August 2019 – Deep Dark Thoughts

When Nature Attacks – The Sequel

Once a week, every week, my entire extended family gets together for an evening to have dinner and catch up on each other’s lives. It’s been going on for years and there is no sign of the practice slowing down in the foreseeable future. This is not the topic of today’s blog; it is merely the setting.

Recently, we were all gathered for the “Family Night Dinner,” at one of my wife’s cousin’s homes. My daughters, EM1 and EM2, had driven there separately so they had their own car. At the end of the meal, we all said our goodbyes and left to drive home. EM1 and EM2 arrived at the house a few minutes before my wife and I did.

EM1 was standing outside her car, looking underneath the vehicle and making several utterances of distress. EM2 saw us pull into the driveway and gleefully announced:

“EM1 ran over a skunk!”

It was about this time that the smell reached me. Yup. She had indeed run over a skunk, and its farewell calling card was all around us.

“It wasn’t my fault!” my oldest told me. “It ran out in front of me and I didn’t have time to stop. I think it did it on purpose.”

My first thought was that skunks don’t actually “run.” It’s more like an awkward waddle. My second thought was that most wild animals aren’t generally suicidal. I mean, I don’t know what this skunk’s family life was like, or if it had suffered a recent tragedy, but I still don’t think it intended a quick jaunt into the roadway to be the last thing it ever did on this planet.

I didn’t say those things to EM1, however. What I told her was to leave her car outside the garage and go through a car wash in the morning.

I thought that would be the end of the skunk adventures for the evening, but I was wrong.

We went into the house and my wife let the dog into the backyard to pee before we went to bed. Less than five minutes later, she tells me, “I think the dog got sprayed by a skunk.” I looked outside and, sure enough, our dog was rubbing her face in the grass and whimpering like a mugger that just got pepper sprayed.

I opened the door to check on her and that smell hit me again. Worse this time since it wasn’t just a little bit on the undercarriage of a car. This time it was a full load, released all over the dog.

My wife asked what we should do. I told her, “Whatever you do, don’t let her into the house.”

We had made that mistake once before. It took months for the smell to leave the living room. No amount of air freshener or carpet cleaner could cover it up, either. Instead of hiding the odor, it just made it more nauseating. Our house smelled like a candle shop that catered to potheads.

As I watched the dog run around the yard, pushing its face through the dirt and weeds of our back lawn, I couldn’t help wondering if this was more than just a coincidence. It’s possible it was sheer dumb luck that the dog got sprayed by a skunk the same night that my daughter killed one with her car. But it doesn’t seem likely.

I’m not normally a conspiracy theory kind of guy, but the timing just seemed a little too convenient. I think what actually happened was there was a skunk wandering around our neighborhood when my daughter pulled into the driveway. I think it sniffed the air as she drove by and thought, “It smells like Rupert got killed. I have to go to this house immediately and avenge my fallen brother.”

I believe there may be a vast network of skunk hit squads, roaming the country and wreaking havoc on anyone who has ever harmed one of their own. I think that’s why the roadway stinks for so long after a skunk gets hit by a car. It’s a homing beacon calling out to the hit squads; telling them that they have another job to do.

I know I sound crazy, but so did Galileo when he said that he believed the Earth circled the sun, not the other way around. So, don’t discount the idea just yet. Keep an open mind and talk to your friends about it. Maybe they saw something that they were too uncomfortable to talk about before. Maybe we just need to circulate the idea for a while before the real truth can come out.

Only time will tell which theory is correct: complete coincidence, or bands of roving skunk hit squads?

Could go either way.

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When Nature Attacks

Living out in the country, I have discovered that there is a large, diverse population of animal life right outside my front door. Hundreds of creatures that run, fly, swim and crawl can be found within a few paces of my house. What I have discovered to be truly remarkable isn’t just how varied the fauna around me is, it’s how many of these things absolutely terrify me.

