Possum Stew

Now, before you run away gagging…let me just say that possum (or opossum to some of you) stew is one of the finer things in life. NOT! Ha. Gotcha! I can’t say that I’ve actually ever had possum stew, nor would I ever choose to do so. But here’s a good story and I had to lead up to it somehow…

The other evening whilst sitting on the couch I noticed a faint scratching noise that sounded like it was coming from the front windows in my living room. As I turned the volume down on the tv, sure enough, it WAS a scratching sound coming from underneath the windows. I looked outside but couldn’t see anything rustling in the bushes. I knocked on the window. Still nothing. So, because I am a big chicken and thought that it surely must be rat in my cellar (even though I have NEVER had a rat in my cellar), I went to bed without looking in the basement.

The next afternoon I heard the scratching again and because it was daylight, and knew the boogie monster wouldn’t get me if I went into the cellar at this time of day, I headed down with a flashlight. I went straight to where I had heard the noise the night before. You see, I have a set of basement windows right underneath the living room windows. These windows are ancient, dirty as hell and double paned. Not the double-paned as in the modern, two pieces of glass that are millimeters apart and make up one window –  but two separate windows that have approximately 3-1/2″ of space between them.

And what to my wondering eyes should appear? Something gray…and hairy…and breathing! Gah! I almost ran away screaming but my curiosity got the best of me. I approached slowly with the flashlight and as I got closer I realized it was a baby possum. Phew! I could barely see in the widows as they are covered in dirt. Very clever how they installed them so there is absolutely NO way to clean them. Anyway, as I inspected further I could see that next to the little possum was what used to be his/her sibling. Splayed out. Dead. With flies crawling all over it.

I ran back upstairs fretting about what to do. My child got wind of my anxiousness and asked what was wrong. I had to tell her. And then she started crying, insisting that we had to “SAVE” him “NOW”. Great.

I grabbed a hammer and headed outside to see if I could somehow break the window open without killing the poor thing. No luck. That glass would not budge. I couldn’t really take a good whack at it as I was afraid the hammer would end up in the possum’s skull. So, I called my Dad and he came to the rescue with his expert glass-breaking technique. We coaxed the little fella out with cat food. It leaned out of the window just enough to gobble up the food. I’m sure it wouldn’t move any further because we were all standing around gawking at it. My child, of course, thought it was cute and wanted to keep it. It started to show its teeth when we moved closer. My first inclination was to whack it with something. Nice. I just save the poor, starving animal and now I want to kill it.

I have no idea how long it had been inbetween the windows. Long enough for two of his siblings to die. Yes, two! After he climbed out we saw that there was another dead baby – he had been sitting on it. Ick. So, now I have a broken basement window full of dead stank. I wonder how long it will take for the bodies to disintegrate, because I sure as hell am not going to touch that stuff! Can I interest anyone in some possum carcass for stew??

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The Grossness Continues…

I know you’re all dying to know how I’m handling the moth situation at my house. So, I’ve decided to share some pics of the moth traps. Warning: this is not for the faint of heart. Honestly, I don’t know where the hell these moths have been hiding out. It was bad enough that I had at least a dozen moths flocking to the trap when I first put it out. BUT…it seems that they are literally multiplying over night. This is the trap after one week.

Gag!

Oh, but wait, that’s not all. They’re on the top of the trap, as well. Take a gander:

Double Gag

Gross, gross, gross (sorry, honey, now you’re never gonna want to step foot in my house, are you?). I put another trap out tonight because as I walked into the kitchen I had to flap my hands about my face so as not to get hit head on with the cloud of moths that were circling. My guess is that not ALL of the larvae were creeping and crawling around in the foodstuff but found another location to inhabit and they are now devoping into these moths that are swarming my kitchen at night. All of my cupboards are bare and all cereal/flour/rice/grain, etc is being stored in the fridge so I know they certainly don’t have any foodstuff to sustain them. I pulled this off a site on the interwebs:

When ready to pupate, larvae leave their tubes to spin a cocoon. They often migrate a considerable distance from their food source while searching for a pupation site, and are found on walls, countertops, and ceilings. This is especially true when infestations are heavy. There can be four to nine generations per year, depending on the food supply and house temperature.

Great. Fantasitc. I think I’m going to barf. This morning I am now taking the ShopVac to the ceilings, walls and any crevice I can find..and will suck those mofo’s out.

And since I’ve already grossed you out considerably, I thought I may as well share some more fun pics with you. Living with a child, two dogs and a cat can get pretty messy.

First, I shall start with the massive quantities of hair that come from the aforementioned animals (except for the cat, which I cannot catch and hold on to long enough to brush). Now, I love my dogs dearly but if I had THOUGHT about how much hair a Lab would put out, eek. I probably would have thought twice about getting one. They shed so badly that a daily vacuuming (sometimes two) are necessary. I brush the dogs every single day and this is what I get:

Umm, yeah. I was thinking that if I saved up enough fur I could maybe spin some yarn out of it and then knit a sweater. How cool would that be if I were to wear my own dogs’ coats. Bleck.

It looks like a small animal and sometimes Ridley is puzzled and thinks it’s some strange creature. Funny, you’d think he’d recognize the smell of his own fur. He’s obviously brilliant.

Ridley’s puzzlement even gets Gus interested

So, times that fur by 3 and that’s about how much I sweep from my floors each day. Would anyone like to volunteer to be my maid? I’ve been seriously thinking about investing in one of those new fangled Roombas. If anyone has had any experience with one…please let me know if it’s worth the investment, because I, sure as hell, am tired of busting my arse vacuuming multiple times a day.

