Tying The Knot

After being together for 21 years, Mike and I made it official; we put a stamp on what we’ve been doing for the past 21 years; we tied the knot; we got married.

“WHY!!!!” I hear some of you cry.
“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!” I hear some others of you say.
“It’s about time,” a few of you are saying too.
“After 21 years, what makes you want to get married now?” you wonder in all seriousness.
And that is the question that this letter blog is going to attempt to deal with today. It’s a journey into a world of light and the saving grace of our Lord.
I have my favorite Bible teachers that I listen to everyday. I’ve thought of myself as Christian for several years now and I’ve seen God’s blessings in my life everyday.
Mike and I have had our issues; there is no denying that. What makes it worse is that I’m a writer and I write about everyday things. It’s hard sometimes, when your heart is hurting, and your head is filled with indignation and anger, and there isn’t anything to do for it but to write — or drink wine — or both! Yeah, combining the two isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but you should always wait a couple of days before posting anything you’ve written while drinking. Despite the fact that my story enthralled some of you so that you couldn’t leave the computer until you had read the story the whole way through, maybe I shouldn’t have posted it. And I know some of you wonder where the last chapter of that story is.
I started it.
I never finished it.
I think I took a page out of Mike’s book. If you don’t want to deal with something, don’t. Pretend it didn’t happen and it’ll go away. Of course it doesn’t work that way but when someone loves you, they let you get away with it.
And you let me get away with never finishing the story.
In the meantime, life kept moving on, there were new stories to write, and the last chapter fell by the wayside.
So, recap.
I had a meltdown… in February 2015. We were going to call it quits, but once emotions weren’t so raw, Mike asked if I’d be willing to work on our relationship for a year, then re-evaluate.
While I was considering this I heard a sermon on husbands and wives and what those roles are, Biblically speaking of course.
“Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord.” That’s only the nutshell, there was a lot of meat in this sermon and by the end I believed that to be a Godly woman, I had to obey my husband.
Yeah, don’t go getting all women’s libber on me. Submit doesn’t mean be a doormat or take any kind of abuse he wants to hand out. It just means you are to be a helper, be supportive and encouraging and help him to fulfill his enormous responsibility of being head of the household.
But don’t worry, husbands have their roles outlined for them in the Bible too. “Husbands, love your wives and do not be harsh with them.”
So I heard the sermon and meditated on it. If I am a Christian — and I believe I am; and if I want to walk in the way of our Lord — and I do; then I have to obey the Word.
“But you’re not married, Peg. Mike’s not your husband,” you say.
Well here I did a little justifying. We live as husband and wife, we portray ourselves as husband and wife, many times we’ve referred to each other as husband and wife, and we were in a marriage-like commitment. Doesn’t that make us married?
I thought it did.
I determined to do as the Bible says, and obey the laws of God that pertain to a wife and I agreed to Mike’s one year probation.
Drinking has been an issue with Mike and me for a couple of years now.
I often enjoyed a glass of wine in the late afternoon as I made dinner, or in the evening. I seldom drank to excess, but it was an issue Mike could get his hackles up about if he wanted to and he issued me an ultimatum, “Stop drinking. Not even one more drop or we’re through!”
“I don’t have to drink, but you can’t tell me I can’t!” I cried and I was preparing to leave him when he backed down and allowed me to have my occasional glass of wine and would only bring it up if he was feeling especially testy.
Then I heard a sermon on drinking. The Bible doesn’t say we can’t drink, although many preachers and Bible teachers don’t drink, but we are not to be drunkards. Christians are also commanded to not allow their bodies to be “mastered” by anything and that includes alcohol or drugs or sex or any of many other things but for this discussion we will leave it at alcohol.
I listened and I meditated on the message. “If you don’t have to drink,” I told myself, “don’t. Put your money where your mouth is.” And I took drinking and I put it out — so to speak — and I didn’t do it for Mike either; I did it for God. We are to be watching and ready for His return. If you are drunk, you are not watching and you are not ready. I stopped buying wine for the house (unless it was a special occasion such as a dinner we were hosting) and I only had a glass of wine if we went out. Although we’ve never talked about it, Mike seems okay with this arrangement.
Then our daughter died.
Kat died.
I don’t think I need to re-cap this period of my life as I blogged about it the whole time.
Living in a world of sadness and grief all the time is too hard to do and not the way God intends for us to live. I did a lot of research on what the Bible says about heaven and hell and here is the bottom line.
It is forever. Without end. Eternal.
