[Photo by Tahoe on Unsplash] I’ve got a couple of very short stories for you this week: Bird in the Hand and Bobcat in the Street
Bird in the Hand:
For me, there’s nothing like the pure pleasure of riding a dirt-bike in the woods. I’ve written about what that means for me before, but sometimes you get a funnier story just dealing with the mundane things in life like keeping the house free of critters. We got a great first pet for the kids in Kentucky. She found us actually. She was an outdoor cat that belonged to the neighbors first, but when we moved in, she came to us and started staying with us. A few months after we moved in, the family she started with moved out. They were empty nesters and took note of how “Scooter” had claimed us. So, they came and asked if we’d like to keep her. She was so great with the kids it was easy to say yes. She had a limp that she’d gotten years before when hit by a car which made her name ironic, but she could really scoot when she wanted to…despite the limp.
We let Scooter in as much as out and enjoyed having her around. One day, she was in with me when I opened the door for a second to check on the kids playing in the yard. To my surprise a small bird flew in. That’s when the adventure started.
Of course, the bird was going nuts trying to figure out what it had flown into and Scooter decided to help. It was like watching a cartoon episode. I didn’t know that cats could run vertically and horizontally on walls in a house. They can. I’ve witnessed it.
Imagine if you’ve seen one of those motorcycle shows on tv where they put several guys on bikes in a large cylinder about three times the size of a merry go round and then start spinning it. The bikes take off and use centrifugal force to ride on the side of the cylinder wall. Except with the cat, there were no spinning walls, just pure force, speed and cat will power.
I grabbed a broom to try to help the cat when the bird started relieving itself in terror in my living room. That resulted in more bird release. Then the cat at least partially scratched the bird and the bleeding started. Now I’ve got bird relief, bird blood, feathers and who knows what else on the walls. The bird is still going nuts. Then the furniture starts to fall. The lamps and vertical pieces started to fall along with any chair that wasn’t particularly heavy. I and Scooter finally got the bird out the door. I can’t remember if Scooter got it on the way out or not. I just knew it was gone and now I had work to do.
I was really concerned with any disease the bird may have carried, so I scrubbed and sprayed everything. Julie showed up at some point and joined in. We kept the kids out until we were sure we’d disinfected all the walls, vacuumed everything in the room and wiped all furniture with rags soaked in alcohol. Nothing like a bird in the house to break up a monotonous Saturday.
Bobcat in the Street
My 16 ½ year old son (now 22), Ross was backing a car out of the driveway with his 19 year old sister, Alicia, in the passenger seat when they heard a fierce cat fight. My son says he’s saw them in the side view mirror, but it was twilight, so visibility was down. He thought it was a dog attacking our cat (primarily due to size). He stopped the car and Ali jumps out to deal with the situation. She is taken aback at the size of this large cat that is rolling in the street with Kal (our pet cat). That doesn’t stop her from running up to the both of them and taking charge. She points her finger in the face of what she thinks is a giant sized house cat and yells at it fiercely and tells it to go away while pointing towards a point of egress. She tells me later that she was surprised that he held his ground for a second and seemed confused that she would come tell him what to do, but he decides it’s best to go and so he does. Kal thinks Ali is great and comes and rubs her legs. They put him in the house and continue on. Later, I produce pictures of a bobcat and Ali responds with, “Yeah that’s exactly what that big housecat looked like.” Excellent, now they’re coming out of the woods into the cul-de-sac to pester our pets. Welcome to Jenks, Oklahoma.
But, it’s just a bobcat. It’s not a mountain lion, not a beaver, not a wild boar (all possible here). We lost Kal under mysterious circumstances a few months later. I believe it was from a neighbor that was annoyed by Kal sleeping in his garden, but I have no definitive proof. A few months to a year and a half later the wolves show up in the field across from our neighborhood. Not coyotes with winter fur, but also not northern or grey wolves. What we saw were what we believe was the Mexican Wolf. They were only spotted in and around the area for a few months and then they disappeared. I saw them, my wife saw them and Ali saw them. I asked about them at a neighborhood Walmart nearby and the workers there told me they would see them in the mornings. They wouldn’t get out of their cars until enough people showed up that the wolves would choose to leave. My neighbor didn’t believe me until he heard the pack catch a raccoon in his back yard. The sounds are macabre as you hear those crunching bones (and screaming). That same night I heard them and thought they were in the street in front of my house. It did sound like a horror movie. I opened the door to let the outdoor cat in. She was pressed up against the door and fell in when I opened it. I’ve never seen two domesticated cats work together like what I saw that night. The indoor cat was coming down the stairs when the howling started as I let the outdoor cat in. The two cats ran together and met in the living room. I was looking out the window to see if I could spot the wolves in front. Anyway, I went back to check on the cats and they had turned back to back and were slowly circling in the house to defend themselves. I didn’t know that was cat behavior, but it was interesting to see.
Thankfully, we haven’t seen or heard the wolves in a year or more now. I’d like to hope it stays that way.
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You might also like to read: Tales from Kentucky #5: An Ordinary Day on the Boat
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