The Cat Lady

We live on the back corner of our apartment complex, facing the wall that divides us from a large city park. An anonymous individual leaves cat food and water in tupperware on the grounds near the park fence for stray cats to eat. The HOA has made mention on several occasions that they wish this person would discontinue this practice. The warnings have been unheeded.

Living so near the food drop location, I have had two exciting opportunities where I glimpsed the person I believe to be feeding the cats. Both were last fall, when I was pregnant with Jack.

1. I was bringing Hazel home from the park. Sitting on the steps just past our stairway, with her back to me, was a woman I'd never seen before. Long, wavy, waist-length blond hair. I'd place her in her mid-40's. Stroking a collarless cat I'd frequently seen nibbling at the afore-mentioned food! She did not turn around as I and my chatty child neared, which I found suspicious. For reasons I now cannot remember and do regret, I took Hazel inside the house and then came back out to look at the Cat Lady again. Alas, she was gone.

2. Mere days later, I was at my garage and spotted a lady with long, wavy blond hair driving an older car past me on the way out of the complex. I immediately called Todd to report another sighting of the Cat Lady. Because of the direction she was driving from, my best guess is that she lives in the building perpendicular to ours.

Jokes about the Cat Lady have been made in our house on a fairly regular basis over time.

Our rental company representative called me about two months ago to ask if I or any of my neighbors were the one leaving the cat food, as it is right in front of my building. I laughed, and told her I wasn't the Cat Lady and that she didn't live in my building. She asked me to confront CL if I ever saw her again.

It's all been very amusing and casual and just something to laugh about. Until...

Just before Labor Day, Todd discovered a pack of four raccoons nibbling at the cat food at night. He didn't think much of it at the time. But a few days later, he and Hazel were coming home from the park and spotted the pack running along our sidewalk in broad daylight! They headed straight for the cat food. Todd threw a few rocks at them to try to scare them away. Quite the contrary. They hissed at Todd and continued on with their feast, acting all hostile and making Todd worry for Hazel's safety.

The third sighting occurred as an entire family unit, in the early evening. I held Jack and Hazel at a safe viewing distance while Todd climbed the wall and vigorously chucked rocks at the raccoons for several minutes. After quite a long battle, they retreated far enough away for me to make a run for it and grab the cat food.

At that point, Todd declared war on the Cat Lady. Homeless cats or no, we can't sit back and let the Raccoon Gang invade our territory, acting all hostile and making us worry about the safety of our children.

For the past month, the entire Bonner clan has been keeping a constant eye out for cat food. Whenever we see it, we dispense of it. Hazel asks about the Cat Lady every time we walk past the drop spot. I've stuck to straight-up dumpster drops, but Todd's been working hard to send a clear message by rendering CL's tupperware useless.Cat Lady switched to paper bowls and started leaving the food on the park side of the fence. Usually it's just barely close enough that I can still reach it if I strain, but Todd has quite frequently had to jump the fence to gather food and containers. One day she got aggressive and dumped the food in a pile on the ground and left the empty bowl next to it. She's got her own ways of sending messages.

Todd and I took a walk past the building I suspect CL lives in, and I think we may have found her unit. Behold, the porch:We thought about dumping a bag or two of cat food on her porch, but decided that's like funding her project.

Frustrated with how this war has seemed to have no end, Todd took it to the next level and wrote Cat Lady a note, which he taped to the fence next to the remnants of her latest water bowl."Dear CAT LADY
I understand your concern for the cats and desire to feed them. However I have now joined the side of the HOA and am requesting you cease feeding the cats over here immediately.
There is now a family of 4 raccoons living here and eating your cat food. These raccoon have hissed at and threatened me and my kids not just at night but at 4 pm in the afternoon. This is unacceptable. I suggest you invite the raccoons over to your house for dinner as it is obvious you don't live in this area.
Putting food on the other side of the wall is still unacceptable. I can easily jump the wall and throw that away too."