While I am not saying that the animals roaming the neighborhood want to kill me, I do have the distinct impression that none of them would miss me terribly if I suddenly disappeared. And it’s not just the coyotes, snakes, and other predators I’m referring to.

Let me give you a couple of examples.

A couple weeks ago, I was outside doing some work on my camping trailer. I was cleaning the interior and restocking some supplies for my next vacation trip. While I was inside the trailer, I heard something land on the roof. My first thought was that a pinecone or small tree branch had fallen and hit the trailer, but the noise didn’t stop after the first bang. Whatever was on the roof continued to scrabble around for almost a minute.

With the hair on the back of my neck standing up, I carefully opened the trailer door and peered outside. As I looked up, I saw a crow perched on the edge of the camper staring down at me. My first reaction was to slam the door so it wouldn’t fly into the trailer with me. After a few minutes alone in the trailer with my heart racing in my chest, I convinced myself that the bird was as frightened by me as I was of it and it must have surely flown away by now.

I opened the door again.

The crow was now directly over the doorway and staring straight down at the top of my head. In a panic, I waved a hand at it trying to shoo it away. The damn bird just opened its mouth and screamed at me. I closed the door again to regroup.

It was surreal. I felt like I had slipped into an Alfred Hitchcock movie. You know, the one with all the birds attacking people. I don’t remember what it’s called.

I finally threw open the trailer door and ran for the garage. After reaching shelter, I picked up the first weapon I could find, which turned out to be a four-foot long pooper scooper. I hefted it in my hand and headed back to do battle. The crow did not move until I was two feet away and swinging the metal poop-scoop like a baseball player trying to hit a fastball after coming off of a three-day bender. When the crow finally flew off, it still did not appear afraid of me. It just gave me a look like, “WTF is wrong with that guy?” and sailed away to perch on a nearby telephone wire.

To this day I am convinced that if I hadn’t chased him off, he would have waited for nightfall then broken into the house to murder me and my whole family.

Which sort of makes me a hero.

You’re welcome, family.

My second nearly lethal brush with nature involved the hairy monstrosity in the picture above. I was in my garage minding my own business when that spider from Hell rushed at me from underneath the lawnmower.

I leapt out of the way and she continued to run out onto the driveway. I think she was suitably impressed by my display of athleticism and had last-minute, second thoughts about attacking. Either that, or my screaming simply hurt her ears. (Do spiders have ears?)

I hate spiders. Especially the ones that are big enough to throw a saddle on and ride around the yard. They have no business living in my garage when there is plenty of space outside for them to frolic around. There are also lots of cats and dogs in the nearby neighborhood for them to eat.

Spiders may be the creepiest things that walk on this planet, and there are probably millions of them in my back yard.

On a side note, do you think spiders ever creep themselves out with how ugly they are? Has there ever been a mother spider wandering around with hundreds of baby spiders on her back that suddenly thought, “Holy shit! Where did all these damn spiders come from?! Oh right. They’re my kids.”

Yeah, probably not.

Anyway, man-eating birds and gigantic spiders are just two of the life-threatening beasties that live around me. There are many more out there, each more ferocious than the last. I have to remain ever vigilant if I want to survive, because every one of them is just waiting for an opportunity to take me down.

Okay, not every one of them.

The frogs are cool.

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A Trip to the Vet

Recently, my wife told me she needed my help taking the dog and one of our cats to the Vet. I told her I would be happy to check if the kids were available to go with her. Unfortunately for me, she had already asked the girls before she came to me, and they were busy. It seems she wanted me to go with her about as much as I wanted to go.

That is to say, not all that much.

Despite the fact that neither of us really wanted me to help with this project, I ended up spending a Wednesday morning wrangling unhappy animals instead of the marathon couch sitting event I had previously planned. That TV doesn’t just watch itself, you know.

My wife asked me to start by grabbing the cat and putting it in the carrying case. Knowing that the cat would run away the second it saw the carrier, I ended up waiting until she had curled up on the bed in the back bedroom before bringing the case in from the garage. I don’t know if she is psychic or if I’m just really unlucky, but the moment I walked into the house with the carrier, the cat wandered out into the kitchen and spotted me.

