Adventures in Country Living

He comes in carrying a plastic storage container. “I need to consult with the resident poopologist,” he says. An animal squeezed through the hole at the bottom of the basement door and left a deposit in the container in the fruit cellar. We peer intently at the poop, and I posit that it is probably possum poop, although the culprit could have been a raccoon or a skunk. Then I remembered that I did detect the faint odor of skunk in our basement about a month ago.

You might be glad that I do not have a picture to share, but you can find just about anything on the Internet, and there is a surprising collection of photographs of various animal poops in case you ever need to try to figure what critter was responsible.

I do, however, have a picture of the small snake that Richard spotted in our living room later in the afternoon. I imagine it came in through the gap at the bottom of the screen door.

It bit me when I picked it up, but whatever teeth (fangs?) it had barely scratched the skin.

It lived to see another day.

Repurposed

Richard is clearing the dish drainers of last night’s dishes, and he is making a lot of noise as he clatters the silverware, plates, and pots.

The noise stops. I hear him clear his throat and he is standing in the door to my office.

“Can you explain to me why there is a bone in the dish drainer?”

Well, yes. I can, except as I start to explain it comes out gibberish.

“Do I have to?” 

“Yes. I have to have my wife explain the very strange things she does,” he says.

So I start again.

“Next year on the Sunday before Easter, I think will try to do a Passover meal at Sunday School, and I need a bone to represent the Passover lamb. I found this one from that dead deer.

Last night I soaked it in bleach, scrubbed it, and it will be perfect.” 

He nods his head. Now he understands. Sort of.

This year at Easter I was going to do a presentation on the Passover Seder for Sunday School. I have some good material on it from when I put a presentation together for the kids at another church years ago, and I have a great little book.

I almost had what I needed. But not quite. I didn’t have matzo, and there was none to be found anywhere in the area. Not even at Walmart. The Jews who celebrated the first Passover did not have factory-made matzo, after all. I did find a recipe on how to make a Passover bread that could be used.

But what I really wanted and did not have was a lamb bone. At that time, lamb was more $9 a pound, and I couldn’t see spending $50 plus for a leg of lamb to get the bone. I didn’t want to use a chicken bone and pretend it was a lamb bone. Then time ran out and the presentation didn’t happen.

But in the meantime, there is a spot on the frontage road where I walk every other morning -- near where I found the first blue sock (see my last post)--that seems to be a favorite place for deer and other animals to cross the highway, and sometimes they don’t make it. I have found a dead fox there, and two does were killed trying to cross within the past several months.

The deer that was most recently killed was not scavenged by coyotes or dogs or other critters. It has finally rotted away (and the stench was terrible for a while there) and is now just a collection of bones. Although I noticed last time I walked by that something has started carrying the bones off.

Well, I don’t mind trying to pass off a deer bone as lamb bone, and so I think I am going to try again next Easter. It will be perfect, as long as I don’t forget where I’ve stored it and don’t chicken out on the presentation.