Holey Moley?

         Remember my idea to tear out my lawn and replace it with a flower garden?

  Well, not only do the pollinators love it, but someone else:

          I saw a garter snake twice, so I thought it might be a snake burrow. (And you love garter snakes because they eat pests.)   But it's unlikely he made the tunnels, because they like someone else to create the burrow first. So that narrows it down to some other critter.

         Also, there are four or five of these holes and I’m getting suspicious. We are now talking tunnels. So I looked it up, and since there are no piles of dirt, that rules out gophers, ground squirrels, and  moles. By the way, did you know a mole is not a rodent? Aha… the things you learn in Joniopolis.

          I see no vanishing of vegetation, so that thickens the plot. Rodents would be eating the plants.  Maybe it's a vole.

          What is a vole, you ask? Aha. It looks very much like a field mouse, can’t climb very well (it’s somewhat plus-size), and it can gobble up lots of roots and bulbs. It is also repelled (you’ll love this) by fox or coyote urine, which apparently can be purchased at nurseries.

          So… I’m off to get laughed at, at the nursery.  You get to stay home and enjoy my Youtube Mom videos with 10K other subscribers.

Tattoops

         Have you ever seen a tattoo that wasn’t there? Aha. Both St. Bob and I did this within the same week.

          We were in an elevator with a woman who had multiple tattoos on her arms and legs.  Bob turned to her and said, “What kind of snake is that on your arm?” 

         She held her arm out, and said, “That’s not a snake; it’s a ribbon.”

           Not only that, but it carried a very un-snake-like message: “Fear not, I am with thee: be not dismayed.”  (Isaiah, by the way.)

          I can’t decide if she was curt or courteous or curious, but she got off on the next floor, thank goodness.

          My mis-reading of a tattoo was even worse, however. I was in the nail salon and the woman beside me had a tattoo on the back of her hand. It was a lot of little jagged lines and I figured it must be some kind of art or maybe some writing.

           I leaned over and just as I was opening my mouth to ask, “What does your tattoo say?” I realized it was her veins!  HER VEINS!  Can you imagine how embarrassed we both would have been if I had asked that? I would have had to chase her out to the parking lot, apologizing, and buy her lunch. Not only that, but I would have had to switch nail salons. And it’s extremely hard to find someone who’s really good and never says anything stupid.

Embarrassment has launched many a story for me; check out my books and my Youtube Mom videos here.

Two Guys, One Surprise

            It started out to be a lovely weekend.  Not only was it Father’s Day, but on Saturday our son, Richie (yes, the one you’ve read about here who blew up the kitchen and is making a death ray out of our TV) graduated from UC Davis with a B.S. in Geology and a B.A. in Philosophy.  This means he can argue about rocks all day long.

            Turns out there’s a new custom—the grads are all decorating their mortar board caps.  It probably started a few years ago when a student put a star or something on his cap, so his parents could find him from their seats in the bleachers.  Like everything else, it escalated and today some of them put sparkles around the edges, and one had lettering that said, “I don’t even go here.”

            So all the geology graduates decided to follow suit.  But Richie didn’t just scatter some rocks on there.  He made an ACTIVE VOLCANO.  First he sculpted the cone from papier mache, then painted it, then filled it with flashing red lights and dry ice that poured smoke over the top. The whole thing was held on the cap with super strong magnets. You couldn’t miss him, and it was the unqualified hit of the entire assemblage.

            Afterwards his friends, including Clare, Kayla, Derek, Mara, and others threw him a fabulous barbecue party, and then the very next day we motored back out to Davis for a delicious Father’s Day dinner he made for St. Bob.  In all, a joyous weekend of celebration, right up until we were saying goodbye.

            And then, for no reason any sane person can think of, Richie happens to say, “You know our society is selectively breeding rattle snakes that don’t rattle.”

            What?  I pictured mad scientists in a lab creating future mayhem for the entire population of the world.  “Who’s doing this?”

            “We are.  Because we’re killing the ones that rattle,” he said.

            OH MY GOSH.  ARE YOU KIDDING ME?

            And now I’m scared to walk to the car, scared to get in it, scared out of my wits.  So now anywhere we go there could be a silent rattle snake, coiled up and ready to strike.

            My eyes are the size of fried eggs the entire way home.  And then St. Bob says, “Hey, did you see that dead snake in the road?”  and I laugh because I am 100 per cent certain he is just kidding.  Only he’s not. 

            He makes a U-Turn and there is a THREE FOOT SNAKE in the street right by our house!!!  One exclamation point for every foot of snake. 

            I don’t know if it’s a rattler—it’s not a diamond back, at least—but there has never been a dead snake in the road in all the 11 years we’ve lived here.  I hate creepy coincidences.

            So how was your weekend?

All the more reason to stay inside with a nice, quiet book.  I recommend the literary novel, Pinholes Into Heaven, or the hilarious chick-lit novel, Sisters in the Mix, or the romantic adventure, Jungle.  Although there is a snake in that last one.