So I was sitting at the computer last night - around 2am or so - and heard a loud, rattling thump. My computer sits facing the dining room over a small room divider. There's a door from the dining room onto a small, screened in back porch - and a screen door to the back yard. The noise seemed to have come from outside the porch.

Anyway, it was loud enough to arouse both cats: Toyota had been dozing on the back of my chair and Xerox was under a chair a few feet away. When there was a second thump a few seconds later, both cats started growling, ran to the dining room and began stalking the door to the porch. This was followed by more rattling and banging and what sounded like scratching. I assumed something was trying to get in through the screen door from the yard to the porch - and my first assumption was that it was some other village cat.

But the thumping (against the door?) sounded a bit heavy for a cat, so my next thought was that it might be a raccoon trying to get to the bag of rubbish that was sitting on the porch. Anyway, the noise subsided and, while Toyota remained on a windowsill overlooking the back yard, Xerox wandered back to his place under the chair.

About five minutes later, though, the rattling and scratching started up again - a bit louder. Both cats were back on the scene, growling and fluffing up their tails. Then there were a couple of loud bangs, followed by some clattering and a few more loud thumps. I repaired to the bedroom to let Sean know that I thought a bear might be trying to get to the garbage bag on the back porch. A few years ago, a bear had come into the yard fairly regularly when a large garbage can had been kept outside the house. It would periodically toss the lid aside and tear apart the garbage bag inside, scattering rubbish all over the yard.

I must admit I was a bit spooked - as I suppose we're meant to be by things that go bump in the night - and was a bit goose bumpy by the time I got back to the bedroom to wake Sean.

"What? Why do you think it's a bear? Did you see anything?"

"No, but it sounds too large for a small animal."

"What sounds large?"

"The thumping and rattling. Like bigger than a possum or a fox. It's not a person because Xerox didn't hide [he hides behind the television when people approach the house] - he's right there with Toyota making cat noises at the back door."

"So what do you want me to do?"

"I don't know."

"Come to bed, then."

"With a bear or something out there?"

"It can't get in the house, can it?"

"It could if it's a zombie."

"It's not a zombie."

"How do you know?"

"Come to bed."

"I left all the lights and stuff on out there."

"Then go turn them off."

"..."

"Oh, all right."

By the time we got back to the dining room, the noises had subsided, but the cats were still a bit agitated. We turned off the lights and went to bed. "I guess it wasn't a zombie."

"Why?"

"They tend to be more persistent."

This morning, I investigated. The back door to the yard had, indeed, been attacked. In fact, the screen in the top half of the door had been replaced with glass for the winter - and the glass and most of the frame had been knocked into the back porch. The door is up a step, so the top panel is about four feet from the ground. As it turns out, it was a plexiglass panel, but it had been broken into three pieces nevertheless. The frame on the door was also slightly bent.

The weird thing, though, was that there were no scratches on the door (or anything else): the lower panel and frame are aluminum, painted white, and would be easily marked. The scratching I'd heard sounded like something scratching at a screen, but the only screen on the porch at the moment is on the inside door, right outside the dining room. There was one hair on the door frame below the punched out panel - black with a gray tip, slightly wavy, and about three inches long - not very coarse.

For some reason I was reminded of the Pennsylvania Creature that had been spotted in Westmoreland County back in the seventies. It was supposed to be a Marked Hominid, a slightly smaller relative of the Sasquatch. Anyway, night has fallen. We'll see if there's a return visit. Meanwhile, any thoughts?

Poll #1185931
Open to: All, results viewable to: All

Was this most likely...

Tags: cat kingdom, nature studies, social and personal
humour: uneasy

So, yeah, there's been another hiatus in my journal updates. On the other hand, there was a minor spike in my posts to America's Debate. With work picking up - more like snowballing - it seems like my "recreational" internet time is at a premium.

Plus my typing has been slightly impaired for the last week or so - which brings me to the (rather obvious) life lesson: Never try to break up a cat fight with your bare hands. Even if they're your own cats.

A week or so ago, both cats were outside - they've taken to the great out of doors like a Republican takes to boysex - and there was a rare incursion into the territory by another cat from the village: much yowling, hissing, and screaming ensued outside our bedroom window. So, of course, we went out to the porch and called the beasties in.

They both came tearing into the house with enormous tails and arched backs and turned on each other - screaming around the house, bouncing off the walls, overturning furniture - so I attempted to come between them, finally grabbing Xerox(traditionally the more submissive cat) and tried to calm him down. Heh - stab-stab-stab-stab-stab-stab-crunch. All six claws (Xerox is polydactyl, which I should maybe have taken into consideration) on all four feet were raked across or sunk into various parts of my left hand, wrist, and forearm - followed by every possible tooth being sunk into my forefinger.

