Cabins, Keds®, And (Not) Living Alone

Last night I found myself sitting in a rocking chair on the front porch of the cabin that C and I will inhabit for five short weeks this summer.  I was listening to the rain pound down on the earth and the thunder rumble over these evergreen hills.

The cabin is named Sebasticook (Si – bass – ti – cook), after a river, but lovingly referred to as “Sea-bass” on camp.  It’s notorious for having a fairly overwhelming mouse problem, but considering that we spent last summer in a camper trailer in a corner of the staff parking lot, this is really

not

so

bad. 

Each morning this summer, I plan to joyfully flush the toilet, knowing that later in the day I won’t have to hold my breath and pull the white lever underneath the camper to empty the black-water tank into an outhouse pit.  I’ll be flushing like a free man.  Like a free man who's actually a woman. 

Another positive note with regards to our living situation is that we have a cat.  A cat who, you’ll be happy to know, is gradually building more experience as a mercenary.  So far she hasn’t actually eaten the mice after conducting her hours of catch and release, but I’m pretty sure the day is looming ahead of us somewhere.    It’s probably tomorrow, or worse yet, tonight.

And mice aren’t all that we find in our cabin.

Two nights ago, I returned from a long day downriver (*ahem*, downrivah) to a miraculous camp dinner (Salmon?  For dinner?  It’s not canned?!) and a chance to visit with some fellow camp staff.   Sometime after that, I walked back to my cabin with an armload of things, only to open our door and find a woman lying on our bed.

Cue the twenty-something girl dropping her armload of stuff.

Do you want to know what was the most distressing?  It wasn’t her dreadful midriff-bearing polyester tracksuit or her blank stare.  It wasn’t her frozen facial expression, battleship chest cavity, or even her nylon blonde bob. 

It was that she was sprawled on our bed with her white, circa-1990 Keds® still on. 

The cat seemed ok with it.

Tactless.  I wasn’t about to give her a rescue breath after that. 

A few friends of ours (some of whom happen to be CPR instructors and run our waterfront, while the others direct our tripping program – you know, the responsible adults at camp) thought that the air mattress we are sleeping on was made for not two, but three, and added their Suzy-sucks-wind to the mix on our behalf. 

I promptly threw her lifeless body over my shoulder, with her keester pointed toward the oncoming traffic  (as is the only way) and marched back to where I knew I would find the culprits. 

And they laughed.  And I laughed.  And Suzy laughed.

As I sit here on the porch watching the thundershower pass, I know that it’s been a pretty good summer so far: the mouse-riddled, black fly-bitten, CPR-dummy-in-your-bed kind of good,

which is to really say,

great.   

Into The Wild

Yesterday as I was driving downriver to run errands, a huge bird swooped out of the ditch on my side of the road and flew into a leafless tree at the edge of the forest.  It was a bald eagle.  Cool, right?  I turned the car around to go take his picture, which was primarily intended to share here with you rather than bolster my photo library, because to be honest, seeing bald eagles is not totally out of the norm now.  We even had one perched at camp's waterfront a couple of weeks ago, drying off after a plunge in the lake.  

Life is full of surprises.  I don’t think I had ever spotted a bald eagle in the wild until a year ago.  It’s just one of many unexpected things that have come to be normal.

Some others:

• Noticing that a new “custom meat cutting” sign has popped up in town.
• Our outdoor moose thermometer.  I don’t even see the moose anymore.  

What moose?

• The Chevy Suburban in town that Maaco painted in Mossy Oak camouflage.
• That our grocery store is a Quonset hut.            
• Canadians.  Seriously.  
• This view:

Ok, you’re right.  Something this breathtaking can’t feel normal.

• This view:

Ditto.

I guess some things are still pretty special.  

Oh, you’ll like this.  Remember the mice that Kiwi has been catching lately?  Well, we found their trap door.  

Hidden behind one of these moose flags was a perfect hole the size of a nickel that our little field mouse was popping out of at two in the morning.  Remember our moose flags?  We found the escape hatch because Kiwi heard the little guy scrambling his way out of the hole and ran to grab him, but quickly she realized that she can’t climb walls.  We were both a little disappointed.  I’ll let you know how long the strip of duct tape keeps the vermin out.

Also, I added a survey gadget on the upper right-hand side of the blog, so check it out.  I'll get more creative with the questions in the future... you'll be begging for an easy one like this.

