Saturday, September 08, 2007

Rats and Other Matters

Rat

No, I'm not going all rodent-y on you. (Not that rodents are a bad thing...but when you have four small furry things underfoot at all times, you really don't need more. And if its tail doesn't curl, it doesn't belong here.)

The Rat in question is this one:





Rat (AKA Devit) turned up our in front yard yesterday morning, just as I was leaving for work. He was limping, but very friendly, and rolled right over on his back to have his belly rubbed. His tag said his name was Devit and that he lived on the western side of the county (we're on the very eastern edge). We called his owner and she said something to the effect of "no, you can't have my dog--my dog escaped yesterday and the county shelter picked him up last night." Uh, no...he's here.


We put Rat, whose name is NOT Devit, in the back yard with the pugs and he went right to the pond and copped a drink. Now, right away this is a unique situation for us. The pugs walk up to the water, look (down) into it, and very quickly get that they will fall in if they try to drink. Rat just put his snout into the bubbler thingy and drank his fill.

When his owner showed up a short while later (and no, I never did get to work), we sat in the back yard and schmoozed for awhile. She was a lovely person who said she has two ponds, er, water features, in her yard and so, of course, Rat knew right away how to belly up to the bar. She also said that, although he has an invisible fence collar, he escapes regularly. I think this might be the farthest he's gotten. (Apparently he'd been a guest of the county animal warden but had managed to escape from them as well. How he got to our yard is a matter of luck, I guess.)

One thing I've learned living in the south: dogs roam. You see them all over the place, walking along the side of the road. Sometimes, unfortunately, you see them dead by the side of the road. I'm hoping that Rat won't end up that way, but I fear for him.

In other animal news, darned if those invisible fish didn't pop right up and show themselves off for Rat's owner. I hadn't seen hide nor hair of them since I put them in there last week, and they flaunted themselves like hussies for a stranger. Of course, that might be because we took an awful lot of pond lettuce out to give to her and that made things a little less crowded, but I saw three of them today, too.

Atlanta Knitting Guild

Our monthly guild meeting was Thursday night and, as usual, it was an incredibly fully packed night of activities. Here are some of them:

- Debra brought The Big Sock and several members knit on it. It's only here for another week or so, then it goes back to Rochester, NY and then on to ... well, who knows where. I'm going to accompany Debra and TBS to two knitting groups south of Atlanta this week.

- The Botanical Garden Scarecrow (which, for some reason, I keep calling the "Squarecrow" since it's made of knitted squares) was in attendance--at least its head was. It has to be in place at the Botanical Garden by about the third weekend of September so there's a lot of activity around getting it complete. Elizabeth and some others have been very busy already! (My teeny tiny contribution is a dark red rectangle which will be on the upper left side of the back.)

- We held a book raffle to benefit the library and about $325 was raised. That money will be used to augment the small library budget and buy new books, DVDs, etc.

- Of course, we had a terrific speaker, Jan Stephens, who spoke about how to alter a sweater pattern.

- There were two Mystery Stoles in evidence, mine and Pat's. They are so different and yet the same pattern--I love how that works. I enjoyed swanning about in mine (a little swan humor).

- Andrea has been our liaison with the Atlanta Day Shelter for Women and Children for several years. The shelter is one of our special projects and we raise money through raffles at least once a year and every month members bring donations. The shelter is a place where women can come during the day to clean up, learn basic office skills, get assistance with finding housing or work, or just have a safe place to be with their children. This month, I took over Andrea's role. I took Mr. Pug's car and filled up the back with donated toiletries, household goods, and clothing. Yesterday I drove to the shelter to turn the items in. I've missed doing service work and I'm excited about finding ways to volunteer with this incredible group of people. A good reminder of how lucky most of us are.

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