Living on the Farm in the City….

I am re-thinking our family motto –‘There is always room for one more dog’. As you might know from stuff I’ve written, we have six rescues – three dogs, two cats and a fish. It’s pretty labor intensive sometimes, but I am in love with all of them (even Charlie the fish), appreciate and empathize with each of their previous dower circumstances and I am committed to giving them the best lives ever.

That said, let me tell you about the last 24 hours…

Ben and I, along with my sister Susan and my cousins, returned home Sunday afternoon from a long weekend in Florida where we celebrated our uncles’ 100^th birthday one night and our cousin’s Bat Mitzvah the next. Gary and my nephew Austin, who lives with us, did a great job of keeping the house clean and the animals fed, so what I’m about to say is absolutely no reflection on them. (Really.)

I returned to this…

First, as I went to feed the dogs, I  opened the pantry and saw a little army of teenie weenie ants on the floor. What a bother. Tidied up with Raid and Windex and made a note to call the pest control company in the morning.

I let the dogs out after dinner and Rusty (little chubby Dachshund) stayed out for a very long time. That is not a good sign. When he finally came in, he looked odd and even chubbier, if that’s possible. I assumed, as always, he had been helping himself to a boatload of poopsicles and gave him a dental greenie (maybe two or three). Imagine that – he thinks he was getting a reward for eating shit.

Shortly after that, Gary and Ben went off to Ben’s basketball game, so I settled onto my bed to read and all three dogs snuggled in beside me. While I was petting Gus (pit/beagle mix or something like that), I noticed a little flick of dirt on his cute head. Except the dirt moved. FLEAS!! One warm day in Michigan and my dog has fleas (that’s a song to tune your guitar, remember?).  I remained calm, got them all off the bed, stripped it quickly, slathered them in Frontline (how I wished I had remembered to use it every month) and headed to the laundry room downstairs.

Just in time to hear Jack (my precious, but rather sickly 15 year old cat) vomiting all over the laundry room floor (old cats are like that). Fine. I cleaned it quickly and thoroughly, loved him up, tried to pet Harry (my sweet, very chunky semi-feral cat,) and got the laundry started.

Around that time, Ben came home and started doing his homework (good boy), Gary went to band practice (good voice). Neither seemed terribly concerned about the ants, the fleas or the vomit, I might mention.

On my way up the steps, I heard someone else throwing up. Rusty…he threw up a little baby dead bird – in whole. I swear, I cannot make this stuff up.  A dead baby bird was in my living room. The dogs started coming toward it and I called Ben to help me. We kept them at bay but the two of us just looked from the bird to each other saying “I’m not touching that thing – you do it.” “Poor thing, but I’m not doing it.”  “No, you do it.” “No way – you do it.”

After a few minutes of that nonsense, I ran to get a plastic bag and gobs of paper towel, screamed while I picked the poor dead thing up, threw it away and thoroughly cleaned the carpet. (By the way, did you know a mixture of rubbing alcohol, peroxide and water removes and disinfects everything? A little household hint for you!!)

More dental treats for the dogs.  Lots of goose-bumping and hand washing for me.

I spent the remainder of the night cleaning (everything in sight), disinfecting (everything in sight) and being thoroughly grossed out, (which was good for my caloric intake, which, after a weekend of parties, I was trying to restrict). Gary came home and searched the yard for any signs of half-eaten anything’s, but saw nothing. We decided to go on a search the next day.

However before our planned noon search, I let the dogs out one more time this morning before I left to work out and decided to follow them. As I was following them to the bushes where I thought their stash of victims might be, I just about tripped over yet another victim – a very large dead rabbit laying right there in the snow (I will not gross you out by sharing details of how poor Peter Cottontail looked). I am sure Lucky (our big, beautiful, serene until there’s an intruder in our yard Shepard-chow mix) went in for the kill and then calmly walked away, leaving the other two to help themselves.

My disgusted, panicked call to Gary was this: “They are killing the livestock!!” He laughed, came right home, cleaned up the poor bunny (he’s really good that way), reminded me that we don’t actually have livestock and we live in the city, looked at the dogs with love and said “you guys…” and gave them another couple of dental treats…another reward for bad behavior.

And so it goes….I’m channeling my inner Eva Gabor – Green Acres, we are there….