EPAA

We had a quiet week this week.
Only two exciting things happened.
First…
My cute little red-haired brother, Richard, acquired a couple of kittens and during one of our evening chats he mentioned it was time to get them fixed.
“I’d love to get ours fixed too, but it’s so expensive,” I whined.
Later, on another day, I was mentioning this to the Kipp’s on one of their morning visits.
“The vet has a spay and neuter clinic for feral cats,” Lamar told me. “Ten dollars for a male and thirty for a female. It’s a good idea to get them a rabies shot too.”
I finally got my butt in gear and called out to the vet on Friday a week ago now. “I’m calling about your low cost spay and neuter clinic.”
“We quit doing that a couple of years ago,” Mark told me. “But here’s the phone number for a mobile spay/neuter clinic.”
I wrote the number down on a scrap piece of paper here by my computer. “As long as I’ve got you on the phone, how much does it cost to have a male cat neutered?” I was thinking that in the very least, we would have Smudge done.
“A male is $91.42.”
“How much is a rabies shot?”
“$21.10,” Mark answered after a few clicks of his keyboard.
“And how much is it for a female?” I might just as well find that out too since I had him on the phone.
“A female is,” and he paused as he pulled up the price on his computer, “$156.96.”
I scribbled the prices down. “Okay, thank you,” and I hung up.
I called the phone number Mark gave me and talked to a nice lady who answered the phone. “I’m calling about the mobile spay/neuter clinic. How much is it to have done?”
“It’s $35 and that includes a rabies shot and ear clip.”
“Is that for a male or female?” I asked.
“Either one,” Lisa answered. “How many cats do you have?”
I did a quick count in my head. “Two males and two females,” I answered just thinking of the kittens, Spitfire, Rascal, Feisty and Cleopatra.
“I think there’s room for two this Monday and we can get the rest in next month. They have to be at least three months old.”
Mine are so I reserved the two open spots.
The next time we visited with the Kipp’s I told them that the vet shut down their spay/neuter program a couple of years ago.
“That’s funny,” Lamar said. “We had a cat done last summer.”
Could I have misunderstood? I guess it’s possible. Maybe he said a couple of months ago…
“I want to take Feisty and Callie but I’ve barely been able to pet Callie,” I complained to the Kipp’s. “I don’t know if she’ll let me pick her up and put her in a carrier.”
Lamar didn’t seem to think it would be any problem for me, “Just pick her up and put her in there.”
Easy for him to say, he’s handled her before.
We have a small dog kennel but it’s Smudge’s bedroom and I didn’t really want to use it. Besides, I didn’t know how well Feisty and Callie would get along if I put them in the same carrier. I have a regular size cat carrier and I thought I would borrow one from the Robinson’s. Two carrier’s was all I needed. Before I had a chance to ask Stephanie, we were invited up to play cards on Sunday night. When we got there I asked to borrow the carrier and was told I could. I knew she’d let me; she let me use it once before. At the end of the evening, when we were done playing cards, Mike and I promptly walked off and left it.
Sigh!
Rather than go back for it, it was the perfect excuse for me to say, “Forget it. We’ll just take Feisty and Cleo in Smudge’s kennel. It’s plenty big enough for two cats.” I didn’t forget the kennel on purpose but secretly I was relieved. I didn’t want to admit that I was a little afraid to try to pick Callie up.
Monday morning, we loaded Feisty and Cleo in the kennel, loaded the kennel in the back of the Jeep and it was off to Tunkhannock for us. I thought for sure we were going to have to listen cats crying for the half hour drive but the little girls were very quiet and barely meowed at all. Maybe being in the same kennel together was a good idea.
This might be a good place to tell you that the chip in the windshield has turned into a full blown crack. It goes the whole way across the windshield from one side to the other. So much for the guy thinking it wouldn’t go any further. Mike hates it and will have it replaced before summer I’m sure.