I tried to hide the carrying case behind my back, but it was way too late. The cat disappeared, leaving behind a cat-shaped cloud of hair floating in the kitchen.

I spent the next fifteen minutes looking in all her usual hiding spots before I located her under my bed. It took an additional five minutes before I could get enough of a handhold on her to drag her back out into the daylight.

Bleeding from numerous puncture wounds, I brought her back to the kitchen to stick her in the carrying case. Her head went into the case easily, but the rest of her suddenly melted into a pudding that was too wide to shove through the opening. It was like I was trying to push toothpaste back into its tube, only the toothpaste kept wriggling and trying to squirt back out.

When I finally got her in the case, it was time to gather up the dog. Getting the dog to go to the vet is a much easier process than corralling the cat. All I need to do is pick up the car keys and jingle them in my hand and the dog is already sitting in the backseat, drooling on the headrest, and wondering why it’s taking me so long to start the engine.

Which brings us to the next fiasco in this trip to the vet saga: starting the car.

After packing the animals into the car, my wife sat down behind the wheel, put the key in the ignition, and…

Nothing.

The battery was completely dead. I don’t know how the cat managed it, but she must have snuck out to the garage while I was searching for her and murdered the car battery. I can’t prove it was her, but the circumstantial evidence is very compelling.

We were forced to borrow my daughter’s car since we didn’t have time to get a new battery before the animals were due at the vet clinic. As my kid reluctantly handed over her car keys, she told me with a straight face, “Come straight home after you see the vet, I need the car tonight. And, don’t forget to put gas in the tank when you’re done using it.”

Before I could respond to those statements with the honest response they deserved, my wife reminded me that we were already late for our appointment. I grabbed the keys, made a mental note to myself to yell at the kid later, and headed out the door.

The vet visit went as I expected. We were advised that the animals are too fat, and we needed to feed them less or let them exercise more (Why is it always my fault that the animals have no self-control?) otherwise they were both perfectly healthy. We got a brief lecture about not waiting so long before we brought the animals in for checkups next time. Then, the cat got a shot and the dog got a treat, thereby guaranteeing that the next trip to the vet would be an exact repeat of the ridiculousness we had just gone through earlier that day.

When it was over, we stuffed the cat back in her suitcase, gave the vet enough money to make her next three house payments, and headed back home.

I thought when we got back home that the cat would tell me what she did to the battery in my wife’s car, but she must have still been angry about getting a shot because she wouldn’t talk to me. She just hissed when I let her out of the cat carrier and ran back under the bed.

It was about this time that my daughter demanded her keys back and asked if I had gassed up her car.

I tossed her the keys from my pocket and said, “Here. You’re taking your mom’s car, tonight. The jumper cables are in the garage and don’t forget to buy a new battery on the way home.”

Okay, I didn’t actually do that. I didn’t think of it fast enough.

But I really, really wish I had.

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Saturday Morning Cartoons

Whatever happened to the great American tradition of Saturday morning cartoons? I was flipping around the channels on my TV a couple Saturdays ago and, just out of curiosity, I started checking the networks to see what kind of kid programming they were airing these days. My girls are both grown up now, so I’ve gotten used to being able to sleep in on Saturdays and then doing some writing in the morning. The television is hardly on anymore on a Saturday before noon.

I was shocked and saddened to find there was absolutely nothing for kids to watch on weekend mornings. The major networks are all news shows, college sports, and morning entertainment shows. I even found some thirty-minute paid programming to help me have better abs, make better grilled sandwiches, and have longer, more pleasurable erections.

Not exactly kid-friendly.

Even the cartoon heavy hitters, like Nickelodeon, Disney, and the Cartoon Network, are just running repeats of the same dreck they air twenty-four/seven during the week. There’s nothing aimed at a Saturday morning target audience.

