Science Monkey

Okay, let’s get this story out of the way.

As I alluded to the other day, Emma and I came home to a slightly damp house, not just because we live in Florida. We came home to a damp house because we live in Florida where the roofers sometimes forget to cover an open roof with a tarp for the daily rainstorm. Grr.

The reason behind the new roof is somewhat complex, but I’ll try to simplify it. As many of you know, we rent our house from Emma’s folks in a situation that works well for all interested parties. Unfortunately, due to the recent hurricanes and such, many insurance companies are not writing policies for rental properties, meaning that Emma’s dad had to find a new company to cover his mortgage insurance. Not a huge deal, but a pain. The new insurance company’s inspector seemed to be overall pleased with the condition of the house, other than the age of the roof. The roof — the solid, intact roof — was greater than 18 years old, so to get the insurance coverage it had to be replaced. In a way that seemed clever at the time, the re-roofing was scheduled for the week that we would be out of town.

So, while we’re enjoying ourselves with the llamas and the lack of oxygen up in the mountains, the old roof is torn off and the new roof was put on. Unfortunately — and I honestly don’t completely understand how this happened — the roofers left on Tuesday with the roof incomplete and uncovered. This being Florida, there was a torrential rainstorm that afternoon and the water poured into the house, drenching our kitchen and our bedroom. There are water stains on the ceiling, the tiles on the kitchen floor are peeling up and bubbling, and our mattress was completely soaked. Water also came into our bedroom closet, soaking most of Emma’s clothes and about half of mine.

Let me interject at this point that we have some amazing friends, including Angela, who was feeding the cats and chickens while we were away. She must have spent a full day’s work being our intermediary with the roofers, cleaning, and doing laundry at the house. She did such an amazing job that I can hardly even believe it. By the time we got home our mattress was dry and the bedsheets had been cleaned, so we could sleep in our own bed, and the vast, vast majority of the water was gone. Just amazing. I don’t think we can thank her enough.

Emma and I met with the roofing company’s owner and the project manager this morning, who have been really helpful in getting this resolved. We went through and showed him the damage and he promised to do whatever we needed to get it fixed. I think we want to replace the mattress — although it’s dry, it just feels odd — and we’re having a painting company come look at the ceiling. All in all, the damage wasn’t quite as bad as we had feared.

The next story will be more fun, I promise. Maybe some mountain climbing adventures?

I finally hung up the poster we bought at the Spring Arts Festival. We bought a cheapie poster frame, but I think it looks pretty nice. I can’t do anything about the reflection from the flash, though, sadly.

Nothing else terribly exciting to report today. The Saturn overheated on my way in to work after therapy and it was all I could do to get it home before it asploded. I put some fresh coolant in and am crossing my fingers that it will be better tomorrow. We’ll see.

I also finished up my first dish cloth piece. I kind of borked the binding off at first, so it looks a little funky, but I don’t care. If it were perfect, how could I get better? I’m looking through my copy of Barbara Walker’s Treasury for the next pattern to learn.

6. Almost a week!

Dear Blog,

Apparently I’m not so good at this whole writing-every-day thing. I have every intention to, but there are often days when I’m too lazy or have nothing interesting to say. I’ve written a half-dozen entries that, upon re-reading, have just been me whining, and I’ve deleted them in disgust. Every morning is a new day, though, and who knows? Maybe I’ll get better and realize I’ve written every day for a week. Or two weeks. Or even a month.

Last week I mentioned that we have a few new residents sharing our home, and wondered how they would do, living so close to us and our cats. Apparently they like where we moved their nest.

Can you see what’s in there? An egg!

And by the next day there were two eggs!

And then three!

So the thing that puzzled Emma and I most about this nest — which is clearly currently occupied — is that we had yet to actually see a bird in or near the nest. Admittedly our experience with birds is limited, with the vast majority of our knowledge coming from watching the chickens in the coop, but we still didn’t understand. Don’t birds roost? Emma had to work overnight this weekend and she would come home about 7 and there wouldn’t be a bird in the nest, but by the time we walked back outside later in the morning, the number of eggs would have increased.

