Thursday, September 27, 2012

Snarling, hissing death on a fence


I think one of my favorite things about living on the edge of "the country" in Oregon City / Beavercreek is that if you drive around enough, you can find several places that don't have skunks or possums.

My back yard is not one of those places.

On some of the back roads, you can even drive several hundred feet without smelling Pepe Le Pew, but only because the skunk stationed there accidentally wandered off and got lost in my particular 20 foot by 20 foot patch of suburbia and somehow could not escape again.

They traversed 10 miles of forest and yards, but the 6 foot fence they already climbed over to get in my yard suddenly becomes impenetrable to them on the way out.

And if we (Amy) aren't coming out with the dogs in the morning to stinky, cute animals ("you can call me Flower if you want to"), then it's slightly less stinky, ugly animals like possums.

I think when God was creating the animals and got to possums, He said, "Look, I'm late for a tee time with Gabriel, so let's hurry up. You know what, let's just make this one hideous to mess with everybody's heads. Yup, even the baby ones."


One of Mother Nature's ways of saying, "KEEP AWAY FROM THIS. Don't even come within 10 feet. Especially with a camera phone with a flash, you idiot."

I was almost out the door for work at 5:00 this morning when I heard the commotion. Amy's usual reserved "shhhhh" at this hour was replaced with, "Chloe! CHLOE! ChLoOoOeEeE!!!!"

When I came running out, Amy was bent over at the waist, running in circles with her arms outstretched while the loudest dogs in Oregon City, possibly the world, easily darted around her and evaded her grasp and cussed in Welsh at the ass-ugly intruder on the fence.

Luckily, I rejected my first impulse to casually ask her, "do you need a hand?" because I knew she could catch me much more easily than the dogs.

You may not know this, but Welsh Corgis are the world's smallest herding dog, are surprisingly fast and can bob and weave quicker than Walter Payton, especially if they have one of your shoes in their mouth.

I was able to first capture the older, non-insane dog, but only because we both went after her and somewhat cornered her as she was distracted with panicking and swearing at Captain Ugly Fangs.

As if it wasn't stressful enough that our dogs were waking everyone in a 2 miles radius at 5:00 AM, we had to try to recapture all this hell that broke loose while that demonic teeth-dirt-fur thing stared calmly down at the four of us doing our best Benny Hill rendition.

I am sure it would have been laughing, if it wasn't plotting how to best pounce on one of our necks and infect us with rabies or West Nile Hepatitis or whatever.

After both dogs were inside and the panic subsided, I was fortunately quick witted enough to remember that all things big or small in my life must be recorded and chronicled on Facebooktwitterinstagram and so I approached the furry little satan, armed with only my Android and a healthy dose of stupidity.

He stayed there motionless and with a calmness that said, "this is my place now, you have 48 hours to pack and get out".

When I came back in, Amy said "I hope you know I just watched you flash the neighbor's place 5 times".

And I also lit up their yard and house with my camera flash!

Luckily, they were probably already awake from our precious pets, Bullhorn and Megaphone. I bet they send us a fruit cake for Christmas this year.

I better test it first on the possum, if he let's me back near his house again by then.

3 comments:

  1. Yup, happens to the best of us, Patrick!

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  2. My daily bust gutting blog - shared the laughter far and wide!

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  3. At the Sandpiper, my Mom opened up the kitchen window that looked out over underneath the building and sand. She had somebody (I won't tell) put a board up to feed the feral cats left by city people. Well one nite she put the food out and a butt-ugly possum showed up, yellow fangs and all looking down at our small kitchen. Scared the Bejesus out of all of us!

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