Felix is doing better today. Yesterday wasn't fun staying up late with him to make sure he was going to make it. He is going to pull through and he is mostly back to normal, except for giant spuds mckenzie nose where the snake bit him. To illustrate:

Regular Felix

Felix as Ben Kingsley

As a cantankerous old geezer

Just looking really sad.

We've started both dogs on a rattlesnake vaccine. So we'll unclench our butts about letting them outside in about 3 months.

God help the rattlesnake living around the house (pictured in the March 7th post). It bit Felix on the nose tonight and no matter Felix's fate...that snake is living on borrowed time. Look out bitey. I'm coming.

Last week M was out of town in Austin recuperating from her surgery. I was back in Albany stone sober (no really!) the whole week. It was kinda fun. I got a lot of practice on the drums, worked on my little art project (4 years and counting), and played with the dogs.

On Saturday, I went to pick M up and as we were driving through Cisco we noticed something that we had never noticed before. See below.



We arrogantly thought that we were the first ones ever to get that joke but we couldn't have been because the warehouse was empty and the fragrant scent of recently dried latex, vinyl, and pleather had long dissipated replaced by other business endeavors of equally bad taste. Cisco is the town where there is a dollar general across the street (an actual street, four lanes, with a median, not a highway, no embankment on either side, no canals, no zombie turkeys) from family dollar (we did not get a picture. no free advertising for them).

Later, however, the aliens came back and opened the store, injecting a fresh supply of bondage equipment and other education toys. (for those recommended to this site by M, sorry I have to please a diverse audience.)



In dog related news, we recently had the dogs prove a natural phenomenon to us. Everyone know that you can scare the blood out of a horned toad, in fact, out of its eyes. And though Texas Monthly beat us to the punch confirming this seemingly impossible myth, it is true. Felix and Oscar cornered a poor endangered horned toad and it shot'em up good with blood. Got Oscar right in the eye. This really pissed them off and they clawed at it mercilessly while barking at it. "Hey!," they'd say over and over. But the toad was perfectly fine if not freaked out. I was too pissed off at the dogs to take any pictures. Sorry. I just didn't understand how they could attack an endangered species.

We'll get pictures of the next thing they attack, promise.*

Before I go, here is one picture to scare you and another illustrating the generosity of Albany.

The teachers all donated goodies to keep M fed and her mind busy after her surgery. If any are reading this and aren't totally offended by the above...Thank You.

*Promise not valid in Missouri or France.

A Two-Prong Attack

The saga continues. D and I decided to take matters into our own hands this weekend, so with a storm rolling in we hurriedly gathered our weapons.






















While trying to minimize the environmental impact (this is a working ranch after all) we knew we had to act fast. Since bugs don't react well to soap we thought it might work just as well as expensive cans of poison. After preparing an arsenal of soapy water balloons, D got to work on preparing the field of battle.














































The stage was set for our no holds barred assault.






































D even came at them from another angle just to up our odds.

















Though the water balloon contingent suffered many losses, we felt the assault was not only necessary, but effective.




























(This is in no way an advertisement for Dish Network. They are worth about as much as the balloon carnage you see before you. And they are far less fun to deal with than bees.)

This was but just one prong of our attack. As fun as this prong was, it alone would not suffice. We had to attack from two sides to ensure victory.





















We raided the BBQ aisle of the local grocery store. Though a duralog would have been best, we made due with lighter fluid, mesquite chips and strike-a-fire starters.

The final step was to sweep up the bee carnage and hope for the best.







The fire has been going for the better part of the weekend and only once have we heard the telltale buzzing from the chimney. I think this qualifies as blitzkrieg. Guess that German heritage in me came in handy. Die bastards.

Life's a bee, and then you die

So the universe has a sense of humor. Or at least the little part that we currently occupy.

After much life, job, health, etc. stress over the past few weeks, things came to a head this afternoon. I'll spare you the soap opera and just say that life has handed me a few lemons lately, but today I decided to just laugh and hope the bees aren't attracted to my lemonade. While letting out the puppies after school today, I see the pre-teen boy who mows our yard walk by and he tells me he can't finish mowing our yard. He goes on to explain that he noticed a considerable number of bees hanging around our chimney earlier today. He is afraid the mower will stir them up and they will all come after him. No problem, we'll wait till they leave and I'll give him a call. I go back inside to see what Oprah can teach me today and hear a funny sound. I walk over to the fireplace and discover that the bees apparently moved into our fireplace sometime today. Hmmm...Interesting dilemma. So I make sure the fireplace is secure and figure that D's almost home and we can figure it out together. A while later, our lawn mowing friend comes running up to our door and says he saw a swarm of bees and followed them to...can you guess? I'll give you a minute
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Our chimney!
We walk outside and sure enough, the entire top of the chimney is enveloped in a black cloud of death, I mean bees. So now I get a little nervous. OK, call the landlord, get the exterminator wheels moving. OK, D gets home, we look at the bees.....hmmm.....then we go our separate ways. Two hours later, I come home from a meeting and notice that the buzzing has really gotten loud. I walk into the living room and see the window covered in bees trying to get out. Yes, out. Inexplicably they have found a way into the house. Shit. I leave a very polite message on the landlord's answering machine, close off the room, stuff towels under the door and immediately google Africanized bees. Not long ago Texas Monthly informed me that Abilene has the largest concentration of Killer Bees in the country. Of course. Where else would they be? Or bee?

So D gets home shortly thereafter and we start to problem solve (I'm going to completely leave out any mention of panicking that may or may not have happened). We try to open the other not-so-bee-covered windows and see if they'll just fly out. No. So we decide to try to open their window of choice, pop off the screen and hope for the best. D volunteers, of course, and I load him up with 3 hats, 2 scarves, 2 pairs of gloves, a down coat and a pillow case over his head and I wait in the yard with a fly swatter wondering if I should just call 911 now. Fortunately, the whole thing goes off without a hitch and the bees leave.

We are so busy shooing them out and marveling at how they aren't attacking that we forget to worry about how they got there in the first place. Before you know it, we are waving our arms around and running from the room once again. Shit. OK, Daniel goes back in with towels and shoves them into any possible bee-sized hole he can find. Then we open the window and shoo out the new bees. Meanwhile a wonderful co worker of mine is trying to track down a guy she knows that comes to people's homes, collects their problem bees and takes them away. No poison needed. We're still waiting to see who wins the bee race. Will it bee (hee hee) the landlord's exterminator or bee keeper who doesn't answer his phone?

Tune in next time for the gripping conclusion of When Bees Attack...Your Living Room.