The greatest Thanksgiving gift ever!
Two days ago I was backing out of a parking spot in the crowded parking lot of Harris Teeter grocery store when my beeper beeped louder and louder. I looked left and right and over my shoulder and was sure I was far enough from the car next to me and there was nobody passing behind me. Then I felt a bump. A soft one, but definitely a bump. I scooted back into the parking place and got out of my car. Across the lane a huge black Porsche SUV was driving back into its slot and a young woman got out. “Are you all right?” she asked. “I am,” I said, “but I was looking for damage at my car. My beeper went off but I did not see anything.”
“My beeper did not even beep, I just felt something.”
We looked at my car, then at her car, and neither one of us had any visible damage. Then she opened her arms wide and hugged me while she was saying, “This is the best Thanksgiving present ever!” We looked at each other and started laughing and went back to our subsequent cars.
“Are you going first?”
“No, you go first.”
And I drove home with a smile on my face and a very thankful feeling for indeed, having received the best Thanksgiving gift ever.
A new creature in our menagerie!
Yesterday, on our walk to the Club for breakfast, I saw her curled up on the sidewalk. “Oh, look, a snake!” I said, and I got my cell phone out to take a picture. I could get really close to her and actually thought she was dead – or dying. Afraid someone would step on her, I put one of the orange cones the gardeners had left next to her. She did not move. When we went for dinner, she had moved closer to the edge of the sidewalk, so I moved the cone with her. The next morning, she was still there; amazing, because the night temperatures had dropped to freezing. So after breakfast I told Mike I would go back and save her. She was so beautiful, and so small, about 8″ when she unfurled and moved when I prodded her gently. I did it a couple more times, with two sticks, until I had her into the grass and thought from there she would find her way home. That night, a neighbor, looking at my picture, diagnosed her with horror as a Copperhead Snake. And look, in the picture you can clearly see the copper color of her head. “Look, she is ready to strike,” he said. “No, I was talking to her and she raised her head to listen,” I said. I had never seen one or heard of one and I found on Google that Copperheads get two to three feet long. They strike and bite, and babies get born equipped with teeth and venom, but their venom is not fatal to humans. Good to know. This one was just a baby, like I thought. I just hope that she will move away before she will be big enough to do harm. Because this was a closeup of about 2″ away, she looks like a large snake, doesn’t she? We have seen some amazing creatures in our back yard. Two small deer, a hawk who once killed a bird at dawn close to our bedroom window, a red fox who ran by, a large turtle, no doubt on her way to find water, geese and goslings, large and small frogs, guppies in the stream, and a great variety of birds. What a lovely place to live; in a city, yet surrounded by nature.
The Thanksgiving Weekend
It has been a wonderful, rainy, very long weekend. I did not have to go out except to Trader Joe’s to get some poinsettias. It was Black Friday, but that was not noticeable in Trader Joe’s parking lot, nor in the store itself. Our cottage is smaller than our home in Prescott, which we decorated with about ten poinsettias every year, but I found a nice place for two of the large ones and three of the small ones in our living room and sunroom here. Then I set out to get the Christmas tree out of the garage. I put it together in the same place as last year, on the glass table next to the loveseat. I had already spent time to puppy-proof bunches of wires by wrapping them in ten feet of black wire cover. I hope we can teach Lani that the whole corner is taboo, so she won’t pull down the Christmas tree. And, D day has been set! Next Wednesday I will work with the trainer to see what he has taught Lani, and then I will take her home. We are all set! Or at least, I hope so.
It’s a Wonderful Life!
Until next time,
Ronny