In Tunkhannock we had a little trouble finding the place because some dummy thought she knew where it was. I had to call Lisa and she talked us in. They stage in a garage of the Department of Agriculture building.
“How long will it take,” Mike asked.
“If they’re first in they should be ready to go by noon,” Lisa told us.
Mike and I weren’t looking forward to two trips to Tunkhannock in the same day but there was no help for it. Drop off was between 8:30 and 9:30 and we were there at 8:30, even before the Spaymobile was there. We could kill a couple of hours shopping but four? We’d just have to suck it up and make the trip. We made a couple of stops at the hardware stores, looking for something Mike wanted, then did our weekly shopping at Wal*Mart. We then headed back to Wyalusing. “Don’t forget we need to stop at Dollar General for cat food,” I reminded Mike. We’d no sooner gotten back to Wyalusing, pulled in the parking lot at Dollar General, parked, I pulled on the door handle to get out and my phone rings. I dug my phone out of my pocket and looked at the caller ID. “It’s the clinic,” I told Mike. I swiped the answer button and put the phone to my ear. “Hello,” I answered in a sing-songy voice.
“Peg, this is Lisa. Your cats are done.”
“Great! How did they do?”
“Just fine. They’re awake and alert,” Lisa answered.
“Okay, we’ll be back to get them,” I thanked her and hung up. “Should we turn around and go get them?” I asked Mike.
“No. Let’s go home first.”
I went into Dollar General and got the canned cat food. I was happy to see they had 9 Lives on sale. Three for a dollar! I stocked up thinking 9 Lives was a better cat food than the off brand I normally buy. At home I put the cold food stuffs in the fridge, walked the girls, made a travel coffee and we went back to Tunkhannock.
The van they use to spay and neuter in is a converted Winnebago Adventurer.

Inside the garage I looked at all the cat carriers covered in sheets. There was one really big one. “I think this one’s ours,” I said.
The lady lifted the sheet and checked the girls.
“How is this funded?” Mike asked.
“It’s all donations,” one of the ladies answered.
We were told to keep the girls warm for the night and give them food, a little at a time to make sure they could handle it. Tomorrow they could join their family or clowder, as a group of cats is called. They could also be called a glaring, says Wikipedia. A male is a tom, or a gib if he’s neutered, a female is a queen and juveniles are called kittens, of course.
Another website says they can also be a clutter of cats or even a pounce but never a pride which is reserved for lions. Just for fun, I clicked through the slideshow.
A shrewdness of apes.
A leap of leopards.
A crash of rhino’s.
A paddling of ducks.
An unkindness of ravens.
A business of ferrets.
And they say a group of kittens is a kindle. I’d have thought it was a litter…
And puppies? They say they’re a piddle of puppies. Again, I’d have called it a litter!
And there I go again! Off on a tangent!
Feisty and Cleo got into a little spat that evening and Cleo camped out in the litter box. I didn’t like that. I went out to the garage and got the small cat carrier, fixed it up for Feisty and the girls spent the night separated. The next morning I carried them out to the cat room and turned them lose.

This morning, as I started working on this blog, I wondered how many cats they fixed a month. I sent a text to Lisa with a ton of questions and she was kind enough to call me. “How many cats do you fix?” I asked.
“The Spaymobile comes to Tunkhannock once a month and we normally do 40 cats. In the springtime, when the kittens are born we’ll ask for an extra day and might do an additional 50 cats. That’s 90 cats in one month!”
“Are you making any headway?”
“I’m not sure. We just keep trapping all of the cats in one area until we get them all then we move on to another area.”
“And what is your position there?”
“I don’t have a position with the EPAA — Eastern PA Animal Alliance— I’m just a volunteer. But I’m the Humane Officer for Wyoming County. When I saw the cat problem we have here I thought, We have to do something! That’s when I connected with the EPAA and got them to add us to their schedule. That was in 2013. But I have to tell you, I have another job and when they come to town, I have to take that day off work. All of the people that help with this are volunteers.”
“What about the vet that does the spaying and neutering?”
“There are several vets that rotate through, they’re paid and so are the vet-tech’s that help them.”
“Do they do dogs too or just cats?”
“They used to do dogs but they lost one of their vans and didn’t have the money to equip this one with the equipment that it takes to do dogs.”
“Have you ever lost any?” I didn’t say the ‘d’ word but Lisa knew what I meant.
“No. There have been a couple of times when we had to take them back in the van for a reversal shot. That’s why the volunteers are so important. They keep an eye on the cats and make sure they come out of the anesthesia okay.”
Lisa gave me tons of information. She told me all the places the mobile spay/neuter clinic goes, all the good it does, and where their two brick and mortar clinics are — more information than I can remember. But here’s the thing. I don’t have to remember it all. I just need to know who to call.