Where did the good shows go? Is Saturday morning not a thing anymore? Am I old and losing my grasp on reality and the modern world?

All right, I already know the answer to that last one, so let’s move on.

I remember as a kid, waking up to an alarm clock all week long to get up and get ready for school. I would crawl out of bed, mumbling and complaining about how tired I was as I put my shoes on the wrong feet and stumbled out into the kitchen for a hot breakfast of burned toast. (My mom was not a great cook, but we can delve into that one on another blog post).

On Saturday morning, I woke without an alarm clock (at least an hour earlier than I did during the weekdays) and leapt out of bed in a panic that I might have already missed some of my favorite shows. I would run into the kitchen to pour a bowl of some sugary mess that claimed to have 8 essential vitamins that made it healthy, then squatted down in front of the coffee table with my breakfast to watch the best television programming of the entire week. The volume was on its lowest setting of course, because my parents were usually still asleep.

Kids today are missing out on the greatest cartoons ever made. I’m old enough to remember the classic shows that were still running from the World War II and Cold War eras, with all their subtle racism (and sometimes not so subtle) aimed at the Japanese and Germans. At a very young age, I would watch images of violence between cats and mice, coyotes and flightless birds, and even some awesome explosions and gunplay between a hunter and a rabbit. If you don’t know the shows I’m referring to, it’s probably because you’re under the age of twenty and too young to have experienced the joy of Warner Brothers at their best.

But who am I kidding? Nobody under the age of twenty is reading this blog.

I remember there was some discussion in the 1980’s about whether or not violent cartoons and kid shows contributed to people becoming violent in real life, but I don’t believe the weekly episodes of Will and Holly running from dinosaurs ultimately did me any harm.

There was an unpleasant incident in college when I was running across the kitchen floor, chasing after a mouse while swinging a broom and screaming “Die, you little bastard. Die!” But, I’m almost certain that little bit of violence was destined to happen, cartoons or not.

During the early 2000’s, when my girls were little, there was much tamer stuff to watch, but Saturday morning was still a mecca of kids’ shows. EM1’s favorites were Bear in the Big Blue House, and Blue’s Clues. There was also a sprinkling of Fairly Odd Parents, and Jimmy Neutron thrown in for good measure.

There was also a certain purple dinosaur, who shall remain nameless, that was banned from our house. If any kid show was destined to create violent, emotionless psychopaths out of an entire generation, it was that one. I still have nightmares about those smiling, dead-eyed children, chanting around a stuffed dinosaur and bringing it to life. A cartoon about devil worship would have been less disturbing.

But, even possessed children and their terrifying, magically animated, stuffed toys is better than nothing.

These days, I don’t see anything for kids to look forward to on a Saturday morning and I think that’s kind of sad. I guess in a world of streaming video on demand, on-line video gaming, and twenty-four hour, content-specific channels, there just isn’t a need for it.

It isn’t special, anymore.

It isn’t Elmer Fudd trying to stab Bugs Bunny with a spear while singing opera songs. It isn’t thinly veiled drug references while Shaggy and Scooby-Doo chase ghosts. It isn’t Snidely and Muttley trying to murder a pigeon for some inexplicable reason.

There is no joy or excitement left in Saturday mornings.

I seriously wonder what kids growing up today will reminisce about when they are adults. What era-specific events will stick in their minds enough that they will talk to their own kids about the good old days?

Based on this blog, I’m guessing it will have something to do with how grandpa wouldn’t shut up about watching cartoons while they were trying to play video games with their friends.

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A Week in the Woods

My family and I just got back from a week in the woods. In order to escape the one-hundred-degree heat in the northern California valley, we packed up the trailer and headed for the much cooler climate of the Sierra Nevada Mountains.

I know perhaps many of you are thinking to yourselves, “What? Another blog about a camping trip? Don’t you ever do anything else?”

