Guess Who's Coming for Dinner?

There weren't three of them, but one seemed more than enough.

After church today, Don and I went to lunch with our good friends, Mike and Sandy Sickefoose. We were enjoying ourselves immensely, but when it came to be about 3:30 we all realized that our housebound pets were probably about ready to euthanize all of us, and, so we scattered, hurrying home to let Rowdy, our Medicare cat out of the house.

When we got home, the first thing I noticed was the hummingbird feeder taken apart and lying on the front porch. That's odd, I thought.  Don opened the front door and said, "Oh, no. No, no, no!"

I looked in to see what was the matter and to my distress, all over the floor was ALL the food from our pantry and refrigerator, a five pound sack of sugar, another five pound pack of Splenda, a sack of flour, a broken antique bowl, two strainers, a jar of peanut butter and a gallon container of raspberry iced tea and lots of cans. Down the hall was oyster crackers, Weight Watchers snacks and a loaf of apple crumb bread.

Following the food trail down the hall, it led to our bedroom. I'm calling for Rowdy, who isn't answering or coming to me. The window was intact, but the screen was torn out and lying on the ground outside the window. In the bathroom, the same thing awaited. A huge paw-shaped rip in the screen gave me the impression that the little bugger (in this case a BIG bugger) had tried to make it through our TINY bathroom window.

We both ran outdoors, called for Rowdy, all the while looking this way and that for the culprit of our break-in. Below the bathroom window was a blown glass bird. Obviously the sun had caused it to shine and our thief liked it very much. The only thing missing from the bathroom was the bird.

Back to the bedroom: whoever it was had to crawl over our ENORMOUS aspen king-sized bed, so I began pulling the bedding off to run through the wash. Next was the cleanup of all the food stuff on the floor. Pine-Sol, bleach and Murphy's soap combined to clean up all the yuck. There were prints all over the outside of the fridge, the stove and the cabinets.

I can't speak for my husband but I WAS TOTALLY GROSSED OUT! Tonight I am looking over my shoulder.

Who was it, you ask?  A BEAR! A bear broke into our home. Thank goodness we scared him off. I hate to think what could have happened if he had still been in the house when we walked in. We think he heard us opening the door and ran out the way he came in...dropping his bread behind him.

You may think living in the country might be boring but it is totally to the contrary. Most of the action around here comes from the four-legged members of our neighborhood. Just last week one of the deer I love so much was killed by a mountain lion just around the corner. The hummingbirds have a war going on outside our front window all day long vying for ownership of the feeder. They're like little stealth bombers. It's hysterical! The crows think they're all that and a bag of bird feed. Every morning about 6 a.m. they plan their strategy. One parks itself in every tree in the front yard and begin to "holler" at Rowdy, who, by the way, has more smarts on one side of his brain than all them put together. They squawk and caw and rattle the limbs of the trees, but Rowdy just ignores them...  The foxes wait just outside the perimeter of the front yard waiting for some morsel from somewhere to land on the ground. Stupid things don't know Rowdy's sitting right on the front porch. They grab anything and run like the wind down the hill. And the raccoons...well, they just climb up in the lawn chairs and peek in the window giving us a "what's up" kind of look.  But, as I've said, before, the deer are my absolute favorites.

The bears can just move along...go somewhere else...they're cute, but I'd rather not get to know them on a personal level. I name the animals I like. The bear doesn't have a name.

Oh...and Rowdy? Hiding under the bed. He may be old...but with age comes wisdom.