old!
I have the best neighbors and friends in the whole wide world!
The Robinson’s live on one side of us. Jon and Steph brought an ice cream cake and we sat around and ate a great big piece then we played a couple of rounds of Skip-Bo while sipping on a hard soda.

On the other side of us, live the Kipp’s. Rosie and Lamar brought me a bird house for my birthday. Rosie painted it and I have to tell you that I absolutely love it!

And with that, we shall call this one done.