More Rodent Tales

I distinctly remember reminding me not to leave the dirty laundry in the bodega, so not to tempt the rapacious rodents.
Somehow I must have forgotten, for when I made use of to-day, the first sunny day in a while, to do my laundry, there they were.
The holes.
In my t-shirts and undies, chewed by these unwelcome and sneaky little critters.
I shall have to wear these holie garments for I have few others, but it is coming down to the wire;
the rodents gotta go. I have lost my patience and good will.
Now should I write them an eviction notice ?.....

The Scorpion

Where it came from I don't know, but there it was, slithering about in my sink as I was about to do some dishes.
For a scorpion it was not that big, but experience has taught me that small ones pack a punch too.
By now I am beyond getting hysterics, so I calmly looked for the sharpest thing with which to immolate this unwanted critter and I cut it in half, watching as the tail straightened out and then was still.
Then I threw the pieces in the garbage.

The Harpies

My mother, raised a Catholic, left her church behind when she married my father, a Protestant.
She saw that we children were raised Protestants too, but churchgoing was never an important part of the family life except, of course for baptisms, confirmations, weddings and funerals.
I don't recall the occasion when Mother and I were sitting in the church together.
Most likely a baptism.
In front of us were a couple of harpies in their dullest Sunday Best suits, complete with little felt hats adorned with withered and faded artificial flowers.
They were talking to each other in the particular tone used to be heard by others but low enough to be claimed as private conversation.
If I had known it was dress-up, said one of them, I would have worn a dress too.
Well, said the the other harpy, some people just don't know how to dress for church...
and it dawned on me that they were referring to my mother, who was wearing a dress she had made from a length of Cherise colored Thai silk I had brought from a trip to Asia. She did look like some exotic bird surrounded by a gaggle of barnyard hens.
I was young and I was offended and I was going to let the harpies know how I felt and I was about to lean over when I felt my mother's hand on my arm.
She never said anything, she just touched my arm and I sat down again.
I think she was secretly proud that I was going to let the harpies have it, and I think she was very proud of her dress, but most of all, I think she realized that this was an occasion for somebody else, a baptism I think, and we were better folks than the harpies who, I am sure, having accomplished their smear would later re-live this over and over again while drinking their coffee and eating cookies.
I don't remember mother wearing that dress again, though.

Justification.

When a while back I found myself with an unexpected windfall, I decided to treat me to a couple of things.
One was a new wrist watch to replace the one that up and died long ago to make it possible to tell the time when we have the inevitable black out and the wall clock has stopped.
The other was to get a cell-phone and join the 21st century.
I bought a watch and I bought a cell phone.
And this morning my reasons for getting these items was justified.
I woke up to yet another black-out but, since I now have a watch, I could tell the time and grab my cell phone -without electricity my regular phone doesn't work- and call The Electric Company who sent, hours later to be sure, a truck to fix the problem.
But I felt good, for this was exactly the situation that justified my wild spending of my windfall.
So there.

Missing Tadpoles

Some toad or frog had deposited her eggs in my pool, and one day I discovered what seemed like thousands of tiny tadpoles swimming in the shallow, murky waters of my neglected pool.
I got curious about this happening, and not knowing very much about the life cycle of amphibians, I checked it out on the computer and watched with great interest as they grew bigger and, it looked like, smaller in numbers.
So after my week in Ajijic I checked the local inhabitants of the pool, and there were none.
Not one little tadpole.
And now I don't know if there was a natural disaster, or some tadpole eating critter got into the pool and ate them all or, maybe, they all changed from their gills into lungs and drowned because there was no place for them to get out of the water.
I don't know, and I guess I will never know.
It will remain the mystery of the missing tadpoles.

Another Rodent Tale

And I need some shorts for Ajijic, I said to self as I opened the closet door to get to the shorts and found myself face to face with a rodent.
It was sitting on a hanger with a shirt, and looked at me appraisingly, looked up at the shelf above and then, not at all panicky, started the ascent to the shelf, and the most extraordinary sight was revealed.
Attached to her teats were three good size babies, whose combined weight must have equaled that of the mother, and yet she dragged herself and her brood over the top of the hanger and up the the relative safety of the shelf with the stacked jeans and sweats.
Such maternal dedication deserves something, so I decided not to do anything about this till I get back from Ajijic.
Maybe by then she will have found better accommodations for her family.
One hopes.

Those Pesky Notes

I forget things.
And I know it, so I am constantly writing notes to self.
Things to remember.
Like today, when I made a note of what was needed at the store, drove all the way there
and discovered
I had forgotten the note.

Miss Clarice and Quigley

I wanted to add this drawing to the former post, but that went beyond my capabilities, so this is how I have to do it.
I give to you
Miss Clarice and Quigley.
Enjoy.

Clarice

I never met Clarice.
Christa met her at a shelter in Connecticut where she had been dropped because her humans thought she was pregnant.
Nice Catholic republicans.
She wasn't. She was just fat.
She, and her equally fat male counterpart in Ajijic, Qigley, inspired me to do the Pas de Chat's.
Now I hear from Miss Alice that Clarice has been adopted.
And to a family with a dog, albeit a blind one.
So listen up all you fat broads out there
somewhere there is a blind dawg waiting just for you.
Just ask Miss Clarice.

The Old Lime Tree

And then you drizzle with a lot of lime
wrote Erik in his recipe for tuna steaks.
Shucks, I thought. I have no limes. Tuna yes. Limes no.
But wait, I said to me. Wait.
And I went out in the street and up the hill a bit to the old lime tree that stands at the side of the street.
Miraculously, badly damaged by storms and old age and neglect, it still has limes.
And I picked a few and thought
there are things to be said for living in the woods.
Now I can make tuna steaks a la Erique.