Ah, but this morning! This morning we went out to breakfast after she worked, and when I came home the nest was occupied. I could only use my camera phone before she flew off, but take a look (larger version):

And, of course, she left an additional egg! Um, you’ll have to take my word for it in this next picture.

So, the mystery is partially solved. They lay eggs a little bit after dawn, then leave for the day. The roosting is still an open question, but the answer appears to be “no.” A little research in our Audobon guide suggests that these are Carolina Wrens. Very cute! And maybe there will be baby chicks in a couple of weeks!

Chirpily,

A.

Dear Neighborhood Bird,

Our front door is not really an ideal place to build your nest. I know that it looks nice and that the wreath provides a nice foundation, but it’s really not a great idea. There are three problems that I can think of immediately. First, we use the front door to go into and out of our house. Consequently, we’d end up shaking your house repeatedly throughout the day. Second, we have two cats. Admittedly they aren’t the greatest of hunters, but I fear that they’d both be able to take out your babies, given the opportunity. And third, there’s that screen door. I know that we often leave it ajar when the front door is closed, but when the weather isn’t very hot (like now), we like to close the screen door and open the front door, to let the fresh air inside. This is what happened on Sunday, when you sat on the tiki torch, screaming at me through the closed door. I’m very sorry.

I’m glad to see that you haven’t laid any eggs in there, yet, so we still have a chance to move your nest. I don’t want to potentially break it by taking it out of the wreath, so I think that I’ll try to move both the wreath and the nest together as one unit later this evening. Maybe somewhere on the side of the house? That’d be nice, I’m sure.

Songfully,

Your Inadvertent Landlord

I went out to try and watch the eclipse last night, but it was too overcast to see much from the house. I took a few pictures anyway, to experiment with shutter settings, etc. This was my favorite. I really like how the light reflecting off of the moving clouds creates a shimmery halo around the partial eclipse. It reminds me of pictures of the Northern Lights, which I have yet to see in person.

Emma and I spent some time Sunday morning refreshing our fish tank. We have a 29-high in our living room which has been largely neglected over the past few months, causing it to be covered in algae. Sunday morning we cleaned the glass, siphoned out as much of the crud as we could from the gravel, replaced much of the water, and bought some new fish.

We bought a whole mess of “tropical community” fish which should play together nicely. Although the quality of the above picture isn’t great (clearly my cellphone camera needs better lighting than what we have in the house), you can see some of the new lovelies. We got a few different kinds of mollies (the ones with the oversized bellies, red swordtails and white lyretails), tuxedo guppies, red platys, a half dozen zebra danios, and about six neon tetras. And two black snails. And some live plants. And…

I’m really happy that we did this. I spent about an hour on Sunday afternoon sitting in the recliner, just watching the fish swim around. It was wonderfully peaceful and relaxing.

A warm cat. In a box. On the bed. On mom’s pillow. In a sunbeam.

I have some sad news to report this morning. We lost one of our chickens over the weekend. I found her yesterday morning when I went out to feed them.

On Saturday night, I was playing WoW in my office until about midnight. (Big surprise, right? Emma says I’m disappointingly predictable.) I heard a loud scratching sound outside from the coop and the chickens started squawking, so I ran outside to see what was happening. As I went out, I heard something scramble over a fence on the side of the yard. The girls looked okay but were clearly freaked out. I looked around the yard a little, then went back to bed. Evidently I missed a small hole in the chickenwire of the coop.

We buried Penelope in the back yard, underneath a lovely new plant. I forget at the moment what it is called, but it has these lovely small, purple flowers. A skyflower, maybe? I can’t remember. I fixed the wire and couldn’t find any other obvious holes.