On to the next adventure. Boy, you never know what you’ll get in my little world. The cat, who spends most of his days outside, likes to kill small creatures and drop them in the back yard. Usually he kills moles and mice. Ridley loves to go outside first thing in the morning and see what prize his cat-brother has left for him in the yard. He then puts it in his mouth and throws it around a few times until I decide I’ve seen enough mouse juggling and whisk it off into the bushes. Today the cat left a poor little finch for us.

Unbeknownst to me, Ridley grabbed the carcass first thing this morning and I didn’t see it until it was already IN the house and IN his crate. I couldn’t figure out why he was playing so contentedly in his crate. Upon further inspection I found the bird and promptly grabbed it, took it outside and took it’s photo. Poor mauled, dog-spit covered, dead creature.

There you have it…morose Monday. Oooo. I think I may have a new theme day. Woo hoo.

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Spaghetti with Worms, Anyone?

I never should have gotten up yesterday. It was a complete day-from-hell for me. I’m just now getting around to posting about it because I’ve been in such a pissy mood that I haven’t been able to sit still long enough to write. This is my story…

I haven’t made any baked goods since I sold my restaurant in February and my daughter has been begging me to make oatmeal cookies. So, I caved and we made cookies Monday evening. We had a few – right out of the oven, with milk, of course, and then I packaged up the rest and left them on the kitchen counter.

As I was getting out of the shower yesterday morning I could hear my daughter yelling – at the dogs. I hurried downstairs to find that they had gotten the cookies off the counter and had proceeded to ingest almost half of them. Great. So, needless to say, my day started out quite shitily. I angrily tossed the remaining dog-spit covered cookies into the garbage as my daughter looked on in horror.

The rest of the morning was fairly uneventful except for my daughter’s constant protests and whining about having to clean her room. We accomplished some cleaning and decided to stop for lunch. And then…

All hell broke loose. I decided to throw some spaghetti together for a quick lunch. I grabbed the box of spaghetti from the cupboard and as I dumped it into the boiling water I could see some strange and unexpected ‘things’ floating in the water. Oh.My.God. Upon further inspection the ‘things’ were found to be WORMS. Yes…nasty little larvae. I gagged, choked and screamed all at the same time (which sounded something like – “gahahggrrgglrlrfcoughholyfuckohmygodeeeekoooohnoooo”) and also did a squirmy heebie-jeebie dance because this is what I saw:

Except they were all shriveled and boiled and there were at least a dozen of them. Ugh. Now, I realize that to some these may be a delicacy. But, um…I’m not going there, thanks. I tossed a heaping mound of half cooked spaghetti and worms into the garbage along with the remaining uncooked pasta – and started investigating. To my horror I found MORE, yes more of the larvae in a sealed box of soy flour, in E’s crackers, in the pancake mix, in the cake mixes, in the dog biscuits; they were in just about everything in my cupboard that was grain/flour based.

We got on the computer and started researching and found that they were Pantry Moth larvae (also known as Indian Meal Moths). Super fun. I had actually noticed that we had more of a moth ‘problem’ this year than most years but the moths were tiny…not your average garden-variety moth that you occasionally see seeking out the nearest light source as evening approaches. Here is a photo of the nasty bugger:

I don’t typically have a problem with moths. What i do have a problem with is the fact that these monsters are laying eggs (apparently 100’s at a time) in the nooks and crannies of my cupboards and in boxed food. These eggs are hatching into larvae that are INFESTING my foodstuff. GAG, GAG, GAG. On one site we read that you are to place any unopened, packaged food that you suspect to be infested in the freezer and this will kill the larvae. Um, yeah. So…I’ll have DEAD larva in my food. Clever. I opted to not go that route and tossed everything into the garbage. Dammit. I was pissed.

I ordered pheromone traps to snag these nasty critters before they can reek any more havoc in my house. I got the traps in the mail today and immediately set them up in my cupboards. HA! I caught several moths right off the bat. Apparently, I didn’t wash my hands properly and still have some moth pheromone on me because as I type this I have two tiny moths dive bombing me. Gotcha suckas!

So, now I have to empty my cupboards, clean them thoroughly and caulk any and all cracks and crevices to prevent another ‘infestation’. I really dislike that word. Bet you’re all just dying to move in with me, aren’t you?

I was exhausted and pissy. I needed something sinfully delicious to calm my nerves. And seeing as I had to throw out just about every ounce of food in the house the only thing I had left was: marshmallows, a chocolate bar and some graham crackers. Ahhhhh…s’mores. I was too lazy to start a fire in the fire pit so here is how my day ended…with this:

and this:

Oh…and with a very nice, long nap. Zzzzzzzzzzzzz.

And as a quick aside…my dear fellow blogger and ever-so-talented artist, bronsonfive, over at Pictures of Doom has hosted his first ever “Contest of Doom” – featuring drawings submitted by fellow bloggers. Go on…go check it out…you won’t be disappointed. You can even see my latest artistic endeavor!

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First Kiss

I received this email from a friend and felt the need to share it…thanks Kate!

The First Kiss

It’s your first kiss and several questions might come to mind:

Is it the right time?

Is anyone watching?

Does your partner even want to?

Is your breath fresh?

And…should you use your tongue?

Then you say,

“What the heck”…

and just go for it!

…

…

…

…

…

Bwahahahahahahahha! Blehck!

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Monkey Pee, Monkey Do

A video is worth a thousand words…

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