Wow, I feel like I’ve been a whirlwind – never mind that I am just over 2 weeks away from my due date! When did that happen? I’ve been so busy it has snuck up on me, but I am SO ready to be done. SO, baby, listen up – you are welcome into the family any minute – tonight would be great! 😀
So stories to tell – we had lots of fun ones that I will have to add later, but lets focus on the two main happenings of this last week.
Story #1: The Sump Pump Snake
Spitfire was intrigued by our sump pump closet. After all, the last time she investigated it she found a mouse (more on that another time). Paul and I were trying to watch a movie in for our Friday night date – in an effort to save money we had stayed home to have our date in the basement while Liz shepherded the little people to bed. We were only a few minutes into our movie when the cat came bolting out of the closet (Paul had opened the door to let her investigate). Trying to see what was happening, Paul got to his feet and peeked inside, to his surprise was a snake! A big snake, which quickly dissapeared down the sump pump. It was too dark to get a good look, but as Paul whacked on the sump pump lid we heard an ominous rattle – there are two rattlers common to Ohio.
We were a little nervous and after a while decided to let it be and see if it came out again. We closed the closet door and waited. Finally, half-way through our movie Paul decided to check again, this time decked out in long pants, shoes, and gloves with a trash picker-upper tool and a shovel, just in case things got nasty. He slowly opened the closet door and sure enough, there was this long black snake climbing up the wall. He snatched it with the trash doo-hickey (professional term there) and brought it out in the light. We saw immediately that it had no rattle on its tail, so what had made the noise?
After a little investigation on the internet we discovered it was a black rat snake, and when they feel threatened the vibrate their tails rappidly – which sounds a lot like a rattle when hitting a sump pump lid, or glass or gravel as we discovered after observing it in a terranium for a while. They are totally harmless, though they are agressive and will bite, and extremely interesting. We decided to keep it in the terranium over night so the kids would have a chance to check it out. We would have loved to keep it, but decided this time around it would be best to let it go.
After a fun round of pictures and petting of the snake Paul took it to a nearby park and it happily slithered off into the woods.
Story #2: It’s A Boy! His name is Murdoch – but he’s not the new family member we’ve been expecting…
We talked about getting a dog and recently decided that it would have to wait until sometime after January – after all, I wasn’t going to attempt training a puppy or anything with a new baby, and we needed to recover from the expenses of moving and buying our first house, and so on.
So, when a co-worker of Paul’s mentioned that her sister was giving away her dog, we were all set to refuse, until I got the email… with a photo attached. Ok, I’m a sucker for dogs. I love Spitfire, and she’s a
great cat, but I am a dog lover at heart. The email stated that he was free to a good home, preferably a family with kids, he was great with kids, neutered, had all his shots, licenced and trained. It was that word, TRAINED, that did me in – and of course his picture – I mean, who wouldn’t fall in love with that face? Oh, yes, and the other word of course was FREE. Oh man, I was a gonner, and after talking to Paul we decided to go for it – besides it felt right.
Upon meeting the dog, the right feeling was confirmed. We all love him and he is already enthralled with the kids. He is an Airedale mix and his name is Murdoch. So here is for exciting new changes this summer – WOW! is all I have to say.
Now, introducing a very handsome dog, here’s Murdoch!
more stories and photos to come – hopefully sooner than these last ones 😀
Fun and Flawed 