Well, on Valentine's Day we said good-bye to a very great man, one that fought with Patton in World War 2 and loved to tell stories as he got older. He helped me learn to fish and I have spent many a summer weekend on their house boat. My Grandfather, Papa, born July 23, 1923 and died of cancer on Febuary 14, 2010. He and my grandmother, Nana, were married for 67 years--that is a great legacy that you left for us to follow. We miss you and love you and I am so grateful that we had the chance to go up there to see him one last time in January with the kiddos. Thanks to all of you who helped watch the kids so David and I could go to the funeral last week. Your service meant so much to me. Thanks. Good-bye Papa--we'll see you on the other side
Last night we were in bed and heard a scuffling on the back porch. It was 12:30am. David and I got out of bed and looked out to see what it was. There was something in the recycle box. We have lots of cats that like our yard for some reason, so we assumed that’s what it was. Our house backs up to a green belt and we are missing part of a board in our fence, so we tend to get a LOT of critters. We also are not good about washing out Kylie’s baby food jars, we just throw them out in the recycle box. That can attract animals, but it’s never been enough of a problem to overcome our laziness. So, David went to the back door and turned on the porch light to scare the cat off. As I watched from our bedroom window (which also faces the back porch). As David was doing so, the presumed cat climbed out of the recycle box, and it was a skunk! We’ve had skunks in our yard before, but we've only seen one once before. We’ve smelled it several times, but it is very sneaky and hard to actually see. The crazy part was, the skunk’s head was stuck inside a baby food jar. So he was staggering around our porch, driveway and yard, scraping his head (in the jar) against the ground trying to get it out. It was clunking around everywhere. David grabbed the camera and took a short video of it (to be seen below), but we soon realized that we were going to have to do something or it might die there on our porch. Who wants to wake up to a dead skunk on their back porch or worse, what if he broke the jar as he was smacking it around and we had a bloody skunk to wake up to? David decided to help help him out. I suggested David put on his leather work gloves before touching it. He told me I may have to go buy tomato juice, but what do you know we already had some in the fridge--I don't think that comforted him very much. So, David went outside, watching this skunk stagger around, tail straight up in the air—not the sight you want to see. He positioned himself so the skunk was walking toward him, put one hand on his shoulders and grabbed the jar with his other hand. The “thunk” sound it made was pretty loud, and funny, but he got the jar off easily. It turned and ran out of the back yard lightening fast, so there actually was no danger of getting sprayed. Crazy!
If only we had made a video of him actually taking the jar off, but hey I don't think we were thinking too clearly at that hour of the night.
