"They spend a lot of time in the air looking for rotting flesh"

Yes, but do they have....


We may never know the answer to this age-old question.

The Onion does Otters

Shell Oil exposes the malingering of a publicity-hungry mammal.

Spring Frost

Spring plowing

Every year I wait for the pictures from spring plowing on the Going-to-the-Sun road. It's early this year. Now I get them on facebook.


It's worth taking a look at this one to see how dramatically light can affect a photograph. This is the same view as this:

Mice

We have mice. This is hardly surprising, given that every house in Indiana I've ever lived in has hosted a few of the little boogers.

Now, add the following things together: 1) a few brazen mice; 2) a doofy dog; 3) a man determined to catch them, and 4) an animal-loving teenage girl horrified by the idea of killing them.

And you get a comedy of errors.

T and I were sitting at the kitchen table Thursday night when we heard a rustling near the dog food bag. Our eyes met instantly. "I hear it," he said. He crept over to the bag and lifted the nearby curtain, revealing an open bag of treats that had fallen out of the dog food container. Aha.

By this time, Thomas was quite worked up, having smelled and heard the creature lurking near his food bowl. T picked up the treat bag and peered inside. Nothing. Hmmm. He began to carry the treat bag over to the sink light to see better, when the tiny thing leaped out of the bag. T jumped, the treat bag flew out of his hands, and a chase ensued that, from my vantage point at the table, seemed to unfold over minutes instead of seconds. The mouse lit out for the space between the stove and floor, T dived after it trying to grab its tail, and my leggy, clumsy dog pursued it in the most inefficient way imaginable. In the middle of all this, T's left hand had the misfortune to come between Thomas's paw and the floor he was trying to gain traction on, and so it now sports two long, deep, but neatly aligned scratches from Thomas's claws.

And the mouse, of course, made it under the stove. And Thomas spent the remainder of the evening in a sort of yoga position with his paw stuck under the stove and his head on the floor, attempting to see the escaped mouse underneath.

We had the last laugh, though, when we caught the little jerk in a live trap the next morning, and released him in the back of the yard. He stared up at us malevolently from the grass, tiny ears twitching. (Yes, a live trap -- we wanted to give that a try first out of respect for The Girl, who isn't fond of killing anything.)

Yesterday, we had an even closer encounter with the rodentine crime family that inhabits my house. T was assembling shelves in the finished basement and walked into the laundry room. "Come here!" he hissed. I entered the laundry room to find him grinning and pointing under the dryer. He found a pair of gloves, pulled them on and proceeded to catch a mouse with his hands. Taking care not to crush it, he carried it out back and released it in the same spot. And I just saw another one right before beginning this post.

I'm seriously thinking about borrowing my sister's cat. Because as much as I love him, this guy isn't getting the job done:



Thomas reinspects the scene of Thursday's crime on Sunday morning.

Be-tentacled thievery

I have to say, I don't think I'd have the guts to chase after it.

Once again

Otters are back at the old homestead.