The short answer to that is, no. No, I don’t ever do anything else. I’m stuck at home most of the time and I don’t have the money to fly around the world, so whenever I have an opportunity to get away it has to be cheap. Cheap, for me, equals camping.

Now, where was I? Oh, yeah: I was camping.

My wife and I enjoy taking the trailer out and travelling into the wilderness for a few days. It’s quiet and peaceful and it’s an opportunity for the two of us to just hang out with each other with no outside interruptions. The kids claim to enjoy it as well, but I think they just like to be away from home so I can’t complain about the fact they haven’t cleaned their rooms or done any of their chores.

For the entire five days that we were gone, neither one of the girls left the trailer except for an occasional jaunt up the hill to the only spot in the campgrounds that had an active WiFi signal. Otherwise, they barricaded themselves inside our camper like they were afraid the zombie apocalypse had just jumped off and if they went outside they would be the first ones eaten.

Actually, that’s not completely true. They did come outside on the third night we were there. That was the night I built a campfire hoping to lure them outdoors. I set up the fire, burned several large logs for a few hours, then stirred them around to create hot coals. My wife pulled out a bag of marshmallows, chocolate and a box of graham crackers. She told the girls they should come out to the fire and make some s’mores. At first, they both said, no, but then my wife reminded them that it had been their idea to buy all the stuff in the first place. She suggested if they didn’t go outside and make s’mores immediately, it would not just be marshmallows that got stabbed with sharp sticks and dropped into the fire.

EM1 poked her head out of the trailer door first, sniffing around like a groundhog trying to decide if there was going to be six more weeks of winter. When she was convinced it wasn’t a trap, she beckoned to her sister and the two of them shuffled out to the fire. Each one of them picked up a stick, stabbed a marshmallow and held it out over the hot coals in the fire pit.

After they had both roasted one marshmallow, they said, “thank you,” waved at us and went back inside the trailer. That was it.

One marshmallow.

Each.

Other than the fact we couldn’t pry the kids out of the trailer with a crowbar, it was actually a very nice family trip. Because we had no WiFi reception where we were parked, we couldn’t use our phones or watch TV. We were forced to interact with one another whether we wanted to or not.

The four of us ended up playing card games and board games, and – on rare occasions – even talking to each other.

It was a lot of fun.

Electronic devices weren’t the only distraction we managed to avoid, either. During the first part of the week, we had most of the campgrounds to ourselves. Most people tend to go camping on the weekends, which is why we specifically decided to go during the week. For the first three days that we were there, the only noises we heard were the birds, animals and bugs in the forest. Well, that and the sound of our kids fighting over whose fault it was that a soda got dumped on the floor. (Personally, I blame the older one. It’s easier to randomly pick one than it is to investigate and figure out who actually did it.)

We stayed up late, slept in the following morning and nobody bothered us. No barking dogs, no loud parties, and no screaming kids (except for our own, of course). It was bliss.

On the fourth day, things began to change. A motorhome pulled into the slot next to ours. The owners brought three tiny dogs outside, tied them to a tree and then proceeded to ignore them while they barked nonstop from sunup to sundown.

A young family showed up later the same day and set up a tent near us. They had three kids, all under the age of seven, that they immediately turned loose with a collection of bikes and scooters so they could travel the campgrounds with maximum mobility. I believe the only time the kids weren’t yelling or screaming was when they were forced to pause to take a breath. The noise parade lasted all day, packed up briefly during the night, then started up again about five o’clock the following morning.

By day five, it was time to go. I was starting to fantasize about putting the yapping dogs into a pit with the screaming kids and making them fight in a no-holds-barred deathmatch. When I caught myself holding a shovel and searching for a place to put the hole, I decided the time had come to go home.

Now, we’re all back in the hundred-degree heat and getting back into to our regular routines. My wife is back at work, EM2 is getting ready to go back to school, and EM1 is doing whatever the hell it is that she usually does.

And me? I’m doing what I always do. Sitting around and trying to figure out a good time to go camping.

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