Wildlife Week Concludes With a Scene of Incredible Dullness!

Have you heard this story before? Maybe. I am too lazy to look it up, myself. So if I repeat myself, at least rest assure that when Mojo repeats herself it is still a hundred times better than some tiresome people who can't tell a story ONCE without it being excruciatingly painful for their audience. I know someone who occasionally announces "Hey, I heard a great joke the other day..." and whenever they do something inside Mojo dies a little. She starts casting about for excuses to leave. But it's always too late, huh?

They say something like "This'll only take a minute" and then spend the next half hour stammering through something so completely unfunny and disjointed (and perhaps even a little horrifying, perhaps involving the purposeful mutilation of small innocent creatures, say, and for some reason they think it's the funniest thing they've ever heard)... You have to wait for them to finally announce "That's it; that's the joke" before you are certain it's over so you can do your fakey half-chuckle polite laugh. And all the time you wish you were dead--you really do.

Anyway, a few years ago--a month or so after our dog George died--I spent the morning sitting on the couch working on the computer. The back door was open to the back yard like we always have it in the summer, so the animals can come and go as they please. I got up to stretch, walked over to the door, and nearly came face to face with a bear who was ambling lazily past the door at that very moment.

I calmly closed the door, then went upstairs for the video camera. The footage isn't all that spectacular; just a document that yes, he was there. And no ear tags, so he wasn't a Problem Bear. Just passing through.

My Favorite Husband encountered what has to be the exact same bear that weekend, and went outside to yell at him and chase him off. For bears need to learn to respect people and stay wild. Instead this bear turned around to try to figure out who was this creature yelling at him, and my Favorite Husband was suddenly very aware that he was standing in his bathrobe and bare feet and nothing much else. He stood his ground and threw a handful of gravel, which the bear took to be some sort of petty annoyance, but he moved off when the neighbor's dogs started barking at the ruckus.

We went out that afternoon and bought an airhorn and looked forward to using it on him when he returned, but he never did. Dang!

Oh, and for those who are critical of Mojo's landscaping skills... (oh great another long story!) ... We cleared about an acre of white pines to move the treeline back away from the house, and the loggers left anything smaller than eight inches in diameter strewn about on the ground. My Favorite Husband was ill at the time and there's Just So Much Mojo can do by herself. I've been clearing it a tiny patch at a time, but even a twenty-foot square patch yields enough pine branches for a two-day bonfire, so I don't clear that much. Besides which, what gets cleared has to be mowed, and I have a walk-behind mower and I'm already doing two acres a week mowing. So there.

On another note entirely, my Favorite Husband is taking next week off, so I am using that as an excuse to take next week off as well. So take care, and I'll see you when I get back, and I'll try not to do what I did last vacation, which resulted in my Carnival of Smiles....

Mojo