Since then, the feedings have slowed down. She might just be out of town for a few days. If not, Todd admitted he's a little disappointed the Cat Lady might be done, as his next step was to add rat poison to the food. He said, "I can't throw all the food away, so I'll just make the food worthless. She's a sneaky little devil."

I'm Bugged

That's it. I'm not stepping outside one more time for three weeks, until the day we move away from this infernal state.

I'm washing floors today. Todd sometimes uses the same bucket for car washing with his Boy Scouts. There was some residual car wash soap, as well as a dead bug, in the bottom of the bucket when I took it off the shelf half an hour ago. I took the bucket outside to spray it out with our water spigot.

Apparently, when I turned on the water, I disturbed a hill of fire ants.
Before you could count to three, my entire foot was stinging. I looked down, and fire ants were swarming all over the driveway and up both my legs. I immediately dumped the water from the bucket on my legs and then picked the rest of the ants off with my fingers as fast as I could. Too late to avoid bites.

Look how red my second toe is. And do you see the big white bite in the middle? I hate these guys! They are so vicious.
And then, as I was hurrying inside to get the anti-itch cream I badly needed, I was bit TWICE on the arm by an airborne insect. I batted it away quickly and am not sure if it was a wasp or a spider or what. So there's a huge welt on my arm, too. Todd thinks it was a muddigger wasp, coming back for revenge since we knocked their nest down the other day.

I'm so ticked. I hate Alabama bugs. August 20th couldn't come any sooner...

Additional Note: Two and a half hours later, I broke my oath and cut Todd's hair out on the back patio, because I didn't want the hair clippings all over my freshly washed floor. I wore shoes: Todd did not. Todd got NINE bites on his feet, possibly from spiders, because they are huge and itchy and fire ant bites usually don't bother him like they do me. The insects are planning a complete take-over!

Playing Dead

We were up late one night and Todd heard a scuttling sound in the backyard by the BBQ. He went out to investigate and saw a possum running away. The drippings can was on its side on the ground.

Since then, there have been a couple more times Todd has sworn he heard the possum outside, always around 11:30 or midnight, but he has yet to see it face to face. Todd is determined to catch the possum while it's in the yard, and hit it with the broom, to make it "play possum," or pretend it's dead.

A few nights ago, Todd was especially confident that his time had come, so he had me videotape the proceedings. Please, enjoy! I think it is SO funny, as you can tell by my whispered giggling throughout the whole thing.

Rattlesnake Rodeo

This past weekend, not to miss out on some of the local "flavor", we saddled up and headed on out to the:

Opp Rattlesnake Rodeo
(42nd Annual)

Mind you, this was not for the faint of heart, viewer discretion is advised. While the live 'rattlers were the main attraction, there was plenty more seein' to be done: Dixie flag t-shirts, armed armadillos, a flashback to the 80's for some hair-bows (on sale!!), and a quick interview with some of the local folk. Oh, and of course we picked us up some snake meat. Hope you all enjoy this as much as we did. Truly a once in a lifetime event......

A Southern Pasttime

Growing up in a small town, I (Todd) became aware at a young age that it often becomes necessary to create your own fun. And while I do recall dodging a few sirens and searchlights, I think This Southern creativity has me beat. It's called Noodling and maybe for those brave enough to visit us here in the south we might go try it out.....

Ode to the Boll Weevil

When Todd and I learned that we were moving to Alabama, we started looking for housing. One of the first things I noticed was that most of the major businesses were located on a street called Boll Weevil Circle. That did not bode well for a bug-enemy like me.

Sure enough, it turns out the main street that circles downtown is named after the boll weevil. Actually, there are several honorable mentions for the above-mentioned insect. The most notable is the enormous monument in the center of downtown. The woman is holding a boll weevil high above her head, in order for it to be honored, I believe.

This is the plaque on the monument.


I did some research and learned that the reason for all of this fuss is that long ago, farmers in the area all grew cotton. One day a huge swarm of boll weevils swept through town and destroyed all the cotton. The farmers decided to start a new crop to try to maintain their livelyhood, and chose peanuts. It turned out peanuts were a grand success in the area.