<<<<<>>>>>

Tuesday, the only other exciting day in my week, we got three or four inches of snow! So here are snow pictures for you.

The snow was wet and heavy but we didn’t lose our electric.

The path to the pond… looks like I’m not walking down to the edge today.

This is what the path looked like from the other side of the pond.

Cattails dressed in snow.

The pond.

By the time I walked down for the mail, the temps had warmed 

and the snow was starting to melt.

A couple of days later the snow was almost gone and our back 

drive is a quagmire. 

Let’s call this one done!

Mostly Just Critters

My current desktop is a bunch of winter flowers with a big old round raindrop hanging on.

Last time, when I talked about my frozen back driveway, I thought I should have taken a photo of it for you, so this week, I’ve done that. This ice path is the back driveway and my usual route to the mailbox. 

Spitfire is the kitten in the picture but I wouldn’t be surprised if there were a couple of more kittens in the weeds someplace. I don’t like them to follow me when I go to the mailbox because I don’t want them down near the road. Most days I try to sneak around the other side of the house, so I’m not passing in front of the cat room, and hope they won’t hear me and follow. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.

See the ruts? We’re the last place just before the county line and the county uses our driveway to turn their equipment around in. Come spring, I’m sure Mike will take his tractor down and smooth it out a little. 

The last time Mike and I had gone out I saw the water over the beaver dam had frozen. 

“When we come back, Mike, slow down and let me get a picture of it, okay?”

“K,” he answered.

On the way home Mike remembered to stop so I could get my picture. I took about half a dozen shots, then we went on. 

“Peg, is that a beaver in front of the dam?” you ask

I don’t know. I never saw him until I was sorting photos for today’s blog. It’s just a rock or something, I thought. I went back to last weeks picture and it’s not in there, but the water was higher then too, so I still don’t know. Maybe the Kipp’s can tell us. There is a little bird on one of the branches in the foreground though.

>>>>><<<<<

Do you see the look little Miss Itsy is giving me?

It’s taken Mike and me a couple of years to teach the girls to not beg at the table.

“Do they ever beg at the table?” you wonder.

Well, yeah, they still do sometimes. But mostly they know that when I’m done eating I’ll give them a treat; either something I’ve saved from my plate or some of their dog treats.

On this particular day Ginger was sitting at my feet, watching me as I ate and don’t you know that Itsy was watching from her bed on the couch. 

It tickled me.

Itsy is making sure I’m not giving Ginger anything. There have been times when I’ve tried to sneak Ginger a bite before I’ve finished eating, but Itsy always knows and it doesn’t take her long to get off the couch, then she expects a bite. 

<<<<<>>>>>

That cat!

That darn cat!

Yeah, Smudge.

We have discovered that we can’t break his will. Smudge continues to be a rebellious teen. He bites, won’t stay off the table and picks on everyone in the house. It got to where I was putting him in his kennel quite a lot for misbehaving and it just doesn’t seem fair to keep him in jail all the time — even though he doesn’t complain.

“Mike, we should put him outside. If he picks on the outside cats maybe they’ll teach him some manners.”

I guess Mike was getting fed up too. “Alright,” he reluctantly agreed. 

The next time Smudge misbehaved I put him out the door. 

Mike worries, in fact I would say that Mike is a worrywart…

If Macchiato is gone for too long or it’s getting dark outside, Mike wants him back in. And now it’s the same thing with Smudge. Mike worries about him. I’ve been trying to get Mike to stop worrying — worry is like a rocking chair; it gives you something to do but doesn’t get you anywhere. “I think you should stop worrying so much,” I’ve told Mike a million times. “If he gets hit by a car or killed by another animal, there’ll be more kittens next year,” I’ve said a dozen times.

