There's a lot (too much?) of capslock in this post. I'm just warning you. If you don't want to watch me go off the rails in real typing time, maybe skip this post.
1) Remember that adorable fawn with its mom? Well, the fawn is no longer in the picture and the doe has taken to sitting under our pine tree drooling. She's skin and bones and is not even remotely moved when Hannah lunges and barks at her, so we're pretty sure she has CWD (don't click that link if you don't want to be sad). It's not a good scene. The DNR thanked us for calling, but told us to the call our local police, who politely told us to fuck off. So, hey, if next week there's an update about a dead deer in our yard, I AM NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR MY REACTION. (NOTE: She hasn't been in our yard for about 24 hours. I am hoping she went off and died in an appropriate deer dying place, LIKE THE WOODS.)
2) Speaking of, we think something died in our basement and it smells repulsive. We cannot figure out WHAT died, though, OR WHERE IT IS, so if you come to our house, now it smells like dog shit AND dead animal. WELCOME TO THE GIMBALSH HOUSEHOLD, HERE'S SOME queaseEASE. (I don't think this is actually true, but who the hell knows? I'm nose blind to the house at this point. Who wants to volunteer to come visit and tell me?)
3) I hit a ground squirrel on the way to work this morning. Am I sad about this? YES. There was also a dead squirrel in front of the sidewalk two doors down earlier this week and Hannah now thinks that when we get to that sidewalk square, we need to walk ten feet into the yard to avoid it. She is so smart that she was trained to do that on only two walks, isn't she?
 |
| She is all nose. |
4) Life hack: Some months ago, we switched kitty litters to Lightweight Tidy Cats after years of using the cheapest 40 pound bag I could get at the local pet store. THIS HAS BEEN LIFE CHANGING. It's less dusty, less stinky, and when I spill it, it doesn't require every single muscle in my upper body to clean it up. I strongly prefer the scent free versions; there are Glade versions that I think are sort of gross - do you want your cat poop to be covered up with the artificial scent of an ocean with dead fish? Anyway. Do you have a cat? Does it use litter? Consider lightweight litter. Pro tip from me to you.
.png){kind=spacer} |
| Collage of bad photos I have taken of my pretty kitty. She refuses to look at the camera when I take out my phone. She's like a sulky teen. I'm particularly fond of the one where she's cuddling scissors and earbuds. |
5) Life hack: Make homemade capsules for the bitter powder your dog has to take for the rest of her life. Remember Hannah's GI issues? Well, the vet has given up on trying to treat whatever the underlying cause of it is. Apparently some dogs, MOSTLY SHEPHERDS, OF COURSE, are just on this medication all the time. So now Hannah's in that club. Anyway, we bought some 1000 (ONE THOUSAND) empty capsules, fancy tweezers to hold said capsules, and now we have an assembly line of pill making once a month. DON'T YOU WISH YOU LIVED WITH US?
.png){kind=spacer}
********
Random things I need to tell of you.
1) I'm going to be out of town for a conference next week, so I'll be MIA. Am I looking forward to this conference? Absolutely not. But I might get to see my cousin, so that's all right. Oh, if you happen to be in Philly on Monday morning, let me know. I have nothing on my calendar right now. I'm not opposed to sleeping in, to be honest.
2) What is this complete and utter bullshit? TREES ARE ALREADY CHANGING. I HAD TO WEAR REAL SHOES ON TUESDAY BECAUSE IT WAS TOO COLD FOR SANDALS. Bring back summer! Boo to fall! Next year I'm moving to Belize. (I am not moving to Belize.)
3) I don't remember the third thing. It's probably for the best.
****************
Any news from four-legged creatures in your life? Are the leaves changing where you live? How do you feel about that? Are you going to be in Philadelphia early next week?
This is probably not what's happening in your basement, but years ago we had an empty plastic tube from a window blind and somehow a mouse fell into it and then couldn't climb back out and died (what must have been a SLOW HORRIBLE DEATH), and then proceeded to rot and it was so gross. We could not find the source of the smell for ages and reverted to walking around sniffing at various heights all around the rooms in the basement until we found the problem.
ReplyDeleteGAH.
I am so, so sad to hear about that poor deer. It sounds like recovery is unlikely, so I'm really hoping they have been able to find a calm, restful place to pass on.
Safe travels!
The smell in the basement has subsided, but we're still concerned. Ha! I guess I don't want to find the skeletonized remains of a mouse/bat/whatever someday when I'm rooting through the holiday decorations.