I washed the wound out pretty well, applied some hydrogen peroxide and so on and bandaged the worst of the punctures and scratches. The next morning (last Sunday), however, the finger was swollen up like a gnarled pink sausage and I couldn't bend it. So off I went to the emergency room for remarks from the receptionist - "You tried to break up a cat fight?" - the nurse - "You tried to break up a cat fight??" - and the doctor - "You tried to break up a cat fight?" - a tetanus booster, and a course of antibiotics.

Now, about a week later, my finger looks a bit more like a finger and I can finally make a fist again, so the infection seems to have cleared up. The wound is still sore and bits of the hand remain somewhat tender, but I can at least use all ten digits for typing. Hurrah.

Tags: cat kingdom, social and personal
humour: sore

I've been a bit absent from here again, mostly due to the fact that the cave officially reopened yesterday. So Sean and I have both been kept busy shelving new inventory for the gift shop, replacing light bulbs in the cave, working on some new signage, getting the Panning for Gems sluice back in working order, mounting new tags for the artifacts, cleaning picnic tables, restocking fish food, making sure the bats haven't come down with "white nose syndrome", working on new school programs, etc.

Things should be slowing down slightly next week in terms of prep work, though we have to contend with a group of Girl Scouts tomorrow morning. Still, it's marginally more interesting than market research, I suppose...

Tags: social and personal, speleological
humour: busy

Dateline Nueva York:

We're in Brooklyn for a few days with only the laptop, which Sean has, of course, been hogging for - ugh - work, so I spent the afternoon with the Sunday papers. Having exhausted the Post, the News, and the Times, I turned to the crossword puzzle in the New York Times Magazine.

Years ago, when I was in college and for a while thereafter (okay, decades ago), doing the Sunday Times crossword was de rigeur for those aspiring to a certain cosmopolitanism and I did them fairly regularly. While I used to be fairly good at solving them (or getting fairly close), they were often a bit of a challenge and occasionally fraught with impasses requiring a small reference library to get past.

It's probably been twenty years or so since I've even looked at one and it took me a while to figure out the themed clues, but once I did - boom boom boom - done in about forty-five minutes. And I didn't even have croissants.

But then I started looking at the clues: no classical allusions, few literary references, no quotes, little geography, few historical references, no technical, scientific or poetic jargon, no foreign phrases, no obscure units of weights, measures, or currency - it was like a slightly lateral vocabulary lesson.

Sean was still at the computer, so I moved on to the cryptic crossword - or "Puns and Anagrams" as the Times calls it - which I'd never particularly cared for (though cryptic puzzles are ubiquitous in the British Isles, so I worked on a few there over the years). Half an hour later, that was done, too.

And I started wondering, "Have these things been dumbed down?" If there's anyone who's been doing these more or less regularly over the past several years, do you know if this week's are typical? Did I just happen upon a set of fairly simple puzzles? Or has there been a noticeable decline in difficulty over the years?

Tags: pop kulture, social and personal
humour: curious

Home again, briefly - recharging the cats, then off to New York.

I'm not sure what Sean is cooking, but he's using these in something:



WARNING: This bag of cashews may contain... cashews
Presumably the humble cashew was not required for his new delicacy, Oven-Roasted Hot Pad:


The thing was allegedly sitting on the oven door when it was closed or something. He noticed a bit of smoke and when he opened the oven door the thing made a sort of "whooomp" noise and burst into flames. It probably released enough toxic fumes to take out a small Cambodian village, especially when it was tossed, sizzling, into the dishwater.

Needless to say, I was more amused than he was - though it wasn't quite as spectacular as the time he cooked a tinned steak and kidney pie without removing the lid. When the can-opener punctured the rim, a geyser of steaming meat bits and gravy erupted, coating the ceiling, the walls, the cabinets, the counter, and every major appliance in the place with England's only contribution to international cuisine (fortunately, he leapt back about fourteen feet as the thing exploded and avoided the potentially lethal beefspray). I think I was still laughing when the clean-up was finished.

Tags: foodstuffs, social and personal
humour: amused

We're heading off to Ohio tomorrow morning to cover the primaries there. Then we'll be back home for two days before heading off to New York for a bout a week. I may have extremely limited computer access or I could end up with lots of free time and plentiful WiFi. Expect some delays...

Tags: social and personal
humour: busy

If one is wearing a portable thumb drive on a lanyard around one's neck, it is best not to simultaneously entertain oneself with online pornography.



Anyone know how to clean one of these things?

Tags: social and personal
humour: distracted