Celluloid heroes have nothing on skunk man

Published Dec. 31, 2007

It was the final minutes of the triple-feature.
We had watched the "The Bourne Identity" and "The Bourne Supremacy."
And now we were watching the end of "The Bourne Ultimatum."
The boys were sprawled across the sectional pit.
I was on the floor in front of the TV.
And Jason Bourne was floating in New York’s East River.
Could he survive a 10-story fall and the shots fired at him as he fell?
In the midst of the suspense, I realized something menacing was in our own house.
I smelled it.
And suddenly, being face down in the East River didn’t seem so bad.

I got up the next morning and the smell of the menace from the night before still lingered.
A skunk.
My husband had found the source of the odor: The critter was hunkered down in a shoebox-size hole that allowed access to the plumbing under the pool house.
"Come see," my husband said.
We bent at the waist, squinting down into the hole while keeping our distance, ready to run if need be.
The skunk wasn’t moving but it looked as if it was watching us. Its teeth were clenching a stick like a dog clenches a bone.
"Let’s get something and poke him," I said to my husband.
"Poke him?"
"Maybe he’ll run away," I said.
My husband got the handle of a shovel and poked. I stood back.
"I think he’s dead," my husband said.
"We need to call someone," I said as I walked toward the house.
I went inside, pulled out the phone book and opened the yellow pages to Pest Control.
As I was dialing the phone, I looked out the window and saw my husband walking deliberately across the back yard.
He was carrying a handful of spear-like objects -- a spade, a tree trimmer and a couple other sticks. Draped over his other arm was a coiled orange extension cord.
He looked as if he was going to harpoon a seal.
A woman answered the phone.
"We don’t do skunks," she told me. "We only do bugs. You need critter control."
And then she rattled off some phone numbers of people who might be able to help.
I dialed one of the numbers.
"How much would you charge to get a dead skunk out from a hole in our yard?" I asked the man who answered.
"Are you sure he’s dead? $65."
Shoot, a bargain at twice the price.
I asked him how soon he could be here and went to tell the mighty hunter in the backyard that he was off the hook.
As we stood looking at the critter, we heard a car pull into the driveway.
The skunk man.
"That’s not a stick in its mouth," he said as he peered into the hole. "That’s an electrical wire. He must have been chewing on it and got zapped," he said, contorting his face into that of an electrocuted skunk.
My husband cut the electricity to the house so the critter control man didn’t end up like the critter. Then the skunk man went to work.
He thrust a grabber tool into the hole and yanked on the skunk’s head.
Whoa. That was it for me. I jumped back as the first try was unsuccessful and the critter’s head popped out of the tool.
But, a couple more yanks and it was out and safely deposited in a garbage bag.
Now, if only that grabber is strong enough to pull a body out of the East River …

The skunk

This is the skunk that found not-so-safe refuge at our house.

