Slightly Off the Mark

 Despite the madcap wildfire of a year this has been, Emily still gets a birthday.

 And it's the first day of winter, which means that thanks to her, the days are going to get longer. 

Emily doesn't particularly like to get her picture taken (okay, I don't either), but I grab one, now and then. For instance, when she has a dog on her lap, and can't get away. She's an animal lover, so if I ever want her to stop for a second all I have to do is throw one in front of her. Definitely a good personality trait.

She's made a few mistakes in her life. She married me, for instance, and I moved her up to a place that has real winters. On the other hand, she embraces hot days the way I embrace chocolate, which I wouldn't do on hot days.

She's a good sport. I mean, she doesn't usually have to be, since we share so many of the same interests. Still, as I alluded to above, she's not fond of cameras, but still comes out with me to places where they may be taken. 

I can't begin to tell you how much I love it when we read together; watch history, science, or obscure documentary shows; do the tourist things at places that have in their names words like "forest", "cliffs", "state park", "trails" or "lake shore". I love geeking out with her about science and science fiction. And, well, I love her.

I know I've said this before, but I really don't know how I would have made it this far without Emily. Not just with our books, which she's largely responsible for, but with just keeping me going in general. She has her head together when I don't. She's tough when I'm not. She fixes things I can't--and I mean that both figuratively and literally. The other day she fixed our bathroom sink. I kicked it. Kicking didn't help.

 My plan for a birthday gift crashed and burned this year, but I did get her cheesecake! (And a different gift to come later.) So happy birthday, Emily, and thank you for bringing back the longer days.

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Remember: Another day older is another day better, at least until you hit your 50s.

But my wife and I are of defiant stock, and we accepted an invitation to go out for a fun-filled Robert Burns Night. I don't generally like driving at night, because that's when the depressed deer come out to throw themselves in front of cars, with the final cry of "I can't take another winter outdoors!"

Still, Robert Burns Night is like Christmas in Scotland, and according to the DNA test I'm 29% Scottish. (And 2% Cameroon, which is in Africa but sounds Scottish.) Burns is Scotland's National Poet, and I'm all for celebrating writers.

You've probably heard, at least once every year, one song Burns had a hand in: Auld Lang Syne. My personal favorite of his is his poem, "To a Louse".

So we made toasts, piped in the haggis, and of course ate neeps and tatties, which I hope aren't related to haggis. It wasn't completely Scottish, because we didn't drink alcohol, and the haggis was meatloaf. Haggis is illegal in the United States due to its sheep lungs, which is actually the least objectionable ingredient.

We celebrated late into the night (okay, for two hours), got to see our old doggie friend Watson and visit with his Scottish humans, and on the way home hit a deer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Q13iEaHkqc

If you look carefully, you can see her little white tail bounding away to the right, without a care in the world outside of a sore rump.

 Stupid deer.

And that's why I'm in so much pain as I write this. Not because of a lack of haggis, but because by the point of impact I'd slowed from 60 mph to 30, from standing on the brake while simultaneously pulling back on the steering wheel as hard as I could with both hands, while two of my most important body openings slammed shut and Emily yelled "Ghdeiirreee!"

 Well, that's what it sounded like to me.

It's basically the same reaction I have whenever the dentist fires up that little drill, and all my stressed muscles hurt after that, too. 

I've always loved the acceleration on our Ford Escape, and now I also admire its brakes. 

The steering wheel is no longer perfectly round, and there are some marks in the dash that resemble Emily's fingers, but otherwise we came out okay. The only impact damage to the car was a cracked piece of plastic on the front grill, and some deer hair left behind.

We didn't even have to clean the seats, thanks to the aforementioned puckering effect.

This is only the second deer I've ever hit, despite some extremely close calls, so it could have been worse. Emily wanted to track the deer down and bring it home as steaks, but I talked her out of it. It was probably just some teenage deer on a dare, anyway.

I'm fairly sure Robert Burns was in no way involved, unless the deer were also having a Burns Night and went all in with the whiskey (and haggis).

"Now, Bambi, I think you've had enough."

"No, seriously, hold my whiskey and watch me scare this driver!"

Anyway, I'm now composing a poem about how great our car is, based on one of Burns' poems:

"My love is like a ruby red rose."

Because the Escape is ruby red, you see. Okay, I'll workshop it. Maybe it can come out in 2030.

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When hamsters came into my house years ago they had little plastic balls, so they could run merrily all over. (Humans now have those, too. You’d think we could just walk.) We did have to close the door to the basement while they were out. I thought it would be kind of funny to hear the “thump-thump” of a rodent taking a ride, but the kids thought the hamster wouldn’t appreciate an E-ticket at Disneyland.

One day I found one of the balls in the kitchen, sans hamster. The lid had popped off. This triggered a panicked search, which was about as successful as panicked searches usually are. The hamster – Ranger, named after a slippery, hard to track character from a Stephanie Plum novel – was gone.

My daughters were very upset. I looked at it as a challenge … but before you congratulate me for my attitude, I should point out that I hate challenges.

After a time – a long time, during which I could have been doing more important things, like nothing – I found a little white puff ball behind the oven, as far back into the corner as he could possibly get. I could have done a few different things, but I didn’t have a gun on me, and in my experience napalm is dangerously unreliable. So instead, I tried to entice the furball out with a handful of his favorite snack, which looks suspiciously like shreds of colored paper.

Ranger instantly disappeared into the wall.