DeleteI hope the deer did find a lovely place to see out her last moments. CWD is terrible.
I had a similar deer experience a few years ago. It was very disheartening to call all the agencies who seem like they should be able to do something about it who said they could not do anything about it. I guess I understand, but it still sucked.
ReplyDeleteThere is a spot in my backyard that smells awful. I have done very little investigating because I am afraid of what I will find. Also, I have a mysterious leak in my basement. Basements are trouble.
Thank you for the pictures of your beautiful girls. They are so smart and elegant and lovely. I hope the conference goes well and that you get to eat all the food you don't normally get to eat.
(This is Suzanne.)
I will admit we finally took to wearing masks and gloves and long-sleeved shirts and really getting in the basement, but we can't figure it out. I think we're going to have to call in professionals.
DeleteI am hoping the conference goes well, too. We'll see! It's not a topic I'm especially interested in, but the location is cool and there's a lot of downtime, so hopefully I'll get to see some sights.
That’s a lot for sure. Cats and litter. Our cat was a prodigious drinker and pee-er. Seriously, her clumps were huge, and the garbage bag got so heavy in a week that we feared the collectors would reject it. We even dumped a bit it those park bins on occasion when our fears were greater than usual. It was supposedly illegal to do so, but we did it anyway on rare occasions.
ReplyDeleteWe tried lighter litter once, but she tracked blue marks through the house, so we reverted to the clay stuff. I think we still have some of that blue litter. I have spread it onto ice sometimes in winter.
Do you have weight limits on your trash? When our cat had a radiation treatment for her thyroid, we can to collect her litter waste for months and we just collected in three or four plastic tubs. When they were finally allowed to be thrown out, I wrapped them in tape and threw out a tub every week until they were gone. We have giant cans and no weight limit, though.
DeleteThere's no blue in the Tidy Cats Lightweight. It feels just like the regular litter, but it's just lighter. I think it's less dusty, too.
Wow, that is a lot of dead and dying wildlife. Out here in the sticks we've had a few dead deer encounters. Rex ate part of one and then threw it up all over our floor, which is good because it was out of his system, and also it was the grossest thing I have ever had to clean up. When Jake worked ground crew for a golf course, he had to clean up a partially-coyote-eaten deer out of a sand trap, while coyotes watched him. GOOD TIMES OUT IN THE COUNTRY.
ReplyDeleteREX, NO!!! That is so gross. I imagine Hannah would have been laid out for weeks if she ate a decomposing animal. Rex is made of sterner stuff.
DeleteBut poor JAKE!! Is he traumatized? I am SO SAD for the poor deer and scared that the coyotes were going to try to attack Jake! I wish nature were further away sometimes.
Engie, you can move to Florida and have summer for the rest of your life! You MIGHT not like the political vibe though...
ReplyDeleteI use whatever litter is cheapest- lightweight sometimes (I agree it's WAY easier to deal with!) And always unscented- I HATE the scented litter!
That poor deer. I hope she's out of your yard for good. It's sad enough that she's sick (nope- did not click on that link) but even sadder if you had to deal with the dead body.
Sorry you have to go to the conference (what??? we will miss you!) but look on the bright side- maybe when you get back the house will smell better. Whatever is decomposing in the basement will be done decomposing (I mean I hope...) Honestly, maybe you'll enjoy a little break. Philly is nice!
I don't want Florida's humidity or politics, thank you very much. But it is a kind offer.
DeleteThe conference is in a cool location, so at least I've got that going for me. I have a goal to meet/network with at least TWO people from other schools. That's my adulting goal.
Zelda is a queen. She shows the proper disdain for the paparazzi.
ReplyDeleteCWD is a bigass deal all over the States, I guess. It's terribly sad, and it should be a deterrent to people who feed deer recreationally. It isn't, of course.
I completely understand the Dead Animal Quandary/Aroma. I think I may have blogged about this, but several years ago I kept telling Rick I smelled Death in the garage. As usual, he smiled indulgently at me and told me I Was Wrong. Not long after, I went to repot some plants, and when I reached my hand into the bag of soil, I touched something furry. It was a dead and decomposing possum. No, I am still not over it.
Oh, Nance, that is horrifying! I fully support you not being over that.
DeleteNONONONONO. That is all, Nance. I will now fall asleep thinking about this. Were you wearing gloves? PLEASE TELL ME YOU WERE WEARING GLOVES!!
DeletePhilly is SO close to DC- like less than two hours on the train…. Except we’ll be out of town on Monday. Otherwise I would have totally hopped a train up.