Early bird still hungry after catching worm

Published Dec. 17, 2007

There weren’t many "Early Bird" shoppers at the mall Saturday morning.
But my friend and I were two of them.
I had asked her half-jokingly the night before if she would be up for some 6 a.m. shopping.
She said maybe she would.
I thought maybe I’d be awake at 6.
But I knew it was fat chance on both counts.
Yet, here we were, dragging ourselves into JC Penney’s before dawn.
The few people who were in the store were lugging to the register $200 kitchen mixers that were on sale for $99.
For a moment, I got caught up in the frenzy and thought that I, too, should buy one of these mixers. I didn’t really need one but I hated to pass up such a bargain.
But I came to my senses and went to find what I was really looking for.
You see, this Early Bird was looking for a whirlybird – two of them actually. Remote-controlled helicopters for my boys – my boys who -- at 21 and 26 – outgrew toys long ago.
Too bad their mom never outgrew the need to buy them.
Or should I say the need to hunt for them? That’s what it’s really about because there are few things more thrilling to a mother than snagging an elusive toy at Christmastime.
When my boys were growing up, people didn’t shop online. They actually went to the stores.
It was mother-vs.-mother in the toy aisle – and may the best mother win.
The most formidable battles took place the year that every kid in the world – including mine – wanted “Ghostbuster” action figures.
The factory shipped the toys to the stores in big boxes, each containing an assortment of characters from the movie. Handy, unless you were looking for the Marshmallow Man. For, although these big boxes contained lots and lots of action figures, they only contained one Marshmallow Man.
One.
And you’ve never experienced real terror unless you’ve been in the same toy aisle as a Marshmallow-Man-crazed mom.
Store clerks risked life and limb as they opened these boxes – a dozen moms hovering over them -- to put the figures on display.
That’s the Christmas shopping spirit that I miss – and try to re-create every year.
About a month ago, I spotted mini remote-controlled helicopters in a drug store ad.
I had visions of the boys flying them around the house on Christmas morning.
But, when I went to the store to buy them, they were sold out.
I felt a momentary jolt of Marshmallow Man mania.
From that day forward, I scoured the ads looking for mini helicopters.
I spotted them again but the result was the same: The store had none left.
And so it was this helicopter hunt that brought me to the mall before dawn on Saturday.
I have to admit I was hoping for a Marshmallow Man showdown with a crazed mom or two but, alas, I just walked into the toy aisle and plucked two mini radio-controlled helicopters off the shelf.
There wasn’t even another mom in sight. It seemed too easy.
But I found out something after I bought those helicopters. I found out that there may be better ones.
Apparently, there are battling helicopters that come two-to-a-package and they have lasers so you can shoot your opponent’s copter, sending it into a tailspin.
I wonder where I can find those. I could always return the ones I bought and get the battling ones. It’s probably too late to order them online.
But there is still a week before Christmas.
And that’s a lot of time for a mom on a mission.

A Griswold, er, Ewald family Christmas

In a scene reminiscent of the movie, "Christmas Vacation," my husband and my brother drag what will be the Ewald Family Christmas Tree out of the tree farm.

They dragged the tree out of the trailer hitched to the Explorer and into the house.
It took two of them.
My brother and my husband yanked and grunted as they pulled the giant evergreen up the front steps and into our foyer.
It was a little rough making the turn into the living room but, luckily, it only sounded as if the woodwork was getting ripped off.
They laid the tree down gently in the center of the room like the prize it was. We all just stood there admiring it and the smell it was giving the house.
Then my brother said something that one of us had to say sooner or later.
“Think it’ll fit?”
We all looked at the tree and then up the wall to the 15-foot ceiling.
No one said anything in response but my husband and I both began pacing off the tree. He on one side, me on the other.
“It should,” we said in unison.
“I don’t know,” my brother said, looking back up to the ceiling.
“Maybe you should have cut some off before you brought it in,” his wife said.
We hated to cut any more of it off. After all, we had already left the bottom five feet of it in the forest.
“Let’s try to stand it up,” my husband said.
Then, he and my brother got down on their bellies and shoved the trunk into a huge round plastic tree stand and screwed it in.
“OK, you hold the stand while we walk it up,” my brother said to me.
I walked around the gigantic green bush and grabbed a hold of a bottom branch. Soon the tree was coming at me. I put my foot on the tree stand to help ease it to the ground.
Three quarters of the way up, they stopped pushing. The tree was lodged at a 45-degree angle.
I guess it was a little too tall.
The two of them lowered it back to the floor.
Now what?
“Let’s take it back outside. I’ll get my chainsaw,” my brother said.
Take it back outside?
“Just cut it in here,” my husband said.
“Use a chainsaw in the house?” my brother said. “Not a good idea.”
“Not a good idea at all,” his wife echoed.
But the next thing I knew, my brother was firing up his chainsaw. In the living room. Two minutes and a lot of gas fumes and wood chips later, our tree was three feet shorter. And 10 minutes after that, it was standing upright. The biggest tree I had ever seen.
That was Saturday. Ever since then, my husband has been stringing lights on it. He dragged down from the attic every box, bag and ball of lights we had.
Up the ladder, string some lights. Down the ladder, get some more. He did over and over and over. But at some point he ran out of lights. Then, the drill was up the ladder, string some lights, down the ladder, go to the Walgreens, buy some more and up the ladder string some lights.
The tree is beautiful now, lit – at last count -- with 1,300 twinkling little colored lights.
There was a message on my phone today. It was from my brother who cut a tree almost as big as ours. We helped him get his tree to stand upright in his house before he helped us.
“Just wondering how your tree is coming,” his message said. “Ours is done, all decorated.”
Wow, he’s done already. Wonder how he did that so fast.
I’d ask my husband but he’s not home.
He just ran over to the Walgreens.

