Saturday morning arrived and people started showing up at Robynn's at 7:00am. Robynn let them shop and the early ones were great customers! The morning was very steady and we did quite well during the busy times. Marley and Lexi (Robynn's dog and ours) were at our house through the sale because Marley would have gone nuts hearing people at their house all day. Royce came back to our house about 11:30 and both dogs were gone. They had dug under the deck, through my Iris plants and out they went. So I immediately drove from Robynn's to help Royce look. He found them across Hall Street, and for any of you who know Hall Street you don't want your dogs running across it. But, they were safe and it was probably only about 20 minutes of racing hearts on our end. That was pet drama No. 1 for the weekend.
Pet drama No. 2. At the end of our garage sale one of Robynn's new neighbors had their dog run away (a yellow lab). We had just seen it so I jumped in my car, Royce took off on foot, and so did my mom. We had just been through this and really wanted to help the neighbors. I ended up seeing it and got it to run back by their fence line and the dog ran up to the front of their house. Royce got down so the dog would approach him, which worked great. However when the dog smelled Royce's hand he growled and attack-bit his whole hand! What the?!?!? I saw Royce bend over in pain and Robynn left the dog and approached Royce. I assumed Royce just got hit in the man-parts but boy was I wrong! I know Royce---and Royce was in serious pain. The dog punctured his middle three fingers and drug his teeth down the middle finger scraping a lot of surface. The deep canine teeth punctures didn't bleed much but they were deep into the tissue. I honestly haven't seen Royce have that shock/pain before and I know a lot of it was disbelief. The homeowner/neighbors of Robynn's are actually friends of theirs and felt absolutely awful. Royce is even golfing with Dustin and the husband on Friday. The dog has never bit anyone before and we assume it was purely confused/overwhelmed with the new neighborhood, first night in the new house, and 4 of us chasing it in every direction. But we can't decide if it was Lexi and Marley's smell that got it upset or the greasy Taco Grande we had just eaten?!? (Mmmmmm, Taco Grande!) Pet drama No. 2 behind us.
*Garage sale was successful, and Chloe & Isaac even made $15.25 at their lemonade/cookie stand! I told Chloe we're gonna do that more often so we can pay to have a babysitter come over more:)
Sunday morning we heard something in the fireplace. We had thought maybe we heard it the day before but weren't home enough to really hear any repeat noises. Royce and I worked for about an hour and a half to try and see what it might be. We assumed a bird, hoping for no squirrel or raccoon. Our vent is hinged on the horizontal and opens to the top/back so we didn't want to squish the creature behind the vent. So Royce opened it little by little and I taped one of my makeup compacts to a spatula so we could stick the mirror in there and try to see what it was. No luck. Royce used his fishing net and even put it behind the vent to try to grab something, leaving the roped handle over the edge. Royce finally gave up, going to take a shower. Our friend did not like being left alone. It was ticked off. So all during Royce's shower I'm running back there giving him updates on the noises and Royce was upset I hadn't given up yet. So he came back out and looked up the chimney, immediately saying "Where's my net?". The handle was gone! Our friend had obviously rattled the net enough to get the rope to fall behind the vent. At that point Royce realized that there was a hollow space behind the vent therefore ridding our fear of squishing the creature. So he really cranked on the vent to open it further and was geared up. Leather gloves, safety glasses, sweatshirt with hood up. I was in catcher mode with a trash can and cookie sheet to cover the trash can. We had the front door open ready for a quick exit. Whew, here goes. Royce went in for the grab and on the first attempt the animal squirmed which gave Royce the jitters but geared him all the same. Okay, attempt number two and we're ready. Royce grabbed the creature and the net in one swipe moving slowly around the vent. Out he came and I just saw this wing that kept coming and coming and coming. I said, in slow motion, "Oh...my...gosh" and Royce said, "It's....a.....duck". A duck? A duck. Pet...drama...No. 3. Unbelievable. Royce had a good grip and our webbed-footed creature was not squirmy at all. Royce took him outside. Unfortunately for Daffy his wing was pretty crushed, either from the vent or from Royce getting him out. So in Chloe's words, "Daddy put a band aid on him and he flew away". Her words, not ours. Sorry Daffy, but at least you're not suck in a chimney anymore. Royce had never hunted a duck before so he 'got' his first one in our chimney!
So that was our weekend full of animal adventures. We learned that even though the neighbor dog might be a family dog maybe strangers should just "shoooo" them over to the homeowners. And we also learned that our chimney has no top on it whatsoever. We'll be installing a screen or shield shortly.
No comments:
Post a Comment