OUR UNEXPECTED VISITORS

All sorts of unusual things happen when you live in the country and you get various, unexpected visitors.

We love having visitors, but please, all that we ask is that you call first and let us know you’re coming.  Sometimes, in some cases we understand that it’s not possible for various and sundry reasons.

 

Sammy stopped in for a visit a few weeks ago.  It was a beautiful Sunday afternoon and all of our windows and doors were open to catch the spring-like afternoon breeze (Never mind that it was July!).  I heard Sammy walking down the dirt road we live on.  I was working at my computer, but I stood up and looked out the window just because I was curious about what I was hearing.

 

There was Sammy, standing in the road all alone, although I didn’t know his name at that time.

 

I hurried out of the house to see if I could get him out of the road before he got hit by a car.

 

I called to him and clapped my hands, “Come here…c’mon buddy…c’mon”.  He looked at me but didn’t move.  “Hi there, boy; good boy”, I said as I approached him.  As I sidled up to him, I spoke soothingly to him as I tried to direct him to the side of the road and ultimately to our yard so he would be safe.  He wouldn’t budge.

 

Just as I turned to call for The Frontiersman, I saw him coming around the corner of the cottage and talking with a man who had stopped his pick up truck on the curve in the road just before our cottage.

 

Dan walked the few yards to where Sammy and I were standing.  I asked him to see if he could walk the ‘boy’ to the cottage so he wouldn’t be hit by a car.  He must’ve liked Dan because he walked right along with him.

 

Just as Dan got him to the cottage, his owners came looking for him.  His owner is the one who told us his name is Sammy.  Oh, did I mention Sammy is a horse?

 

A couple of weeks later, The Frontiersman and I were on our way back home from the Ghetto Bodega; it was a dreary, rainy day.  As we approached our cottage, there was a rather large fanny walking on the side of the road.  Yep, you read that right; a fanny…bare naked fanny at that!

 

“What the hell…” The Frontiersman exclaimed as we neared the slow moving fanny.

 

I was astonished as we pulled up closer to see the fanny was attached to a 350-pound, black and pink pig!  The things you see when you live in the country; there’s never a dull moment!

 

I got out of the truck and walked alongside ‘Porky’ to try to keep him/her on the side of the road so he/she wouldn’t be turned into bacon and chops if a car came along.  Not that I could do much.  How do you make a 350-pound pig keep to the side of the road if it wanted to move to the center?

 

The Frontiersman turned around and drove back the two or three houses to Porky’s house to let Porky’s owner know he/she was walking the streets, as no respectable pig should do in the middle of a Tuesday afternoon.  It’s just not ‘proper’ you know.

 

Porky and I walked, in the drizzling rain, down to our cottage and Porky seemed quite content to visit our yard.  It seems he/she stopped in for an impromptu lunch.  Our yard took top billing on the menu.  “Have at it, Porky; that’s less grass for us to have to cut.”

 

It was only two or three minutes until The Frontiersman came back, followed by Porky’s owner…walking.  He thanked us for letting him know the pig, (not even a name for the poor thing), was on the lam and for taking care of her until he could get here. 

 

He put a leash around her rather large neck, whistled to her and she went right along with him.

 

One good thing about living on a dirt road...there’s not much traffic…you could lay down in the middle of the road and take a nap and you probably wouldn’t have to get up, or roll to the side of the road for at least a couple hours before a car comes along.

 

It’s not that we haven’t had unexpected guests before.  When The Computer Genius was five years old, I took him to a Memorial Day Parade and we came home with the cutest, sweetest little Pomeranian/Chow mix dog.  That was a little hard to explain to The Frontiersman when he came home from work, although I did call him at work and tell him we had a surprise for him; a new addition to our family and then I hung up.  He really got a surprise when he came in the door from work and ‘Shelly’ ran over to him and promptly bit him.  All was well though after he came in the kitchen, very carefully, sat down and let Shelly smell him to be sure he was acceptable to be in her house.  They both calmed down and ended up being good buddies.  TF wouldn’t let me go anywhere without him for the longest time though.  He said there was the danger of me going shopping and coming back with a pet cow or something.  I don’t know where he got that silly idea.