Finger Lickin' Good

Monday I celebrated my 100th post with a little dance and an astonishing ginger pumpkin mousse made by the excellent chef at Lake Parlin Lodge.  Last night, Kiwi, our cat celebrated my milestone by catching a mouse in our living room and gnawing on it for 15 minutes until its faint shrieks prompted me to snatch it away from my then-fanatical feline and chuck it out the front door with a pitcher.  This morning, Kiwi attempted to rouse me by burrowing her face near my neck and filling my air supply with her nasty rodent breath before attempting to clean me with a mouth that I had last seen with a tiny foot and tail poking out the front.  I know that licking the area around my nose is her love language, but considering the circumstances, you can imagine how it went this morning.  She flew.

It's important to know a few things about our cat.  This is only the second mouse that she has apprehended in our 5 year history together.  In all truth, you could probably consider it the first, because Kiwi is what C and I like to call "lazy and totally infantile".  The only other time she's had the opportunity (that I'm aware of) to catch a field mouse was in a small cabin we lived in for the first year and a half of her adopted life.  It was a nice grey box nestled into a wooded hill, which probably made it an easy case for a pack of Italian Job forest creatures small enough to dig into the floorboards and walls.  It took place, as last night, at about 3 o'clock in the morning, and in similar fashion,  I awoke to Kiwi scrambling about, tearing her claws into the carpet, only on that occasion the crime scene was our bedroom.  It was as pleasant as it sounds.

So the scenario played out in roughly the same fashion as last night's event, barring the fact that our vicious cat with razor blades for fingernails was totally unable to catch her prey.  She looked like a blind gorilla playing whack-a-mole, throwing her hairy arms wildly in every direction, smashing the blue carpet with more spit and vigor than I'd ever seen her demonstrate anywhere.  This is the cat, that when the vet needs to use the rectal thermometer to read her temperature, responds by purring loudly and rubbing her chin along the latex gloves of the lab tech holding her in place, which is a totally needless assistant in this particular instance, might I add.

Crackers are another strong love language for our fish-breath angel.

5 years ago, when C finally relented to my pleading and reluctantly accompanied me to the nearest Humane Society, it didn't take long for us to find our special friend.  This was a remarkably well designed and beautifully maintained facility, and there were a number of glass-walled cat rooms for us to visit, including the unusual chamber we found Little Miss Einstein in.  Going into the process, I was already leaning toward adopting a black cat or kitten.  I'm not entirely sure what went into my decision, but considering my overwhelming reputation for donning predominantly obsidian apparel, it's probably due to something that happened to me as a child.   So not surprisingly, I entered into a small room that was filled exclusively with black cats.  I'm not certain of what message this particular establishment was trying to send, or if there was actually some kind of evidence-based motivation for this state of segregated affairs, but there they were, with every pair of lime green eyes flashing in our direction.  The only exception to the color palate was a single mostly-white calico cat that was hiding under a chair, hissing wildly.  It was hard not to read anything into the scene.

I knelt down onto the pale linoleum tile and waited.  I was there for maybe a full minute before I was greeted, no - accosted by this one small, ratty-looking animal that was suddenly mounting my chest and summiting my shoulder.  Within seconds, the tiny beast was smearing drool onto the side of my face and working it into the crevices of my left ear.  I don't even think I was holding her up as she clung to my chest like a magnet on a refrigerator.  Instantly, I knew that the search was over.  This was my kind of animal.

As I should have suspected, there was more to this package than tattered fur and dual fountains of saliva and love.  As we filled out paperwork at the front desk, the employee helping us explained that, "all of the volunteers adore her", and that they take turns bringing her home on the weekends.  This is a good sign, I thought. "There is one thing you should probably be aware of, though", said the young fellow as he proceeded to inform me of her condition.  You see, something went wrong when our hairy ray of sunshine was a kitten.  She wasn't weaned long enough, or perhaps it was that she was weaned too long, but either way, she developed a certain coping mechanism to deal with stress.  She suckled.

She what?

Suckled.  As in, finds the nearest finger and latches on like a newborn.  Well, I thought as we signed the papers, how bad could it be?

BAD.  REAL BAD.  

5 years later she still does it, sniffing through the bed sheets like a pig searching for truffles and nosing around in your sweatshirt for the hands you've crammed into your kangaroo pocket.  She will find them, and she will not relent until she has done it. We've been worn into giving up pretty easily, but I think we're going to start keeping a pair of deer-hide mittens on the coffee table, just so we don't have to scramble around like we've entered a game of capitol-punishment Twister where you're playing against ten rottweilers and your hands are made of bacon.

All I know is that after last night, I will do whatever is necessary to keep that dirty mouth from finding one of my fingers.  And please, whatever you do, don't come over today.

I won't be able to open the door after I tape these Cheerio boxes to my arms.