ReplyDeleteI have no four legged creatures in my life right now, but the 6 year old likes to pretend she’s a dog and there are evenings when she only speaks in barks.
I hope you don’t find a dead deer in your yard. It’s like that joke- what’s worse than finding a worm in your apple? Finding half a worm.
And I’m a flipside I hope you find the dead thing in the basement. Once when I was living in this shack in Colorado, something died in the walls and it smelled AWFUL. But the properties manager for the opera company said, “I can’t get to it. You’ll just have to live with it.”
There are only evenings when she only speaks in barks!!! Is that relaxing or stressful? I can see it going either way, to be honest.
DeleteWe had colleagues in grad school who had a squirrel die in their walls and it reeked for YEARS. I am not sure why they never moved, to be honest.
We used Tidy Cat for years, then switched to a cheaper brand for awhile. Now we're back to Tidy Cat. When it comes to litter, I have learned you really shouldn't skimp on quality. It makes a difference.
ReplyDeleteI haven't seen too much in the way of fall color lately, but I am eagerly awaiting it. I love the cooler temps and lower humidity we've been having!
We used the cheap stuff from the pet store for years and years. But the dust really did get to me. It's far more expensive this way, but YOLO, I guess.
DeleteIf you start looking at the trees, you'll see some are quite far along. *sigh*
Oh, so sad about the deer! UGH. I used to have to make powder capsules for our dog Genevieve. She was always having diarrhea, poor girl.
ReplyDeleteWhere will you be in Philly? I lived in Philly for a couple of years, but that was a LONG time ago - my 30 year old daughter was born there, at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania (where, coincidentally, Anne worked for a time, but not at exactly the same time). Will you be at Penn? If so, and if you find yourself walking down the leafy and lovely Locust walk on campus, think to yourself, ‘hey, Julie worked here!’. There’s a bench with a statue of Ben Franklin sitting that you can snap a pic with, near the McNeal building. Wow, that’s a lot of info that you likely didn’t want or need.
The conference is at the Penn Museum! And this conference is the most research I've done about it. I will look for all these landmarks and send you photos if I see them!
DeleteI have a sensitive nose- I would smell out the issue in your basement for you. I've been spending the last month or two sniffing my basement for cat pee- my big guy started expressing his displeasure with life and strange cats outside by deliberately urinating in unexpected places. I finally found the last spot of lingering smell- I'm going to buy new litter boxes and place them about. Bribe him into good behavior.
ReplyDeleteTidy cats clumping litter is the only one that keeps my house from smelling like cat pee- anytime I give in an buy a cheaper one it takes just t a o days for ne to regret that choice.
We had a bad smell in a bedroom once- a bat had hidden in a box fan and died. I finally found the corpse and promptly threw the whole thing out.
Zelda is gloriously arrayed in your photos.
Yeah, the 1.5 litter boxes/cats is so hard if you have more than one cat. They just have to be everywhere in your house!!
DeleteI think it's a combo of litter and how often we deep clean the box and/or buy new boxes. My cat pees straight back and it's so acidic that it wears grooves in the back. Those are impossible to clean and hold on to odor, so I feel like we end up buying new boxes every 2-3 years, which seems like a lot more often than other people replace theirs?
I'm glad I don't have your super sniffer. I get annoyed now with bad smells and I can't imagine if I could smell MORE.
So sad about the deer, my partner said something about EHD, don’t look up if you don’t want to be sad again…
ReplyDeleteAnd your basement? Geez, hope you don’t have to host a book party anytime soon!
Way to make it through a wild week, glad you still did the painting!
Yes, EHD sounds BAD. But at least it's quick? I read they day within days with EHD, but the poor deer with CWD hang around for a long time.
DeleteI'm glad I did painting, too! But maybe next time we'll stick to Saturday events. Ha!
I switched to the lightweight litter on your recommendation, and it's so much easier to carry up the stairs! It works just fine, too, thankfully.
ReplyDeleteMaggie would frequently stare at me until I pointed the camera at her. Then suddenly, she was not interested in me!
I think it works just as well, too. I'm glad it has been helpful for you.
DeleteZelda hates the camera, I think. LOL. She's so perfect.
Oof, that's a lot of ickiness! You poor thing, my heart goes out to you. I hope your conference turns out to be unexpectedly nice!
ReplyDeleteThe conference is in a cool location, so I'm hoping it will be amazing even if the content isn't super relatable to my interests.
Delete