The game

Little granddaughter Olivia expressed some reservations regarding attending full-day public kindergarten in September. This was despite the fact that her older sister Lillian would be in second grade at the same school.

At the open house in August Olivia, never shy about expressing her opinion, was expressing her reservations to the kindergarten teacher. Ms. Poltkin, without hesitation, took Olivia to see the guinea pigs, Bob and Patches, who lived in a cage in the classroom. Olivia was immediately smitten with these small, smelly animals. When her teacher explained that the guinea pigs would need a home on the weekends Olivia was hooked. She immediately offered her house.

Unfortunately, the very young Ms. Polkin, unaware of certain characteristics of guinea pigs in the wild, had to find a permanent home for Bob shortly after class began and there was the terrible “incident” in the cage in the classroom. The less said about this the better. Patches would stay, a little worse for wear, and be rotated among the parents on weekends. Bob was sent to “The Farm”.

Olivia proudly took Patches home for the first weekend. She showed Patches to her parents, sisters, neighborhood children and her cat. She let Patches out to play. The cat appeared to be appalled, if cats can be such a thing. But, much to his credit, he refrained from jumping on Patches and leaving the classroom pig-less.

On Sunday Olivia’s mom Jessica noticed Patches was not in his cage. The children were in their rooms picking up. Jess searched for Patches but couldn’t locate him in the immediate vicinity of the cage. As she went upstairs to ask the children she passed the master suite and heard the plaintive cry of the captive guinea pig.

What, she thought, is he doing in my bedroom. No, that wasn’t right. The cries were coming from the bathroom next door. Still she couldn’t see old Patches anywhere out in the open. Where were the cries coming from exactly. She began opening drawers in her vanity until, lo and behold, there he was. Stuffed into the middle left hand drawer.

She took the shaken Patches to the children and demanded to know what was going on.

Olivia put her hand on her hip and while tapping her foot calmly stated that they were playing hide and seek and it was Patches turn to hide when she had been called away from her game to clean her stupid room. Now mother had completely ruined the game.

Winter on the river

Surprisingly, winter on the Bass River is busy. Not with boaters and bathers but rather with loons, seals, small arctic ducks and terns.

I find it amazing that loons spend the summer in the Rangeley Lakes of Maine and northern-most lakes of New Hampshire and then come to the Bass River for the “mild” winter. Granted the water is still mostly open here in winter, unlike the lakes, but it is still very cold and windy. Oh well, they must be pretty tough.

The gray and harbor seals from Monomoy Island off Chatham find their way here in winter to catch fish coming and going with the tides at the mouth of the river. I watched one last winter with a big flounder in his mouth, flip the fish until it was head down and then swallow it whole!

The little, bright black and white arctic ducks never stop diving. I should think they would freeze solid after the first dive but they shake off the water and start again. They bob over whitecaps and steep waves like corks then fly back against the tide to drift and dive again with the tide.

Usually someone will leave an old boat on a mooring over the winter, sort of abandoned. I watch as the winds eventually tear to shreds whatever canvas remains and the hull begins to settle in the stormy water. I speculate as to what may have happened to cause the boat to still be on its mooring. Was the owner called away on a top-secret mission before he had time to tend to his beloved old boat? Did he fall on such hard times financially that he couldn’t afford to drag the old girl up a ramp to shore for the season? Or is he actually still aboard, living out the winter in isolation, banned from civilization for his transgressions?

Or did some old fella simply forget the damned thing?

A better mouse trap

I have an old foundation under my old house made, in part, of porous old brick. I keep promising to get some mortar and fill in all the cracks. It’s still on my list.

Field mice come into the crawl space under the house in the fall through these tiny openings, some of which they have expanded over the years. In and of itself that would not be a big problem. I learned to share in kindergarten. The real problem is when they get bold and enter my space! After all, they don’t pay rent and we are never formally introduced so why should I be housing AND feeding these little bastards?

I set out old fashioned traps with old cheese as bait in one of my cellars. These types of traps, wood base with a metal snap held back by a small rod lightly connected to the cheese platform, have been around forever. Clearly there is no wisdom passed down the generations in the mice world. In fact, even with one lying “trapped”, other mice will stop by for a taste of cheese at another trap nearby. Talk about cold!

I hate removing these deceased mice. I wear an old pair of gloves so as to not catch some exotic disease known only to doctors on Indian reservations in the southwest. I used to bag them and discard them at the dump with my trash until I watched a neighborhood hawk eating one she had caught in the yard.

Now I discard them in the yard by the cellar door and, by golly, the little corpses are gone within minutes. Talk about recycling!

I need to know...

As I drove to South Carolina I noticed lots of license plates from Quebec. And as I got closer to Hilton Head, I saw lots of cars with license plates from Michigan. The thought occurred to me that perhaps no one remains in Quebec over the winter and maybe most people are leaving Michigan. Who could blame either group. It makes sense to me.

Both places are colder than you know what in the winter. And all the jobs in Michigan have left for places unknown. Places like South Carolina and Alabama and India and China. Probably people from Quebec also need a break from all that French language and unceasing romance. Especially us elderly.

Now, I’m assuming the travelers from Michigan, what without having jobs and all, probably don’t have to worry about health insurance except in the broadest sense of having none but what about all those Quebecois? Doesn’t Canada have, you know, socialized medicine? Who pays the medical bills of all these old geezers from up there when they spend the winter in Hilton Head?

They must get sick while they are here. Their blood must thin out awfully in the warm weather. Their resistance must get down to nothing. When they go to the doctor or the hospital do they present a card that says something like, “Health insurance provided by the Commonwealth of Canada, eh! Send us a bill. Keep your stick on the ice, eh!”

If anyone is left in Quebec, could you let me know? You betcha!