25

One day, I was on my way out of a big-box pet store, loaded up with a very large bag of dog food, snake bedding, and mouse-intended-for-food.  Sometimes big stores like this have adoption cages near the registers, and on this day there was an all-black kitten with yellow eyes who was hollering at me and waving me over with one paw.  I did go over to his cage, but I couldn’t pet him since my hands were so full.  He gave up trying to get me to pet him and satisfied himself rubbing back and forth across the bars.  The card on his cage said he came from Purrfect Pals, a no-kill shelter in Arlington, and that his name was “Tiger-Boy.”

24

When you have a variety of pets, as I do, you end up going to the pet food store on a regular basis, and even if you are the sort of person who avoids the big-box pet food stores, you might end up going there to buy mice.  Mice intended for the feeding of snakes come in fresh or frozen, and even when you have a regular supplier of them, they don’t always have a regular supply.  Small snake meals require the purchasing of “pinkie” mice, which are frozen new-born baby mice.  Larger snakes eat more pinkies or larger mice, depending on what you can get.  Frozen seems like a nice option until you have to defrost them, and the microwave is no place for a mouse, dead or alive.  So eventually you come the to the point where you buy live mice, small ones, and experience the thrill and joy of my much younger self, coming home with a critter in a tiny cardboard box with holes.  When you ask the sales people for help, they always want to know if the mouse is to become a pet or food.  I’ve never understood why. I did on more than one occasion have the mouse escape in the car while I was driving back from the pet food store.

An Incident on Sunday

I believe that spiders lead short, furtive lives and should be left alone whenever possible. I like to let the big fat ones build webs on my front porch in the fall, but then when I try to take a picture I remember that I am not patient enough to be a good photographer. Sunday morning I uncovered a spider in the basement when I was doing laundry. I stood and moved away so it could scramble to safety. About an hour later, I was driving on Avondale Road in Redmond, and a young squirrel panicked in my lane as it tried to cross the street. I hit it with my left rear tire, and flattened it. I have never killed a squirrel before and a day or so later I still feel terrible about it.



Things I find in my Basement #5

I dreamed once that I bought a lottery ticket on a Wednesday.  My winning number was shared with two other people, and together we split $12 million.  As a former math teacher, I well understand how much I can expect to win from buying lottery tickets.  I don't remember ever buying one, but I think maybe I did once or twice. On Wednesdays.

Things I find in my Basement #4

Between kindergarten and first grade, my mother made me cut off my hair. I was allowed to keep my ponytail, and for many years it was pinned to a bulletin board in my bedroom.  When my mother died, my brothers and I found boxes in her home of things we had saved or she had saved for us.  The boxes were labelled with our names.  I kept mine for a long time before I opened them. Mine contained letters, school papers, drawings, my frog dissection kit, some dolls I made, and this ponytail.

Things I find in my Basement #3

I was kicked out of Brownies for hiding behind a tree in Shaw Park.  I guess I must have stayed hidden too long.
I was a Girl Scout long enough to earn these merit badges. I recall that we wore our uniforms to school on the days we had meetings after school. I am pretty sure I didn't like that. The most specific thing I remember about being a Girl Scout is that I hated selling cookies.

Things I find in my Basement #2