Laughter is the Best Medicine

I have spoke before that I have caught several unwanted creatures in our garage. Well, there is another animal hiding in the shadows in the corners of the garage. When you live in the same house for over 40 years, you tend to accumulate a variety of items that should have been thrown out years ago, but instead they are put into the garage and are taking up space that unwanted creatures can hide under, around or even in. You know you have heard the story of things that go bump in the night! Well I hear bumps, bangs, thumps and booms in the night.

Whenever I pull into my garage every evening after work, I immediately start looking around for any unusual or out of place items. My sense of smell is pretty good too. I can smell an unusual smell and pretty much pin point where it is coming from. My biggest fear is that on one of these excursions I will have something jump out at me that will be totally unexpected and trap me. It will probably be a skunk.

My mother and I live in a small township N. of Midwest City so we have some open fields and country close by the housing addition that we live in. Hence, an assortment of animals that exist in our area. We have rabbits, skunks, stray dogs, cats, snakes, lama’s and horses. And if you drive or walk  around the corner then down the street a pet cemetery.

Well, to the point. I noticed a very unplesant smell in the garage last weekend, so Sat. night I decided it was time for me to put out my animal traps again and see what species I might trap this time. I made a wonderful tuna salad for sandwiches to watch during the football games on Sat. and I kept the stinky juice off of it in a jar. I washed the tuna can, set the trap, and put the juice back inside the tuna can to temp my non suspecting visitor.

I have been chasing off this very wild cat that tends to have litter after liter of kittens in our garage and then leave them for someone else to tend to. And it must know that I am a real sucker, because I will take care of them, feed them well then find them a home. I have tried unsuccessfully to catch this cat for about a year.

Surprise, Sun. morning when I strolled out into the garage guess what my stinky tuna juice finally caught? Your right, the beautiful wild long hair black cat with the greenest eyes I have ever seen. It looked so sad in the cage that I felt guilty for catching it. One of our own outdoor cats was sitting beside the cage and I do believe they were having a conversation. When the black cat looked up at me, it sounded like it was trying to talk to me.

I felt so guilty that I went and got my mother to ask her if I should just let the cat go or relocate her. My 75 year old mother took one look at this calm. sweet looking cat and said please let her go. My mother went back into the house, and when I picked up the cage that cat went crazy. It was running all around the cage like a possessed animal. I was really out of my comfort zone. I felt like I had just walked into a horror movie. I didn’t know if this cat would turn on me and attack me. I stilled my nerves and sat the cage on the ground, opened the door and watched the cat run like greased lightning one way as I ran like greased lightening the other way.

Once I calmed down and went into the house and told my mother what happened and she stopped laughing and crying, I realized that I still had something lurking in the garage that I still had to catch.

That was Sun. Morning this is Thurs. Morning and I have not see the cat again, and I am still working up the courage to set the cage again.

Remember to laugh it really is the best medicine.

I was recently asked when I would be writing on my blog again, well I guess it is time to catch up on what has been going on. Taking care of my mother is a full time job and my first priority, so everything else except my job is second fiddle so to speak.

Since I have last written on this blog, my mothers scooter has been in the shop for scooter repairs, its go has got up and gone. Now you wouldn’t think that there are many ways to mess up a scooter. It has two wheels, a battery, key with and on/off switch, horn and an electric motor. Now with a regular mechanic you take your vehicle into the shop and they listen to it, put it on diagnostic devices, drive it then tell you what could possibly be the problem.

With the scooter, they listen for the beeps. What! That is exactly what I said. They diagnosis the problem by how many beeps the scooters sounds off after you have the problem. Now the problem with that is, if I am an elderly person and my scooter quits on me in the middle of say a Casino and just starts beeping at me will I know to start counting the beeps. The answer is NO. The first thing I would do is look around to see who is looking at me because I really don’t know what to do, and I would be looking for a hole to crawl into and hide. Not to mention an elderly woman getting very frustrated with the scooter because it was not moving and was sounding off like an alarm and my mother starts talking to it telling it to go.

Of course when this happened, and it really did happen, I felt really stupid leaving my mother sitting in the middle of a casino while I ran to the car for her wheelchair and dashed back into the casino to get my upset mother back into the car, while I left a security guard standing beside the scooter until I could get back and try to push the thing out of the casino, to the parking lot and into the back of my car again. I am sure the the people watching through the camera’s in the ceiling did get a pretty good laugh.

When I took the scooter in for repairs, the first thing out of the repair mans mouth was, how many beeps. I must have had a pretty blank look on my face, because he asked the question again kind of smiling. You know one of those side way grins, when you know that he is thinking this lady does not have a clue what I am talking about. He Was Right!

Then he proceeds to explain. Now remember when she got the scooter I made the remark that they really need to come with manuals. When you turn the key off, you are suppose to count the number of beeps, and it is suppose to tell you what is wrong with the scooter. After two weeks of not being able to diagnose the problem because of course I did not count the beeps, they rode it for the two week period and did not find a thing wrong with it.

Of course I was answering almost daily to my mother, that they have not found the problem yet. Finally after two weeks they called me and told me with great excitement in their voice that they have diagnosed the problem. The electric motor was going out, but wait, it would cost $600. to replace it. I started laughing and I know this guy thought that I had totally lost it. He sounded confused as he asked me why I was laughing. I said you want to charge me $600. to replace a motor on a scooter that cost $800. that took you two weeks to diagnose because you had trouble counting the beeps. After about 10 minutes of both of us laughing so hard we were crying, he said he would replace the motor and all I would need to pay is the labor charge. Which I gladly did.

Now we have back this wonderful invention that gives my mother freedom again, that I am hesitant to take out of my car and she is very leery to ride, because we are both in fear that this may happen again.

And as Paul Harvey would end his stories, and Now The Rest Of The Story