 

The first year we lived here, somehow a bat got in and was flying around upstairs.  The Frontiersman was asleep downstairs and The Computer Genius was, of course, in his man cave.  I was upstairs, in the bedroom, watching TV and all of a sudden a bat flew in front of the TV.  ‘The girls’ and I, (our two miniature pincers, Mia and Gia), all dove under the covers.  After a few minutes, I got brave enough to poke my head out and look around.  I couldn’t see it, but I knew it was there…lurking in the shadows…waiting for me.  After about an hour, I finally got enough courage to go to the stairway and call for the two brave men of the house.  Neither one of them answered me so I sat in bed for another hour without seeing it and then I got enough courage to hurry downstairs, with the comforter wrapped around me.  I went to the basement stairway and called to The Computer Genius.  He came up to see what the problem was.  I asked him to come upstairs and look around for the bat monster.  He did.  He put lights on and cautiously looked around, being careful not to disturb anything to avoid having the bat monster fly up in his face, but he found nothing and I never saw that disgusting thing again.

 

Also, the first year, The Computer Genius had his own excitement with various and sundry birds that flew in the basement woodstove exhaust pipe (or whatever you call it), and then there was the night Sheba, our part-Burmese cat, woke him up to advise him of a wandering bullfrog in his bedroom.  There was a certain amount of excitement associated with that incident.

 

Last year, in the spring, there was a fawn that came to visit our little Min Pins.  I was doing something at the kitchen sink and caught something, out of the corner of my eye, walking past the kitchen window.  As I glanced over towards the window, I saw brown, furry, skinny legs walking on the sidewalk.  I couldn’t believe my eyes so I walked over to the window, but whatever I thought I saw was gone.

 

I walked back to the sink while debating with myself whether to take a vacation or see a ‘shrink’.  I looked out the window over the sink and I saw the most beautiful little fawn, rubbing noses through the play yard fence with my little Mia.  Gia was right there, making sure her sister was safe.  Neither one of them was barking; unbelievable!

 

The fawn came back two more afternoons and visited the girls but then, although we saw her from time to time, with her mother, she never came that close again.

 

More recently, two weeks ago to be exact, we had quite the donnybrook in here when, early one morning, The Frontiersman let the Min Pins out for their morning rout of the resident chipmunks when he felt something run across the top of his bare feet.  He just thought it was one of ‘the girls’ so he didn’t pay any attention.  I came down stairs a few minutes later and got a cookbook out to look up a recipe when I heard a rustling sound over by my computer.  My eyes were attracted to that general direction but, by that time The Frontiersman was in the kitchen, making noise so I just thought it was a noise he was making and let it go. 

 

After their morning jaunt around the yard, Gia came in and was ready to settle down for a while when, there it was again; the rustling sound.  Gia ran over to the stairway and immediately began crying and trying to dig her way through the storage space under the stairs.  I told The Frontiersman that I had heard something there earlier and Gia and I had just heard it again.  He walked over to the stairway and began to move the little antique school desk that sits in front of the storage space and Gia barged right in to start her reconnaissance mission.  As she did that, I went to the patio door and called Mia to come get in on the excitement and then I took up my post in the kitchen doorway.  I, unlike the Min Pins am not brave and do not want to tangle with any of these cannibalistic creatures. 

 

Mia immediately sensed furry danger and the hunt was on.  As Gia bore her way through all the crap, oh excuse me, ‘items of value’ stored under the stairs, the ‘furry thing’ ran out and behind my desk.  Mia honed in on it and pursued it until it ran out and across the room.  At that point we could see it was a red squirrel.  It leaped up onto the third shelf of our bookcase, but didn’t have a good grasp.  Mia jumped up and knocked the squirrel to the floor.  Gia grabbed the squirrel by the head and ran out onto the deck with Mia in hot pursuit.  Once in the yard, Gia dropped the beast and Mia picked it up in a New York minute, its head in her mouth.  Then, it grabbed Mia’s face with its sharp claws and she started to cry.  The Frontiersman to the rescue…he kicked the monster off Mia’s face to keep it from hurting her anymore, and Gia went in for the kill.  She dropped it once again and Mia picked it up and they took turns shaking it to be sure it was dead.  The Frontiersman picked it up with a shovel and rake, and threw it out into the brush.  Mia and Gia were of course cleaned up and rewarded with one of their vitamin treats.

 

I’m anticipating who our next unexpected visitor will be.  I hope they call first so I can run around and pick up the clutter and vacuum and all…you understand.

Reviews

[Marijo]

Enjoyed this Shari! We have more "wild" animals - Mick almost hit a bob cat coming home yesterday!

[Amy]

Wow, sounds as though you have quite the menagerie around your house. Hope next time you get some pictures!

[Shari Vaudo]

I'll try, Amy. They usually just appear so quickly and then everything gets so confusing, I just don't even think about taking pictures.