21 really is a magic number in Vegas

Our younger son just turned 21.
And I lived to tell about it.
Barely.
You see, the birthday party was in Las Vegas. He and his brother — my older son who lives in Denver — cooked it up over the summer. A bunch of their friends were going.
"It will be fun, Mom. You and Dad should come," they said.
"I don’t think so. We’re old. We can’t hang with you guys," I told them.
I’m not quite sure how the rest of the conversation went, but the next thing I knew I was looking at the Las Vegas strip out of the airplane window as we landed.
It was 10:45 p.m., a mere hour and 15 minutes until my baby was an adult.
Where was my baby?
He had taken an earlier flight.
I called his cell phone.
"We’re at the Mirage. Come on down," he said.
I wonder where the Mirage is, I thought, as I dragged my bulging suitcase through the airport. We were only going to be there three days but I had heard the horror stories about how far you had to walk to get anywhere so just to be safe, I had packed virtually every pair of shoes I own.
We checked into our room at the MGM, which, of course, was at the opposite end of the strip from the Mirage and set off to find the party.
The phone rang. This time it was my older son.
"Where are you guys?" he asked. "Get a cab. It’s pretty far away."
I hung up.
"Mike said we should get a cab …"
"We’re not getting a cab. We can walk," my husband said. "We’ve been sitting on that plane for hours."
A little while later, the phone rang again.
"Where are you guys? Did you get a cab? I told you to get a cab," my older son said.
"Mike said we should get a cab," I told my husband again.
"We don’t need a cab. It’s right there," he said, pointing at the Mirage sign.
Here’s a little tip if you’ve never been to Las Vegas: Nothing is "right there." It’s an optical illusion. It’s a two-dimensional place. There is no depth of field. Your perception is always off. Near-far, day-night, rich-broke … you can’t tell anything apart.
Except maybe sober and drunk for when we finally got to the party, it was clear which one of those everyone was — especially the birthday boy.
He disappeared for a while and I found him sitting on a railing outside the casino. He told me he was sick and wanted to go lie down, so I got him a cab and told the driver to take him back to his hotel.
The next morning, we met the gang for breakfast — burgers and beer (add breakfast and dinner to that list of things you can’t tell apart in Vegas).
This was The Day, The Birthday.
We rode the roller coaster that zips and zooms around the outside of New York, New York. We went from bar to bar and casino to casino and, in between, we drank fruity drinks out of yard-long cups.
Every once in a while, the birthday boy would say, "I can’t believe you just stuck me in a cab last night. I couldn’t even walk."
I wanted to hop in that cab with him, really I did.
But I didn’t know what to do. I wasn’t sure who I was putting in that cab — my baby or my all-grown-up son.
What a relief it was to find out they are one and the same.

How much is that mousie in the window?