I’d like to tell Mike that he should place his trust in God; that God loves us and doesn’t want us to carry around the burdens of this world on our shoulders. The Bible, God’s love letter to us, tells us so. 

Cast all your anxiety [worry] on Him because He cares for you - 1Peter 5:7 

And in Philippians 4:6 we are commanded: Do not be anxious [do not worry] about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.

Second-guessing, partner of worry, is futile. You could guess all day long about what may or may not happen and in the end, you can’t anticipate everything. You simply have to make the best choice you can, with the information you have, and then live with the choice you made. 

After 21 years of telling him not to worry, he is starting to ease up a little — or in the very least, he is not expressing as much worry to me. 

Smudge loves it outside. He climbs trees and tussles and tumbles with Cleo, his liter mate, and his cousins Rascal, Spitfire and Feisty.

>>>>><<<<<

I took Ginger and Itsy on a walkabout on Saturday afternoon. The temperature was a very mild 52 degrees. It was more like a day in March than a day in January! In the places where we had thick ice, there was still plenty of ice. We walked up the hill to the barn.

 Attached to the side of the barn is a smaller room with a separate entrance. I rolled the door back and looked inside. It was empty and mostly dry. 

Maybe Mike’ll let me have it to dry my wildflowers in, I thought. And I could keep the bones of my quill pig in here too.

  I pulled the door shut and as we walked on down toward the pond, I thought of Mike’s cousin. I’ll tell you what, Suzy is not only a kindred spirit but she is my hero too. She’s been collecting animal bones for a long time and has a whole shed devoted to them.

Not only that but she loves anything iron or metal. She’s used many of her finds to adorn a fence row and many more for landscaping in her yard. 

I love Suzy’s yard! It is so eclectic and I could spend hours there. 

But I’m off on a tangent. 

After going past the barn and down the hill I hear a bird at the edge of the pond, trilling an alarm. 

He had spotted the cats and was warning everyone else. I slowed my pace and tried to spot him but I couldn’t see him. Even when he took flight and disappeared down onto another branch, I still couldn’t spot him. I walked down to the edge of the pond hoping a different perspective would allow me to spot him but it didn’t. 

As I stood there listening to the bird and watching for the flit of a wing, Spitfire stepped in the water at the edge of the pond and eyed the ice. 

Surely he won’t go that far, I thought, but he did. He never took his eyes off the ice as he took another step and another step. The water came up to his chest. He is going for the ice! I was surprised.

Spitfire stepped up onto the ice…

and shook the water from his feet. 

And now my attention was on Spitfire as he explored the rotten ice. Would I go in after him if he fell through and got into trouble? I probably would, but man-o-man! would that water be cold! Not very deep though, maybe up to my knees. How deep the mud is, I have no idea. Luckily, I didn’t have to find out. 

I got Ginger and Itsy going again and we walked around to the other side of the pond. 

Splash!  

I turned around and saw Spitfire swimming for the bank. I don’t know if he fell in or jumped. He didn’t look like he was in trouble and I watched as he swam along the bank until he found a place where he could climb out, then climb out he did. He shook himself off and meowed at me.

“Hey! It wasn’t my fault,” I told him.

<<<<<>>>>>

One of our older females, Cali, is more accepting of me these days. She no longer runs out of the cat room when I enter and after a few weeks of that, I actually got to pet her this week. In this picture Cali is curled up snug and warm in an old piece of insulation. 

“Isn’t that bad for them?” you ask.

I’m such a dummy. I thought they took all the bad stuff out of insulation and the cats love the stuff. In all of the years that we’ve been gone they have trampled down and laid on all the insulation every place they could get to it. We had some old nasty insulation that we didn’t want to use in our house so I took it out to the cat room to seal up the air seeping in from under the door. 

And that’s where they would lay — on that insulation.