My very first day substitute teaching out here, I came across this book in the classroom. It tells the story of Billy the Boll Weevil, giving the farmer the great idea to plant peanuts instead of cotton. Please notice that the subtitle is "A pest becomes a hero."

I have been meaning to post about this ever since we moved out here, but it took a while to get a great picture of the monument. I would always either not have my camera with me, or the lighting would be bad, or there would be too much traffic (it's in the center if the intersection). Long story short, I found that picture online and it reminded me I needed to post this great info.

Long live the boll weevil!

A Friend at the Door

Last night I was shutting the blinds on the French doors in our living room, and found myself face to face with a little tree frog. He was just hanging out on the glass.
We brought him inside and gave him his very first photo shoot.

Gator Huntin'

Yesterday was just your typical lazy Saturday afternoon, until our new friends Troy and Rebekah called and asked us if we wanted to hang out. We threw around a few ideas of things we could do, and settled on. . .

Gator Huntin'!

There have been rumors swirling among the soldiers that there is an alligator in a lake on base, namely Lake Eck, and that it sometimes comes out if you bait it with hot dogs. We set out to find out if the rumors were true.

We already had Ballpark Franks in our freezer, but I wouldn't let Todd waste such a delicacy on a wild goose chase. So we headed down to the commissary, grabbed some Bar S doggies out of the lunchmeat isle, and took off for the hunt.

Little did we know that we should have grabbed more than one package.

As we pulled up at the lake, I couldn't believe it- there was the alligator, right before our eyes! We jumped out of the car, and I grabbed the camera, but by the time I had unzipped the camera case, the others had realized that what we saw was actually just a log. Classic!

Alright, so it wasn't going to be quite as easy as we planned. We started to circle the lake on foot, watching for ripples in the water, movement, or any other clues. Half an hour later, we were resting on a bench in the shade. By this time, I had been stung three times by ferocious ants, my shirt was stuck to my back from the heat, and we were all trying not to be too disappointed that we weren't going to see an alligator after all.

Who was going to eat all those Bar S hotdogs? I wondered to myself. Not me!

We all stood up, consigned to the fact that we were going to go home without a sighting, when lo and behold . . .

Did we find a gator that day?
Maybe we did, maybe we didn't.
To find out the answer, click on the video Todd made today.

We've got company!

Todd and I came home from a hot date to the movies last night (The Bourne Ultimatum - very cool). We came into the kitchen and flipped on the light, and VOILA! A new friend was on the floor, just waiting to play with us!

I jumped up on the counter, screaming, as Todd stepped into action (more like, stepped ON the action). Cockroach guts went spewing all over the kitchen floor! Todd was ready and willing to wipe them all up, but I insisted that we document this guy on the camera before the clean-up crew swept through.

My hope is that we won't see too many more of these guys, but Todd is trying to convince me that cockroaches will just be "a way of life while we're out here, and we've got to get used to it." He's so tough! He's also excited to make his way to the store to buy bug killing spray, so he can reinforce our doorways and such. Don't worry guys, he's on it.

My first blog post ever

Hi y'all!

The accents are thick, the bugs are huge, and the humidity is sweltering.

Todd and I have now moved to the booming metropolis of Enterprise, Alabama, and feel a little bit like we've entered a foreign country. It takes at least two hours to drive to any place you've heard of before, and we sourly predict that we will have few -if any- visitors while we're here. And so I have taken it upon myself to create this blog so that you can get a little taste of what we've got going on here.

Take a look at some of the creatures we are sharing our yard with.

This one might be a cricket??? We were walking towards our front door when we couldn't help but see it, perched near our porch light. I said, "Todd, grab the camera! This guy is huge!" We think this guy might be one of the bugs we hear singing at night.

This gecko definitely ought to be paying us rent. We see him in our front and back yards almost daily. He might actually be a chameleon, because he's been a few different colors at different times, but he is always around. Todd chased him around our backyard today. Not sure why. . . .