Consider the words of Amazing Grace. “When we’ve been there ten thousand years, bright shining as the sun, we’ve no less days to sing God’s praise, then when we first begun.”
Imagine that! After ten thousand years!
Now imagine you don’t go to heaven. Imagine, after ten thousand years of agony in the fires of hell that you do not have any less days then when you’d first begun.
Have you ever been in agony? Intense pain? I have. I blogged about it. Without going back to see exactly what I wrote, I can tell you from memory that my throat hurt so bad, just moving my tongue caused intense pain and swallowing was out of the question. You have no idea how many times a day you swallow until each swallow is torture — pure agony! It hurt so bad that I wanted to die, I prayed to die — I wanted the pain to stop. That lasted for only for a few days, how could I endure it forever?
All of me revolts at the idea. I do NOT want that.
So what do I have to do to go to heaven?
Easy! Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. Confess you are a sinner, ask for forgiveness and ask Jesus to come into your life.
We are all sinners and the consequences of sin is death. We will all die. And after that there is only heaven or hell for all of eternity.
“Peg, I don’t believe in heaven or hell,” you say. “I think that when you die, that’s it. There’s nothing beyond. POOF! The candle goes out.”
You are not the only one who believes that, but what if you’re wrong?
“But I’m a good person. Surely your God won’t send me to hell,” you say.
That is saying you earned your way to heaven by being good and yet the Bible tells us that you can’t get to heaven by works alone.
“I’ll live my life how I want and accept Jesus before I die,” you say.
Well, guess what? You don’t know when you are going to die. I don’t know when I’m going to die. We must be ready, every single minute of every single day, to meet God.
I made the decision to ask Jesus to come into my life.
Lord, empty me out of me and fill me up with You, I’ve been praying. I want to hear You and obey Your word.
I hear God’s word.
Obey your husband for he is the head of the house.
I hear God’s word.
Don’t be a drunkard.
I hear God’s word.
Be ready to meet God, for you don’t know when your last hours on this earth will be.
I hear God’s word.
Obey man’s law as long as it doesn’t go against God’s law.
I hear God’s word.
Don’t commit adultery.
I hear God’s word.
Then in February of this year, right around our one year mark of working on our relationship, I got a niggle.
I must have heard a sermon and although I don’t remember what it was, I couldn’t sleep. For three nights in a row I only slept a couple of hours and I was exhausted. But eventually my niggle, my sin, became known to me.
Just because I think we are married, maybe God doesn’t.  What is ‘married’?
I Googled it and after reading several pages, came to the conclusion that God does recognize a ceremony for marriage. For one thing Jesus turned water to wine at a marriage ceremony. For another it is our law, man’s law that we have a ceremony and it does not conflict with God’s law.
I am living in sin.
I have no choice but to marry Mike or leave him.
Mike must have known we were at our one year mark too because one day out of the blue he asks, “What are we doing Peg?” He was in his recliner in the grouse, I was in the RV in front of the computer.
I stopped what I was doing, jumped up and went to the door, “What do you mean?” I asked with a racing heart. I knew what he meant.
“Are we staying together or not?”
And I was evasive. “I don’t know. What do you want to do?”
“You’re answering my question with a question,” he observed. “Do you want to stay together or what?”
“I don’t know,” I answered and he dropped it.
Honestly, quite frankly, and to tell you the truth, I was not thinking of separating, I was thinking about getting married. But how would Mike react to an ultimatum? I know how I did!
Another time, I’m in the kitchen doing something, he’s in the recliner. “So what are we doing Peg?”
Speak up! I tell myself. I can’t! I’m not that brave! And again I was evasive.
This game went on for a couple of weeks. Not everyday. I never knew when he was going to bring it up. One night he brought it up in bed.
“What are we doing Peg?”
“I’m not talking about this right now, I want to go to sleep.”
“You’re not sleeping, you’re playing games on your Nook.”
“I’m winding down getting ready for sleep.”
He accepted that and rolled over and went to sleep.
In the car one day. “What are we doing Peg?”
“I don’t know,” I said again.
Another time and another time and another time.
Bits and pieces. That’s how we work things out.
In bits and pieces.
Finally the day came. Our business in Missouri was going to be sold, we were going to pack up everything and move to our mountain home.
It was time.
“Mike, we need to get married or split up,” I told him.
“Why?”
“Because living together without marriage is a sin.” Mike didn’t say anything and I didn’t push him. I let him think about it for a while. I was afraid his reluctance to get married was a no, in which case, when we got to our mountain home, I’d be staying there on my own. As far as I was concerned he could pack the RV and Jeep with anything he wanted and leave.