We came across some more insulation that was ruined, it had been rained on, so I dried it out and took it to the cat room and made beds for them. I just figured that since they liked it so much they could curl up in it and it would keep them warm on the coldest of days.

Then yesterday (Sunday) when I picked this photo to show you, I got to wondering about it and I Googled it. 

It is not good for the cats. Insulation has twenty to thirty percent recycled glass in it. When they lay in it, little fibers can break off and they ingest it as they groom themselves or worse, they could breathe it in.

I’m such a dummy.

Today, Monday, I cleaned it all out of the cat room; every bit of it. I never want to do anything to harm any critter — if I can help it. 

>>>>><<<<<

This past week I worked on some wire work. I made a new style bracelet and I tried to end it so it wasn’t too girlish. I’m not happy with it.

I added beads to a ring.

And I made hearts. I thought it would be cute to add one to the loop at the of the first bracelet I’d made.

I flattened some of the hearts too and I really like the way the flattened copper looks so now that is rattling around in my head with all the other ideas I have working there.

My beautiful wedding ring— I’m allergic. It’s stainless steel and stainless contains nickel; nickel gives me a rash. So I only wear it when we go out. I’ve hammered a piece of copper and I wear that most of the time. It’ll work until we can afford to get me something else, 

Let’s call this one done.

A Sad Day

Another week gone and we are halfway through January.
Thursday was a sad day for me, and for only me, I’m sure. Before we get to that, let’s talk about a couple of other things.
First, my desktop photo.
On Wednesday morning we woke to ice coating everything. I went back into the house for my camera. I spent quite a long time and many, many shots, trying to capture the rays of the morning sun reflected in an ice droplet. This is the best shot I got and looks great on my desktop.

I walked around and got a few other shots and although you really can’t tell it’s ice and not rain, I know and I like them.

The kittens followed us, as usual. Spitfire chased a twig across the ice on our pond as he batted it around. Ginger, ears perked up, was curious about what he was chasing and went to investigate. Her leash was too short so she had to content herself with just watching.

Other pictures I’ve taken this past week include these red berries dripping after a recent rain.

Burdock against a branch.

A culvert ice-fall.

Waterfall over the beaver dam in the Kipp’s side yard.

Logs destined to be a home, musical instrument, maybe a boat or just a fire to keep someone warm.

Speaking of keeping warm…
Ginger hasn’t been enjoying the freezing temperatures lately. When her little paws get cold she’ll hold them off the ground, one at a time, then when we head back in, she walks like she’s walking on sharp pieces of glass. I guess ice crystals can be as sharp as glass to a little doggies feet.
Silly me! Our friend Margaret, in Missouri, gave Ginger a pair of boots a few years ago. I dug them out and suited Ginger up and took her to the mailbox with me. At first she tried to shake them off but soon realized they were a good thing and took off running as fast and as far as her leash would let her go. I laughed to see such spirit in a little dog.

  I took a picture of my shop window when we came back with the mail. It’s almost as cold in there as it is outside. It’s not heated, don’t ya know. My glass suncatchers will have to wait for warmer weather. In the meantime, my newfound love of wire weaving is rattling around in my head with my long time love of glass. Who knows what that will produce. Something beautiful and unique, I hope.

I took another crack at Shrinky Dinks. This time I used the correct numbered plastic, number 6, and the end result is so stinkin’ cute!

I put Tigger beside the original picture I traced so you can see how much they shrink up when you put them in a hot oven for a couple of minutes. Tigger started out at three and a half inches tall and ended up just under an inch and a half.

I pulled the images from the internet but you can totally freehand something if you want to. The oven temp isn’t as important as the kind of marker you use. They have to be permanent markers or it’ll just wipe right off.

This week I made a baby bracelet.

Smudge helped.

“What’s that for?” Mike asked when I showed it to him.
“I don’t know,” I told him. “I had a little piece of braided blue and thought I’d like to make it.” I have no idea what I’m going to do with it. I guess I’ll just add it to my inventory.
I made homemade dish soap this past week too.
“Peg, it’s easier to buy that stuff,” you say.
I know right! That’s what Mike tells me too! I like things that are whole and natural, or at least as close to that as I can get.
I made this soap with Ivory, borax, and hot water. I added a few drops of lavender oil to make it smell pretty and a few drops of food coloring to make it blue. I put it in my recently emptied Dawn bottle. So now, instead of having just a dish soap and a hand soap living on my kitchen counter, I have a second dish soap living there too.