He’d discovered what I, in ten years, had not – the hole mice use to get into my house every fall. (They stopped coming after we got the pet snake, but that’s another story.) It led behind the cupboard and from there to – who knows? A rodent superhighway, perhaps, or a mouseport, or a hamsterteria.

The next morning, I found a very old mouse carcass on the floor outside the hole. I’m talking mummified. Ranger had not only made himself at home in the former mouse house, he’d even dug up the cemetery.

“Yeah, I’m bad, I’m bad–you know it.”

Now what? Offering amnesty wasn’t likely to help. There is a homemade trap you can build, making steps out of books that lead to a trash can. Water and food goes into the can, and once inside, the sides are too steep for the hamster to get out again. The problem is, Ranger is afraid of heights. Seriously. It took him a week to climb down out of the upstairs apartment in the hamster house.

I considered leaving him in that hole, until the squeaking started.

The only time they made noise was when they started fighting each other. Every now and then they’d get into a quarrel over who gets the best piece of trail mix, or who controls the remote. Then they’d squeak like crazy until they were all squeaked out, and ten minutes later they’d be happily sitting together again. And yes, it reminded me of my daughters.

The conclusion was inescapable: Ranger wasn’t alone down there. Hopefully we weren’t hearing loud rodent sex.

“You should have sent me in, coach–I’d have those rodents for breakfast. Literally.”

A few days later we found the little white furball, huddled behind a bookcase that turned out to be an excellent place to trap him. I was never so happy to be a book packrat. Or is that a bookrat? Ranger was none too happy, and who can blame him? He’d had free run of the house, so it was like moving out of the Taj Mahal and into a one room trailer. He was in a foul mood, and proved it with a couple of knock down – drag outs with his old roommate.

I never found out whether his mouse friend kicked him out, but later that day I saw the mouse trying to fit an entire soda cracker through its doorway. Eating for two? How friendly they were, I don’t know – can hamsters and mice cross breed? Was I in danger of being overrun by white mice, bent on freeing their dad? I’ve had a few disturbing nightmares.

All I know is, after his brief escape Ranger was awfully squirrely– if you’ll pardon my rodent-themed pun. I feel like I’ve separated Rangero and Julie-rat.

 If I'm counting correctly (which is never a given), this is my sixth year judging 4H prose writing entries. And to think, before that I used to think all 4H kids did was push animals around.

Truth is, 4H'ers do a lot more than working with farm animals, which is probably what the average person thinks of. It's too bad they don't get more credit. When I was a kid we'd walk the fairway of the Noble County 4H fair, and when we got to the end I was puzzled by why they had all those barns full of cows, sheep, goats, and various other four legged guys. Since we didn't have the money to buy a lot of food or ride a lot of rides, I eventually wandered around enough to figure things out.

(For any of you who haven't gone to fairs, be cautious about buying a lot of food AND riding a lot of rides.)

I wonder if they had the writing stuff when I was a kid? I'd have been all over that: Other than extra credit in English class, I had nowhere to go with my writing until I turned eighteen, and started my eclectic collection of rejection slips. Not one of those rejections had a ribbon on it--not even a white ribbon.

Speaking of which, I don't know if it's a sign that I'm too easy, but I think I gave all but one of the entries a blue ribbon this year. With the one that got a red ribbon, it was really close to blue. The problem is, I have a clear memory of how good my writing was at the same age, and they're all better than I was. That's in all three categories--the youngest are at about the same level I was at the intermediate stage. The oldest are better than I was when I started submitting, which maybe explains the rejection slips. I'd have been a red ribbon all the way through, if not white.

So I had to not only keep in mind their ages when judging the entries, I also had to guard my self-esteem. I thought about turning on reality TV shows and saying "at least I'm not on a reality TV show!", but I didn't deserve that kind of punishment. Instead I told myself I was good enough to deserve chocolate. Then I ate chocolate.

If one of them hits the best-seller list before I do, there won't be enough chocolate in the world.

Look! A 4H clover!

Only four days left to help the Pokagon Saddle Barn pay their expenses in this year of coronavirus ... but, of course, it's always a good time to buy a t-shirt.

https://www.customink.com/fundraising/pokagon-saddle-barn

 Due to the Covid-19 epidemic, the Saddle Barn is opening late this year--the mandated target is May 24th, and then they can only run at half capacity for an unknown period of time. As I explained in a previous blog, while it's inside Pokagon State Park, the Saddle Barn itself is an independent small business that could really use your support: 

https://markrhunter.blogspot.com/2020/05/support-your-local-saddle-barn.html 

The horses are around whether they're being ridden or not--and ask any horse person how much that costs! So buy yourself a t-shirt and support a good cause. 

Earlier this summer, as I entered Pokagon State Park, I spotted a turtle making it's slow way across the road.

There was a car coming the other way, but the turtle was about to the center line and looked safe from it. I shifted into park, got out, and ran up to the turtle since, as you know, it takes them about ten days to cross two lanes.

When I reached down, the turtle scampered away like a rabbit with its tail on fire.

I had no idea they could move that fast. All I had to do was keep stepping behind it, and it made its way to the far side in a matter of seconds. On the way back to the car, I noticed the guy driving the other way looked just as surprised as I was.

A few days later Emily encountered a snapping turtle, and had a similar experience in that it whirled around so fast she couldn't get it off the highway, for fear of losing fingers. Some neighbors who apparently had been there before brought down a broom and trash can, and successfully moved it out of harm's way.