I think Mike took my not pushing the issue as a sign that I had changed my mind and he was happy to let things continue as they were.
But I wasn’t and I brought it up again.
“What are we doing Mike?”
Mike cleared his throat, twiddled his thumbs but finally said, “I don’t think we should get married.”
I was crushed but outwardly I didn’t show it.
“Okay. Why not?”
“Because you won’t take my last name,” he stated matter-of-factly.
“I like my last name!” I told exclaimed. “Lot’s of women don’t change their name when they get married!” I told him.
  “I’m old fashion,” was his reply. “I think a woman should take her husband’s last name.”
I didn’t point out that if he was truly old fashion and not just making excuses he would never have lived with me without the benefit of marriage in the first place. Instead I said, “My last name hasn’t been an issue for 21 years! I like my last name — it suits me! And it’s been my last name for 40 years!”
And he said no more.
Bits and pieces.
Our son Kevin was visiting one day not long after. “Kevin,” Mike said. “Do you think that when a man and woman get married that she should take his last name?”
“Well, yeah,” Kevin answered.
Mike smirked at me and I found myself defending my position all over again.
The next time we talked about it, Mike offered a compromise. “How about Kraft-Luby?”
I frowned. I know I should have been happy with a compromise but I hated the idea, and told him so. But over the next couple of weeks I began to wonder if standing on not wanting to change my name was Biblical or not so I sought out a Biblical counselor.
The response to my question was this. “Candidly, from your aversion to take his name, it seems that you are not prepared for the lifelong commitment and unity of marriage. No, taking a husband’s last name is not required by Scripture, but it is a significant symbol that you are choosing to following your husband’s lead, forming a new and united family.”
I really thought the word ‘aversion’ was a rather strong word and I am totally committed. I think he’s full of shit, I thought. Still, it got me to thinking.
It’s just a name, Peg, I told myself. What does it really matter? And I was back to, But I like my last name!
I am really and truly totally committed, if taking his last name is what it takes to prove it — I’ll do it.
Two weeks before our move (and wanting to be married in Missouri so Kevin and his wife Kandyce and our friend Margaret could be there) I asked Mike, “So!” We were driving down the road and not talking about anything in particular at this point and I thought he would be pleased when he hears that I had a change of heart and would take his last name and not the Kraft-Luby thing as the compromise he suggested. I opened this conversation with a big ole’, “So! What is your objection to our getting married?”
“We just don’t get along anymore, Peg. We have different interests.”
I was shocked. Stunned. I was quiet for a moment, giving him a chance to amend it with this last name issue. He didn’t.
“Lot’s of married people have fights,” I said, “And lots of married couples have different interests.” I could have said, “The only thing you are interested in is watching TV,” but I didn’t. He knows. We’ve had that ‘discussion’ before.
And I didn’t tell him about my change of heart.
A week later we were in Branson, in a campground that was trying to get us to buy a membership.
“Are you ready to become a member of one of the best campgrounds around?” our agent asked. “It’s a great deal!”
They were really high pressure and I decided to just be honest and hoped it got us out of there. “It is a great deal, if we camped full time, but honestly, once we get to Pennsylvania, I’m not sure we’re going to stay together anymore,” I told her.
“Why not?” she asked.
I looked at Mike because the objection to us getting married was all his. “She won’t take my last name —“
“Yes I will,” I said quickly and quietly so only Mike could hear me.
“— and I’m old fashion that way,” he finished.
Our agent looked a little stunned. “Really? I’ve been doing this for a long time and I never heard that one before.”
We get to Pennsylvania and with the issue of my last name resolved, we talked about when to get married.
“I wanted to get married in Missouri so the kids and Margaret could be there,” I complained.
“Peg, that is not helpful,” Mike said.
“Well, I thought about getting married on Kat’s birthday but I don’t want to wait that long.” After a pause I added, “It would give me another reason to be sad on that day,” I joked. “Actually it’ll give me a reason to not be so sad.”
“How about July 11th?” Mike asked.
“Really? That would be okay,” I got the implication of that date. That was Tammy’s birthday and Tammy was Mike’s only biological child. Tammy died of cancer two years ago.
Mike and I went to the courthouse in Towanda to get a marriage license and what does some dummy do but walk in the courthouse with her pocketknife.
Yeah, me.
The beautiful, solid old oak doors held my attention until we opened the inner doors and I saw the officers there with the metal detector. “Oh, shit.”