“How do you like it?” you ask.
I don’t like it as well as I like Dawn. For one thing, my dishes, which are air-dried, dry spotty. For another, I don’t get all of those lovely bubbles.
I know! I know! Bubbles aren’t what makes your dishes clean. Bubbles do, however, make me happy. So what I do is add my homemade dish soap to the dishwater, then add a few drops of Dawn. Voila! I’m happy now. I’m even considering just adding the Dawn right into the homemade mixture. I want my glass soap dispenser to sit on my counter and not the big old ugly plastic Dawn bottle. So until the glass one gets empty enough that I can do that, this is how everyone is going to live.
“You could put him under the sink,” you suggest.
Yeah. No. I like it better when he’s within easy reach. I’m not trying to impress anyone with an uncluttered countertop and it doesn’t bother me.
I posted my picture of homemade soap on Facebook. You may have seen it there. Then someone said it can cause gunk to build up in your septic tank. I replied that I heard Rid-X will cause gunk to build up in your tank. The article went on to say that every time you make a ‘deposit’ into your septic system, you are adding the bacteria needed to break down waste, so you don’t need to add anything else.
But now I worried. I don’t want gunk in my septic tank. So I tested my dish soap. I added a liberal squirt to a bowl of water and let it sit overnight. It didn’t congeal so I’m guessing it won’t when it gets into the tank either. Then I tested my laundry soap. I filled the washer with the smallest amount of water and added the amount of soap I use for a full load. I let it sit overnight and in the morning I checked it. It wasn’t congealed either.
I researched it online and can’t find anything that says homemade soaps are harmful to our septic system. There are lots of things that are bad for it though. Food scraps and grease are two; they’ll clog the drain field. Lint from your washer and dryer will clog your system and the backwash from your water softening system will interfere with the settling process inside your tank.
All in all, I think I’ll keep using my homemade soaps.

<<<<<>>>>>

I waited in the Jeep one day while Mike had his hair cut. I keep a New Testament in the center console for just such waits. As I read from the book of Hebrews the rain gently fell against the windshield. I picked up my camera and took a few shots.

I like this second one best. I can see the buildings reflected upside down in them.

A few days later, sitting in the car wash, I took a few pictures of the different cycles as the soap ran down the windshield. I like this one best. I like the bubbles in the soap veins. I like the soft colors in the background and I like how the pinks edges the veins in the upper right-hand side of the photograph.

I know.
I’m weird.
Remember.
If you look at a photograph for forty-five seconds you’ll find something in it to like.

>>>>><<<<<

Our friends and neighbors, the Kipp’s, made an unusual discovery.
Out beside their shed a whole bunch of little bottles made their way to the surface. Fifteen of them, I think is what Lamar told me. These bottles have Eagle embossed on them and look like little milk bottles.

“We found them online for $4.95 but couldn’t find out what they’re used for,” Lamar said.
I looked for them online too and found the same eBay website that had them for $4.95. I found another website that talked about identifying old bottles by style. These definitely are a milk bottle, but what good is two ounces of milk to anyone? I wondered. Maybe they were for cream. 
The next time I talked to Momma on the phone I asked her about them.
“We had a dairy so our milk didn’t come to us in a bottle,” she told me. “Once the cream separated, Ma would dip it off for Daddy and Clarence’s coffee. I don’t remember if Ma ever put cream in her coffee or not.”
Clarence was her older brother.
“So do you think that city-slickers got their cream in this size bottle?” I asked her.
“It could be, or maybe the restaurants used them.”
That sounds very reasonable to me. My mother is the smartest, most beautifulist mother in the whole wide world!
“The schools would get milk in the half-pint size for school lunches,” she told me.
I thought back to my school days and a small cardboard carton flashed in my mind's eye. “In glass bottles?” I asked.
“Dah! Peggy,” you say.
“Yes,” was Momma’s more polite answer. “We could have either white or chocolate.”
“How much is a half-pint,” some of my younger readers might wonder.
A half-pint is one cup.

