Last edited by a moderator: Nov 5, 2018

I guess that I was 13 or so on a beautuful Indian Sunday fall day, and we were just about leaving the house to see a NY Jet game at Shea Stadium. My father wanted to make sure that the cats weren't in the basement as they couldn't get outside to eat or drink for the rest of the day, so he called out to them. Thomas, the big black one (I wrote a song about him when he died, the oldest song I still sing) showed up immediatly. Dad heard a noise behind the washing machine and reached behind to playfully pull on our other cat named Jessica's tail to get a move on. When he did, something felt off, the tail not fuzzy and muscular, but rather thin as a piece of licorice, and he immediately let go. As he turned around he then saw both Jessica and Thomas looking at him and instantly realized that whatever was back there didn't belong in the house. It turned out to be an ugly opossum that the cats had chased down the basement steps and through the open cellar door. I shooed away the cats and my Dad picked up a baseball bat and poked gently at that opossum in the direction of the open door and the freedom that the back yard offered. It didn't take much for the varmint to understand it's happy opportunity, and so scurried by, up and away to greener pastures with a story to tell it's amigos of it's valiant scuffle with two monsters and a giant human with a smooth tree limb. The cats were kind of pissed off for letting their hard won effort run free. I don't remember if the Jets won or lost or who they even played that day.

 

Last edited by a moderator: Nov 5, 2018

Here come the warm Jets.

 

After being told that there were illegal Romanian immigrant ladybirds (w/ STIs no less) swarming into the country, I of course made it my mission to rescue them from captivity (my flat) recently. (I'm still finding em! - they're not bed bugs, just regular insects) I'm not sure I did it right, but I manufactured a giant cotton bud and (hoping they were thirsty) dunked it in water and wafted it (*ahem* jabbed it at) piles of them that had gathered everywhere. They all leaped onboard, and it was easy enough to shoo them out (*ahem* catapult w/ a boing) of a window when the weather was sunny. One lil tiny one fell and landed upside down in a drip and needed rescuing using mega magnifying glasses and dumb luck, but it seemed to go well. Ish. No casualties. I just hope they weren't hiding from a predator and I did a reverse @superliquidsunshine :O!

XD Awwww... (I guess ur son is too young & too tired to make much of it. Well, not yet anyway! Just wait :D )

 

Last edited: Nov 7, 2018

I have survived a bedbugs calamity myself just recently. They are the worst! It was a true nightmare. Had to wait in horror for three sleepless nights for the pest control to show up. Luckily had a little extra medicine from our favourite place as it seems: Mexico ;) Otherwise it would have been no party at all. Bedbugs suck!

 

Surrounded by and living in nature in a beautiful California canyon, each and every day I would spend hours hiking, exploring and scrabbling off trail around my home niche until I knew every bit of the little piece of utopia that I was lucky enough to have landed in after years of living in NYC. There was a creek that cut itself through a steep rising wall before the sides widened out, and the canyon itself was approximately 500 meters long to its 400 foot tall back wall rising to sight the Pacific Ocean, and 300 meters wide or so and tapering off at the back end of the oval-edged box until it met with the larger concurrence and greater of the main canyon that it spilled into. I would slather myself with the clay-like silty mud that I knew where to find which was in pockets where the slower ebb water would deposit it year after year, and smearing the brown goo from head to toe in making sure to cover every exposed area of skin to avoid the inescapable and unavoidable poison oak that proliferated everywhere and waiting to deposit it’s irritating oil on any unsuspecting person brushing up against it. When I was done I looked like a commando in camouflage, but I had learned the hard way in the beginning of my solo sojourns, having awful full body (and I do mean EVERYWHERE) eruptions that itched and itched until finally two weeks later finally and blessingly subsiding after bottle after bottle of applied calamine lotion. Anyway, it was on a daily morning excursions one fine Spring day, while making my way up the creek that I noticed lots of ladybugs flying around, zipping by like tiny jets, and as I made it up the now narrowing, rushing creek bed, their preponderance became greater and greater until there were so many that I could hear the mass buzzing of their thousands of tiny wings beating about my ears, many crashing into me and then buzzing off again. Just then I noticed something odd and out of place, a big rock sitting atop others in a pile was not the same beige as all the others, but rather from my distance of about 40 or so feet away was almost black. As I got closer the amount of ladybugs was incredibly dense and now many were landing on me and hitching rides as I slowly picked and sloshed my way towards it in the shallow water and rocks of the creek. When I was about 20 feet away it dawned on me of what I was seeing...the rock, about 2 1/2 feet round and about 2 feet deep was entirely covered in ladybugs. And as I got right up to it I noticed that it wasn't just the surface of the rock, but the mass of insects was about 4 or 5 inches thick with them. I opened my hand and placed my palm gently on the living stone of little polka dotted bugs and it felt cool to my touch. They undulated under my palm and soon covered it entirely, like absorbing me into their number. It was a weird and strange but oddly exciting at the same time. Then I inferred that I was now part of a ladybug sex orgy and that I seemed to have found their sacred tantric sacred g spot stone of gratification and proliferation. Looking under the mound of stones then saw their treasure. Deposited there were a zillion tiny white eggs of the next generation. I was awed and honored and intrigued all at the same time. After a time l lifted my hand off of the living mass of squirming sex, shook the horny little creatchers off me and continued on my way feeling very much at one with nature. I also visited them the next day. Two days after their arrival and about an hour after sunrise, as I was eating my breakfast of apple pancakes and maple syrup at my little round table under a blue, blue, blue California sky, the ladybugs took to wing en-mass and did a fly by for me. What seemed like 10,000 or more of the little buggers buzzed by me to find their way to parts unknown to munch out on insect pests of gardens and farms in the nearby vicinity, no doubt. The coolest thing was that they returned to the exact same spot for the next two years until finally on the third must have found a new and novel place to get it on and make more little ladybugs...you know, doing the same damn thing gets boring after a while!

 

Last edited by a moderator: Nov 8, 2018