The officers looked at us and Mike was quick to explain. “She has her pocket knife.”
I turned to go back out to the car.
“That’s okay,” an officer called after me. I stopped and turned to look at him. “Just put it in one of the lock boxes out there and bring me the key.”
I went back out the door to the foyer and there on the wall were six or eight little lockers. I put my pocket knife and pepper spray in one, then I took my cell phone out of my pocket and put it in there too. It took me a couple of minutes to figure out how the lock worked, but I finally figured it out and joined Mike inside. I handed the key to one of the officers and walked through the metal detector. It went off.
“It’s probably my underwire,” I said. I know those things will set metal detectors off. The officer passed the wand over the front and back of my body and cleared me to proceed.
We went into the clerks office. “How can I help you?” a nice lady asked.
“We’d like to get a marriage license,” Mike said.
She got up from her desk and came to the counter. “Okay. Have either one of you ever been married before?”
“Yes, we both have.”
“We need a copy of the divorce decree, photo ID and $49 dollars. Once you get your license you have to wait three days to get married.”
“I have no idea where mine is,” I said.
“Me either,” Mike said. “It’s been 26 years.”
“You’ll have to contact the courthouse in the county where you were divorced and get a copy,” she said.
“Okay. Thank you,” and we left.
Getting a copy of my divorce decree was no big deal but they couldn’t find Mike’s. “I see where you applied to the court for a divorce but I can’t find where it was ever finalized,” the clerk of the courthouse told us. “Maybe it was finalized in a different county?” she suggested.
That prompted phone calls to another county. “We went to a computerized system in the early 90’s and some records didn’t get transferred,” the clerk there told us. “I’ll have to go down to the archive room and search for it manually. What’s your phone number?”
And Mike had a whole day to worry that he wasn’t legally divorced from his last wife.
The next day on the phone the clerk told us she found the final divorce decree by searching in Ronda’s name, Mike’s ex-wife.
And the relief on Mike’s face was palpable.
July 11th came and went.
In the meantime I am attending Moxie Church, a little country church that I go to on Sundays when we are at our mountain home, and the church I want to become a member of.
In order to join this church you have to meet with the Pastor.
“Why do you want to be a member of this church?” he asked me.
“Because the Kipp’s come here. I love the Kipp’s and I trust the Kipp’s,” was the answer that came out without any thought. This is a Bible teaching church and if they taught something that wasn’t in the Bible, the Kipp’s wouldn’t go there.
“Right now, you can’t join the church. You and Mike are not married,” Pastor Mike said.
“Will you marry us?” I asked.
“Let’s set up a meeting with you and Mike and we’ll talk about it.”
On our first meeting with Pastor Mike, he said he would not marry us —that he didn’t think we should get married — at this time. He suggested that we live apart for a couple of three months, continue with counseling and then see if we still wanted to be married.
“If we’d have married 21 years ago instead of living together,” I reasoned, “we’d be in the same boat today.” Reason, justification…whatever.
Mike and I had several more meetings with Pastor Mike, some joint meetings and some private.
And Mike was dragging his feet about getting the license and now I’m thinking again that we are not going to get married.
I didn’t know what was happening in his meetings with Pastor Mike but eventually Mike’s concerns came to light and I was right. He didn’t want to get married. “Some people live together for a long time then when they get married they get divorced. I can’t afford a divorce, Peg.”
So Mike was worried about his money. Our money. I was by his side and helped to build both of the business’s that he sold. “I’m not marrying you to divorce you! I’m marrying you so I get right with God. There is no divorce once we get married.”
Once Pastor Mike and Mike had another meeting, we were done with counseling and Pastor Mike came to the conclusion that as messed up as we are, we are perfect for each other.
LOL.
Wait, maybe it was my beautiful neighbor lady Stephanie that said that about us.
Anyway Pastor Mike agreed to marry us and on August 25, 2016 we were married at the little Moxie Church.

The Kipp’s; Rosie and Lamar, and the Robinson’s; Jon and Steph, stood with us and that was the extent of the wedding party and the guest list.

Small, simple and sweet.
After our ceremony we had dinner at the Wyalusing Hotel.

In closing, I want to say that I know everyone has their own set of beliefs and it may not be the same as mine. But this I know for sure.
I love the Bible.
I love listening to the Bible teachers and preachers teach the passages of the Bible. I believe the Bible was divinely inspired and every word in the Bible is true. I believe the Bible is as relevant today as it was when it was written.
And with that we will call this one done.

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!