For months now, every time I go to take a bath or shower I find a spider in the bathtub. Every. Single. Time. I don't know what it is about my bathtub that is such a draw to spiders, but it seems that there is some sort of spider law that a single spider must take up residence in there at all times. I carefully remove the spider using a yoghurt container and a piece of paper, relocating little Igor or Charlotte to the back yard, yet the next time I go to use the tub, there is inevitably another eight-legged critter in there waiting for me. It's like my bathtub has a vacancy sign that only spiders can see:
Spider residence now available!
Must fill immediately!
Move-in ready!
Disclaimer: Slight chance of free relocation to a more outdoorsy abode.
Take possession Today!
It's funny, I seem to have a history of critters of various sizes entering my homes (or yards) uninvited. I've had
frogs, raccoons, squirrels,
hummingbirds, cats, bunnies, and dogs appear in our house or yard without invitation... not to mention the numerous critters our cats used to catch and release in the house when I was a kid, or the animals our neighbors would bring to my mom to rehabilitate. We wound up with several unusual birds that way... golden pheasants, crows, ducks...
I've written about the
frogs who have not only appeared in my garden, but have hopped right in the door and across my living room floor - more than once! I actually thought that the little frog was one of the kids toys left out during a recent visit with N&J, until I saw it leap a couple of feet up and to the right.
I've mentioned the
hummingbird that I had to rescue from the eating area of our house, and the squirrels who ate from my hand. I learned how to patch up drywall when mom and I cut several holes in the wall to rescue a baby squirrel who got stuck in the wall of our house.
Let me see if I can clear up some of the other animal appearances...
There was a giant neighborhood dog that used to break into our backyard and patiently wait there for me to come out and give him pats and scratches behind his ears. He knew how to push open the gate latch in order to enter the yard, where he would visit with our dogs. He showed up on the sundeck a couple of times, scaring the begeesus out of me before I realized that it was my furry and unnamed (to me) friend. Our neighbors across the street had a black lab named Shadow. He had an electric collar linked to an invisible electric fence around his yard. He would carefully weigh the discomfort of the shock he knew he would receive if he left the yard (provided the fence was turned on, which it often wasn't) against how much he wanted to visit his neighbors. I found him lurking in our carport numerous times. Often I wouldn't know he was there until he was nudging his head against my hand to tell me he wanted to be patted, RIGHT NOW! He managed to scare each of us more than once because he just blended into the shadows, so you rarely saw him coming. He loved our neighbor Mr. G. Mr. G was a quiet neighbor who usually kept to himself, but when Shadow was around he would just light up like a little kid, and made a point of visiting Shadow in his own yard every day so that he wouldn't get zapped crossing the invisible fence.
It was Mr. G who found a tiny baby black and white bunny in his garage, thought it was ours, and asked me to come retrieve it. While we did have a rabbit matching that general description, Domino was about a hundred times the size of the little guy I found hiding in Mr. G's carport.
A few years ago we had a raccoon mama that moved into the shed in our backyard. She found a large Tupperware container and used it to create a nest for her babies. She let me take several photos of her, cooperating as long as I didn't try to get too close.
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| raccoon babies |
When I was a teen, my mom stayed up late one night baking several dozen muffins to take to work the next day. She left them out on the counter to cool overnight. We woke up the next morning to find that every single muffin had at least one bite missing from it. We scolded the cats, thinking that was the end of it. A week or two later, I was in my bedroom downstairs when I heard a rustling sound in the hallway. The bag of cat food was kept there, so naturally I assumed that one of the cats had gotten into the bag and was helping herself to a snack. I called out an admonition, but the rustling started again after a brief pause. I peered down the hallway to find two beady little eyes staring back at me. Those eyes didn't sit on the face of one of my cats, but on the masked face of a rather large raccoon. The raccoon had discovered the cat door, let itself in, and not only helped itself to the cat food, but to the muffins mom had made earlier. To get the muffins, the raccoon had to go through the cat door, up the stairs, onto the kitchen counter and back out again without being discovered by one of our dogs or cats. I really don't know how the furry little bandit managed it!
Speaking of our cats... around the time of the raccoon invasion, we had two cats, Quixote Anne (not to be con fused with our former kitty, Don Quixote) and Kira. Kira appeared one afternoon in a nearly empty flower planter on our sundeck. We went outside, heard a pitiful mewling sound and found a tiny, very dehydrated kitty curled up in the dusty planter. How she got there, where she came from, and how she instinctively knew that ours was a safe place to go, we will never know. We called the vet, described her condition and were told to try to give her some water via syringe or turkey baster, but not to hold out much hope. If she made it through the night we were to bring her in, but not to bother right away as she was unlikely to make it. (In hindsight, it seems like the vet on duty was not very compassionate. I've met vets since then who would have insisted we bring her in immediately, planter and all in order to avoid jostling her.) Against the odds, we managed to get Kira to drink some water, and she gained enough strength to curl up in our laps and purr like mad. The vet was quite surprised when she went from deathly ill to remarkably healthy in a short span of time. Her growth was stunted, but she was a lovely and affectionate little kitty who liked to curl up next to our dog
Gandalf. At nap time, she acted as if he was her mama, he in turn tolerated her unassuming presence. Quixote on the other hand, he avoided like the plague after an unfortunate encounter in the eating area (of
hummingbird fame) where he cornered her, then didn't know what to do with her, so he kept barking while lunging at her while she swiped her claws at his nose. She won the battle, he skulked off with a few nasty war wounds, and that was the end of their chances at a lasting inter-species friendship.
