Creek Running North

*@&#%$ republicans!

Nuclear wars start like this.

“Don’t let your dog harass my cat!”

“Shall I then cut out his larynx, or would you rather?”

Dissociatives have no self-awareness.

This is like the Buddha teaching why American politics just leaves one roiled…

If I may ask, why were you looking up scary pumkins, or pumpkins?

No, that was someone else looking for pumkin’s. I can see what search strings bring people to my blog.

Come to think of it, I do have a scary pumkin’s desert story I could share sometime this month.

you are bad. your dog harrasses the cat and your bunny lures the cat into a strange yard. you need a jackalope to patrol your place.

Well, of course it’s all your fault.  If it wasn’t, it’d be her head that would explode.

Let a barka bark!

Becky made me move the jackalope to the office.

Oddly, there are no kitty cats at the office, so he must be doiing his job well.

the cats (not) at your office can smell Zeke and his cat-hating inner nature.

or they’re boycotting the patriarchy—when will you get a jillalope to even things out?

Clearly, what we need is bigger rabbits.  Carrots and intrusive cats be damned.

tell you neighbor you want to make out with her. oh — wait. better not.

Cat really does taste like duck.

‘Round here we have well fed coyotes, not too many cats sittin’ outside the fence.

The animal chain of command goes mouse, cat, dog.  Norb is right, you gotta let a barka bark.

The animal chain of command goes mouse, cat, dog.

Yeah, but only until the non-living viruses bring us all to our knees.  Bow down to the simpletons, ye mammalocentrists!

PLEASE don’t let’s get eRobin started on the viruses.

A-choo.

two of the cats of our house have taught the much larger dogs to keep their distance.  however, the dogs will bark if they are out of claw’s way.  [the third cat is blind and socially inept by feline standards, and he likes to play with the dogs.]

(posted via LiveJournal also, but I realized I should post here so you can see it here)

Well, she shouldn’t let her mouth out loose like that.

Neighbors can be fun. I have a running shop on our block, three doors down from me. The owner comes out every morning and sweeps the sidewalk down to my house, sometimes farther, clearing all the leaves off the sidewalk.

Sounds nice, except that she sweeps the leaves from the sidewalk, where they’re easy to pick up, into the gutter, where they are hard to pick up when cars are parked there (i.e., always) and where they turn into gutter mulch along with any trash that visiting idiots toss on the street or sidewalk.

Also, she’s doing it so that the people who try on shoes in her store can run up and down the sidewalk without getting the leaves or other stuff on them. She doesn’t seem to bother to clear the snow, I guess because they’re not allowed outside with the shoes then.

So I was (uncharacteristically) at home the other day when I heard her sweeping. I leaned out the window and asked her if there might be some other way to clear the sidewalk without putting the leaves in the gutter. They create mounds of icky stuff that becomes a barrier to water draining out of the gutter and gets on your shoes when you get out of your car and walk to your house. I said, I realize that you don’t want to get the dirty leaves and junk on the shoes your customers are trying out, and I understand that, but can you do this some different way? By not putting the leaves in the gutter?

She explained that she picks up the ones in front of her shop and puts them in a box. Uh, yeah. But not the ones in front of other houses. So the gutter is still clogged and I can’t always park right in front of my house, so her leaf sweepings get on my feet anyway.

She explained that if we *all* cleaned up the leaves in our gutters then there would be no such problem. Maybe no one else would do it at first but eventually everyone would do pitch in. Uh, yeah, but not everyone’s going to do it. For damn sure no one in the apartment building next to her will.

And it’s not really easy to get the gutter mulch out of the gutter because there really are always vehicles parked there, and you don’t want to scrape a rake or shovel against someone’s car.

She rolled her eyes and explained to me that leaves were “Just nature.” Uh, yeah. I know that. I’ve seen trees and stuff. But is there some other way to clear them off the path without putting them in the gutter?

She gave in. Sort of. She won’t sweep the leaves in front of our house. She said this in a tone that clearly communicated that we’d be so, so sorry to miss her altruistic effort in keeping the sidewalk clean, does a good deed never go unpunished, etcetera, etcetera.

Uh, yeah.

Argh..."outdoor cats” are a pet peeve of mine.  Even Ingrid Newkirk, the crusader at the helm of PETA, advocates an indoor only policy for cat owners, but most believe it “cruel.” As a cat lover and owner myself, I have grown intolerant of such attitudes.  What is terrible, if not cruel, is the hefty toll the most prevalent invasive species in North America takes.