<<<<<>>>>>

My sad day was Thursday.
Mike and I normally break for lunch around twelve or twelve-thirty. After lunch I walk the girls, taking them with me to check the mailbox.
Our back driveway is wet in all but the driest of conditions. Add winter and you get ice. I bet that doesn’t surprise you.
Even though the temps were warmer for a few days prior to my sad day, there was still plenty of ice there.
On this morning, after navigating the minefield of ice, I navigated the minefield of mud. Stepping into the roadway I see a lot of little white needles scattered everywhere!

They look like porcupine quills, I thought. I looked a little closer and saw the black tips. They are porcupine quills! I’m going to pick up a few — didn’t the Indians use quills for decorating their clothing? Looking at those skinny little quills I couldn’t see how they could thread anything through that. Maybe they had bigger porcupines back then.
Then my mind turned back to the conundrum of how the quills came to be on the road. As I crossed the road to check the mailbox I wondered, Did he tangle with an animal? I’d heard the coyotes singing last night. Even if he did, he wouldn’t drop his quills like a pine tree drops needles, would he? I’ll go home and get my camera. Maybe you guys can help me figure out what’s going on here. 
Stop laughing. I’ll get there.
My story-maker’s mind made up a short video. Super Quill Pig Strikes Again! And I see his tail lash out at a passing car.
Car.
Car tire.
I bet he got hit. See! I got there!
I tucked the mail into my jacket and heading back across the road my eye is drawn to the quill trail as it tapers to the right. I walk the girls a little ways down the road as the trail peters out and then stops altogether. I look in the weeds on both sides but don’t see him anywhere. I turned the girls around, even though Ginger was enjoying stretching her legs and she didn’t want to go. We get back to the end of the driveway and I see the trail of quills is even thicker in the other direction.
There’s a whole clump! With fur!

I glance down the road and don’t see anything. Then I scan the weeds at the roadside and…
There he was.
I’m sad, I thought as I recognized the feeling that washed over me. I know lots of people think it’s a good thing when these oversize rodents get killed, but for me, I just liked knowing he was around. He didn’t bother us. Ginger getting a face full of quills was most certainly her own fault.
Now that he was dead, my mind changed gears. How can I keep his bones?
I contemplated it the whole way back to the house. On the breezeway I unharnessed the girls and opened the door for them to go in first. Inside, I shut the door. Mike is on the couch, watching the TV.
“It’s a sad day,” I told Mike.
“How come?” he asked.
“My quill pig got hit on the road last night.”
Mike grunted.
I went on. “How can I keep him?”
“You don’t want to keep him!” Mike said incredulously.
“Yes I do! It would be cool to have a porcupine skull.” My mind already developed a picture of what that would look like and it was very much like this photograph I found online.

Why are their teeth orange? I wondered. I Googled it. ‘Their teeth are orange or red because they are coated with iron-rich enamel,’ it says, ‘not white like ours.’
Another mystery solved.
I stood there, in our shit-hole, as Mike affectionately calls our apartment, and waited. I’d assumed he was thinking about it, but in hindsight I realize he’d gone back to his program.
“Well?” I asked.
“What?”
“How can I keep him?! I don’t want the animals to scatter his bones!”
“Put him in with the apple tree,” Mike said.
“Yeah! Why didn’t I think of that!” We’d planted four fruit trees and caged them in to keep the deer from stripping off the tender young bark. But three of them died in the first year and the cages are still there. I took a bucket and a shovel and I collected my quill pig. I carried him up into the back field and dumped him over the top of the wire cage. I wondered how long it will be until the insects have scrubbed his bones clean.
“Months? Years?” I asked Lamar when he and Rosie stopped on their last walkabout.
“Probably not long after the bugs come out.”
I know, I’m weird.
And with that, let’s call this one done.