Deep thoughts...

Okay. So have you ever wondered whether the word for the color orange came from the fruit the orange? Or did the fruit get named from the color?

In other words, which came first, the fruit or the color?

Talk amongst yourselves. I've given you a topic. Discuss.

Sir Maximilian the Small and Annoying

Awwww! This couldn't be the little beastie that stole my underwear, barked all night and punctured my thumb with his little alligator teeth.

Oh, and the places I go!

create your own personalized map of the USA
Borrowed this idea from my friend Sarah. This is a map of all the states I've visited. My map looks pretty much like the opposite of hers.

I think it's hilarious that the entire west of the U.S. is red for me, and the heartland is completely barren on my map. I guess for the most part, I just never wanted to/had the opportunity to visit the Midwest.

Mike says I shouldn't be counting the airport stops in some states. In that case, Georgia, Michigan and Tennessee should be banished from the map.

First snow...

Mighty Max experienced the white stuff for the first time today.
At first, he gingerly stepped his front paws on the snow, keeping his haunches on the back step just in case he needed to make a quick getaway. But he found he actually liked stepping on the cold crunchiness and stalked his way to the grass. As with everything, he tried eating the strange new thing next, and discovered that snow is quite tasty and refreshing.
So now we have this black puppy bulldozing its way around the yard, eating the biggest flat snowcone he's ever seen.
It's kind of like watching a whale trolling through the ocean with its mouth wide open, straining the sea water for plankton. Only a lot smaller. And without the ocean thing.
Maybe the snow will keep him from trying to poison himself with peach pits for a while. That's good enough for me.

I killed Mickey.....

It’s a first I wasn’t looking forward to. A first that I remember happening many times at my parents’ house – with my mother practically hyperventilating as she set a trap with peanut butter and tried to put it down without snapping the trap shut and giving herself a heart attack.

We were eating dinner and I saw the small, gray animal dart from under the pantry door to behind the stove. Mike wouldn’t repeat what I yelled at the sight of the mouse, when he was telling the story to my mother.

Dinner was suddenly over.

We conspired about how to best catch the critter, though we had no traps or poison that night. Mike laid in bed at three in the morning, fuming over the pooping rodent that was probably crawling all over our things and giving us hantavirus.

The next day we laid out the traditional, crush-their-little-brains-out traps and the newfangled glue traps around the kitchen. It didn't take long.

At the edge of the stove lay my prey, as I came home after work.

A furry little gray mouse lay motionless in the black plastic tray. Like it was take-out waiting to be warmed up.

I stepped toward the mouse as I closed the door. I was hoping maybe it ate too much of the glue on the tray and asphyxiated or something. But I took a step and the mouse started writhing, stretching pathetically toward the darkness of under the stove.

My joy of catching the rodent before it left any more poop nuggets in my silverware drawer was deflated by the scene of the writhing mouse.

His little feet were hopelessly stuck in the goo, crossed in a very uncomfortable way. His little tail, frozen in a perfect curlicue on the shiny black.

The mouse’s abdomen writhed so forcefully, it looked like he was trying to swim. The mouse had more chance of moving the entire trap than he had actually escaping the sticky doom. I didn’t want to look at its little black eyes.

I wished it had chosen death by peanut butter – the steel arm of the trap would have crushed its little skull as it munched happily. Although this trap left no blood or brains for me to wipe from the pantry floor, it left a hopelessly trapped creature with no means of survival. The slow death. And I could end it.

I should put it in a paper bag and hit it with a hammer. I should just take it outside and hit it against the wall of the house. Isn’t there a big rock out there or something I could just drop on it, like maybe it would happen anyway in nature? Except there wouldn’t be a black, sticky thing holding down the mouse while the rock fell on it in nature.

The mouse hopelessly swam with its limbs tied by glue as I pondered this dilemma, its ears folded back in sheer determination.

I took a pair of metal tongs from a drawer and picked up the corner of the trap. The mouse didn’t budge from its sticky doom.

I put the mouse in a grocery sack and it dropped to the bottom with a swish. I walked into the garage, glancing at the garbage can in the corner. I could just put it in there and it wouldn’t be able to get out and then it would just die tomorrow. Or the next day. Or next week. By then the trash would be picked up.

The darkness of the trashcan tomb was too horrible to think about. I couldn’t do it.

I could walk to the middle of the street and put the mouse down where the schoolbus would run over it tomorrow. That was it! The bus could pick up the neighbor boys and be the deathmobile at the same time. Perfect.

I looked at my car and realized I could just take care of it now.

I placed the mouse, concealed from his executioner by the grocery bag, behind the rear wheel of my Ford Escort. I started the car, tried to think that I was just backing out of the driveway, and stepped on the gas.

The car flattened that little living creature, not me. But I was at the wheel of destruction which eliminated the rodent that was chewing and pooping around my house.

I came back in the house and felt bad for a second. Then I heard scratching in the cupboard and opened another glue trap.