Published Nov. 5, 2007

There are dog people and there are cat people.
And there are people who want both but have husbands.
My husband didn’t always hate pets. In fact, at one point, we had two cats and two dogs all living in the house at the same time.
But, the cats peed in his shoes and one of the dogs (the bad one) ate doors and woodwork and took off like a shot whenever he spotted an open door.
It was around that time my husband decided an animal-less house is a happy house.
After those animals were gone, we compromised. A cat, OK, but no more dogs.
But that doesn’t mean I can’t look.
The classified ad said in bold type: Puppies for sale.
“Shih-Tzus, Yorkies, Dachshunds, Poms, Malti-Poos, Puggles, Yorkie Chons, Lhasa-Poos, Cavaliers, Yorkie mixes, Yorki-Chis, Chihuahua mixes and more.”
And then it said they would be for sale for two days at a nearby motel.
Little tiny designer dogs. I had to go check them out.
As I pulled into the motel parking lot, I was a little afraid I would run into a collection of puppy-mill dogs, raised by one mad breeder, mixing and matching with no regard for the animals.
But that wasn’t the case at all.
What I found were four breeders — representing scores of others who have banded together to form what amounts to a traveling pet store — and about two dozen cages of cute little puppies.
I walked around looking at the fuzzy little creatures.
There were Yorkie Poos (a cross between a Yorkshire terrier and a poodle) for $199, Malti Poos (Maltese and poodle) for $299, Pom Poos (Pomeranian and poodle) for $199, and Shih-Tzu Poos (shih-tzu and poodle) for $350.
There were Yorki-Chis (Yorkshire terrier and Chihuahua) for $325, toy fox terriers for $225 and a Peke-a-Pom (Pekinese and Pomeranian) for $275.
“The poodle mixes and the Bichon mixes are the most popular,” said Steve Litener, a breeder of Puggles (a cross between a pug and a beagle) from Vienna, Ohio.
“Poodles don’t shed, so when you mix a dog that sheds, like a Lhasa-Apso, with a poodle, you get a dog that doesn’t shed … most of the time,” Litener said.
He brought four of his puppies this weekend. By late Sunday, there was only one left. It was $275.
This traveling pet store was Litener’s brainchild. He said he got the idea three years ago after he rented a table at a craft fair and sold all the puppies he brought.
So, he and Marti Drozdek, a Yorkie breeder from Youngstown, hatched the idea of the traveling puppy store.
Every couple weeks, the breeders take turns setting up shop in motels near highways in Northeast Ohio. They take about 40 puppies from assorted breeders, splitting the cost of the motel and the classified ads.
“There are really only about 45 good breeders we deal with,” Drozdek said. “We check them all out.”
“We turn some of them down if we don’t like the way they raise their dogs or we already have too many of one particular breed,” Litener said.
They usually sell between eight and 15. This weekend in our area, they sold 30.
They check out prospective buyers, too.
“We ask how many kids they have at home and what other kinds of pets are in the house,” Mark Crane, a breeder of Australian shepherds from Mentor, said.
Hmm. I knew my 20-year-old son would be OK but I wasn’t sure about my spoiled 15-pound Siamese cat.
Especially since the dog I would have bought — the Yorkie-Chihuahua in the photo — looks exactly like an overgrown mouse.

Finding space for treasurers ... priceless

Published Oct. 29, 2007

"I really wish you'd get rid of that doll. It's creepy," my son said as he came in the house.
I didn't see him as he walked through the garage to get into the house but I had a pretty good mental picture.
He stepped between the tables laden with "getting ready for a garage sale" stuff.
As he turned to wedge himself around an old TV whose back end sticks a foot into the aisle, he saw it.
The doll.
The life-size doll that that my parents gave me for my fifth birthday. It had been in their attic until my mother came across it a few years ago.
She bought the doll a new outfit, including made-for-human-children shoes, fixed its hair and presented it (back) to me.
"Look what I found," she said proudly as she handed it to me.
I took the huge plastic little girl from her.
Now, the first time my mother gave me this heartfelt present, I’m sure I must have known what to do with her.
But now, I hadn’t a clue what to do with a doll the size of a small child.
So I thanked my mom and brought the doll home.
I walked in the door and set her in a corner.
“That thing looks like Chucky,” my husband said. “It’s going to come alive when we are all sleeping and kill us.”
I looked over at her. She was a little creepy. I took her out of the kitchen – and away from the knife drawer – and put her in the living room until I could figure out what I was going to do with her.
Nothing says "something you can't keep and something you can't get rid of" like a 3-foot doll you got on your fifth birthday from your parents.
My husband, the Chucky chicken, put her in the attic and we forgot about her.
Until we moved.
Now the doll is perched in a corner of our garage, standing guard over all the other stuff we pulled out of the attic in the old house and didn’t know what to do with when got here.
All the sentimental stuff we've been holding onto for decades.
The garage is full and winter is coming. We have to get it cleaned out so we can put the cars in there. Cars? In a garage? Imagine that.
We've separated the attic junk into “stuff for a garage sale” – things we don’t expect to get more than a $1 for -- and “stuff to be sold on eBay” – stuff we hope to get more than $1 for.
But then there are still a lot of things that don’t fit in either of those piles, things such as the big doll and the mobile that hung over my babies’ cribs.
And the revolving bookcase that used to belong to my mother-in-law, the epitome of stuff you have absolutely no use – or room -- for but can’t bring yourself to throw away.
And then it hit me. I had an idea.
We should borrow my dad’s pickup, pile all the stuff in there and take it to one of those U-store places – those rental units that serve as garage annexes – and unload it.
Then we lock it up and give the man our address so he can send us a monthly bill.
The key? Oh, we’ll give that to our sons.
In our will.