Sunday night was full of anxiety. Clearly the creature would be back, but when? Emma went to bed early and I was back in my office. About 7:55 I heard a noise and raced outside. Both of the girls were downstairs, standing on one side of the coop, squawking loudly. At first glance, I didn’t see anything. Then, there it was! An opossum! In the coop! It was on the bottom, on the opposite side from the girls. I stared at it for a moment, figuring out what to do, then saw the hose. I turned the nozzle to “jet” and blasted the hell out of the opossum. I had to keep herding it on its side of the coop, keeping it away from the girls. After about a minute, I let up and gave the possum a chance to get away (thinking that I’d find its way in, too). It started to scurry underneath the side of the wire, through a tiny hole between the wire and the ground. Once its head was out, I turned the hose on again and kept spraying it for as long as I could while it ran into the woods. I checked on the girls again, then piled a couple of courses of bricks on the side of the coop, blocking off the hole.

I checked on the girls a couple more times before I went to bed, then slept like complete crap, worrying about them. This morning I didn’t want to go out to feed them, for fear of what I might find, particularly when I couldn’t hear them making their usual early-morning-we’re-starving clucks and whines. Happily, both of the girls were fine and started clucking when they saw me with the food bowl. Phew.

Tonight — and from now on — I think we’ll start closing the girls upstairs at night. The ramp between the levels is on a string so we can pull it up, blocking off the only way up. The top section is pretty secure, I think, especially now that I’ve re-stapled the chickenwire around the sides. The bottom is pretty good, but we’ve now seen repeatedly that critters can get through the smallest of openings.

I don’t think we’re going to replace Penelope, at least not anytime soon. Two chickens is still a good number…if we only had the one, I’d be concerned about her being lonely all day. I’ll get pictures of Penelope’s plant (and the previously-promised garden pictures) up in the next few days.

Can I tell you how much of a sucker I am at the seed and feed? I went by on Saturday morning to get some more chicken feed. Before I know it, I’m walking around with a tray of beautiful seedlings, just begging to get planted in our garden. *sigh* They must see me coming from a mile away…”Here’s one of them city boys who wants to play farmer. If he were a real farmer, he’d be growing the seedlings himself. Sucker.” Whatever. It cost me a whopping $30 for the 50-pound back of chicken feed, two trays of broccoli seedlings (12 plants), one trays of brussels sprouts (6 plants), two trays of cauliflower (15 plants), and a tray of lettuce. I got the beds mostly cleared out this weekend and about half of the new stuff planted. I’m going to try and finish planting tonight (assuming it doesn’t rain), and I’ll get some pictures up. Woo!

Late last night I was sitting in my office, playing WoW, and having a grand old time. Earlier this weekend I dinged 57 (yay!) and had pushed myself to within 5k xp of 58, so when I couldn’t sleep last night and didn’t want to watch TV (or actually do any work) my choice of pastime was simple. I ripped through about 20 undead (which seemed appropriate, given how close we were to halloween), dinged 58, and was on my way to the Dark Portal (and Outland). Oooo. Spooky. I hear a quiet little scratching noise behind me but ignore it, assuming it’s one of the cats.

I explored the area around the Portal for a bit and had flown to Thrallmar when I heard the noise again. This time it wasn’t so much a scratching as a cat trying to walk stealthily into my office. Last I saw, both of the cats were asleep on the bed with Emma, so I was curious who had come to visit me. I turned around and…no cat. I look around some more and see this long, white face with coal-black eyes staring at me from underneath a fish tank. “What the hell is that? Is that a ferret? Where’d a ferret come from? Oh…that’s an opossum! Wait a second…why is there an opossum in my office? What the hell am I going to do? Oh! Let’s get Emma. She’ll know what to do.”

I go wake my wife and with her help we managed to herd the possum into a cardboard box. Okay, so mostly she did the herding. And the planning. If it were just me, I think the opossum and I would still be staring at each other, not sure what to do.

So there’s one more reason why my wife is my hero. Emma Caplan: healer of the sick, wrangler of wild beasts, and owner of the cutest new haircut this side of the Pecos.