Rugged Individualism

So Janneke went to Philadelphia and spent several days at a conference. She did all kinds of professional stuff, including facilitating panels and...Hey, you know what? If you want to know so much about it, go and ask her, fer chrissakes.

Because back at the ranch was where the rubber hit the road. Back where no one reimburses us for our travel, where there's no complementary cocktails and no Christmas room at the B&B. Back where two kids have hungry mouths that need to be fed, there's a pile of laundry sky-high, outdone only by the tower of dishes and the dog that's clamoring to be walked at the end of a long, hard day in the salt mines of public education. Back in the real America.

Ronadh was instrumental in my foray into single parenthood. She let me dump - er, drop off the kids at her house around 6:45 Friday morning, which allowed me to get to work on time for a day of restraint training. Kid rasslin', as I like to put it. (I get re-certified every year. It's usually the same stuff - what you're allowed to do, legally, to keep students from injuring themselves or each other in case of a melee or some such. This year, the bureaucrats down in Boston finally saw reason and reinstated the throat punch.) Of course, I work at a district so bucolic that one of my students, when told why I wouldn't be in the classroom Friday, asked, without irony, "Why would you need that in a high school?"

At the end of the workday I came home, grabbed the kids, and headed south again to have pizza and movie night the way Papi does it - in style. (Which is to say: the way we do it when no one in the house knows how to actually make a pizza.) We went to eat at Pizzatella and watch "Bolt" on the day of its global release at the Berkshire Mall. After a quick stop at the side of the road at the suggestion of one of Massachusetts' finest. (I had a tail light out, apparently - T cried as we sat and waited, afraid we'd miss the movie; when I assured her, after being told what the issue was and while we waited for him to run our plates, that we weren't being ticketed, that this would take five minutes tops, she kept crying, but changed the reason: "I don't want to waste our time!") The kids were spectacularly well-behaved, and a grand time was had by all. Except for when T dropped her little blue plastic mouse, which she had purchased with the tickets that the "Squash-a-Spider" machine had spit out following her very good run. I had to jog back out to the concession stand and ask for a flashlight so I could crawl around in the stale butter and juju-bees until I found the worthless little trinket, which she had infused with a great deal of love over the previous hour and a half. Still, it wasn't so bad - I came out the other end looking like a hero.

When we came out, there were scads of teenagers lined up waiting to get in and see "Twilight". Among them were many of my students, in a huge group, all of them female, and they squealed with delight upon seeing...Q and T. They got a good look at Q, but T buried her face in my shoulder the whole time we were near them. It was nice to see them outside a school context - I remember seeing my teachers in shorts and tee-shirts at different points when I was young, and it was a very healthy adjustment for me to see them as actual people. Though it did kind of remove some of their magic.

Saturday morning, we loaded into car and went to Caretaker Farm, Stop & Shop, Wild oats, and the hardware store - because there has been rodent trouble of late.

All revolving around the birdfeeders. The larger rodent issue is the squirrels that continually eat the birdseed out of the feeders. Readers of my facebook page will know that I want to get a slingshot and shoot chickpeas at them to dissuade them - the tennis balls we lob from the deck just haven't been accurate or effective. I think they find them entertaining, honestly. But until I can manage a foray out of state, the slingshot purchase will have to wait. Because, as Dave, of Dave's Sporting Goods, said to me over the phone on Thursday: "Not in the State of Massachusetts. I can sell you a .44 Magnum, but I can't sell you a slingshot." First the throat punch, now this.

Until my contraband Wrist Rocket is in place, I've had to come up with an alternate plan, and have taken to sneaking out our back door with a hatchet in my hand. Why a hatchet? You certainly don't think I plan to harm them! These are town squirrels - killing one would be like killing the pigeons that eat out of your hand at the park, or the revered and holy cows that wander the streets of Des Moines. No, no. I don't try to kill them. Instead I creep as close as I can before one of them sees me, then charge the rest of the way, and as they scramble up the chain-link fence around the yard I underhand flip the hatchet in their direction. What are the odds I'll ever hit one? It clatters and bangs against the fence and scares them to absolute death - they sprint across the neighbor's yard for a good fifty yards before taking to a tree again. It's been very effective.

Today, when I charged, three of the four there gathered beat it in short order - but a fourth, the most daring, still clung to the sunflower seed feeder. He was turned in such a way that he couldn't see me - I could see his back side hanging off to the right, but his head was behind the feeder. And he waited there, not sure what to do or what the threat was. This is a very stupid squirrel, who probably deserved, in a Darwinian way, to be cloven in two there as he hung suspended between the feeder and the ground.

And keep in mind, I eat squirrels.

I barreled down on him, hatchet in hand, not believing how close he was going to let me get, wondering, in that split second, whether anyone had before stalked and hand-killed a wild - Spoiled, sure, but still technically wild - squirrel. So I raised my hatchet -

...and I poked him in the behind with it.

Hard, I must say. I was running, after all. He (she?) flew spraddle-legged and panicked off the feeder and crashed through the fence. I could actually feel the squirm and spasm of his (her?) terror through the handle of the hatchet - a live and wriggling jolt straight from (ah, screw it) its heinie to my hand.

And after that little incident, which took place this morning around 11:00, I did not see a single squirrel back there all day.

But I still want a slingshot.

The other rodent-related birdseed caper, which was the reason for the stop at the hardware store, is a chipmunk that had burrowed into the garage through a gap in the lowest...I don't know, "rung", I guess, of siding at the back of the house, and could regularly be seen scrambling off the shelf where I keep the bird seed, across the floor, and back under the woodpile when I'd go into the garage. I was concerned about how he might be getting in, so I moved the whole woodpile last week and found the entry point. I then took some nails and closed off the hole forever - and in subsequent days, Janneke observed him from the patio door, running back and forth, trying to jump up toward his former point of entry.

This little sunflower addict must have been waiting at the door when I charged out after the squirrels, leaving it banging open behind me, because even after closing off his entry point, I kept seeing him in there.

This was bad. He had no way out now - if he got in while I chased squirrels (or when the garage door was left open), he'd be trapped, and would probably have to try to chew his way out. If we leave the doors open in hope that he'll get out, how do we know for sure we're not just letting him in again? He's cute and all, I said to Janneke, but he's got to go.

So I took advantage of Janneke's absence this weekend and purchased a rat trap.

And I will simply say this: They are highly effective.

And I bravely stood up to all these rodential challenges without a helpmeet, with wailing, clinging brats impeding my every move with their endless tooth-brushings and behind-wipings and in-tuckings. Q made things easier by going away Saturday night for a sleepover birthday party, which left T and me to go out and have a night on the town.

T picked the restaurant in the car on the way back from dropping Q off, hollering it in wide-eyed glee as soon as I solicited ideas.

"COYOTE FLACO!"

Run by Ecuadorians, it's Williamstown's only Mexican restaurant. And as anyone who knows me well can attest, I could eat mexican food every day until I die and would never complain. T had crispy tacos and avocados (her own and mine), and I had a plate of enchiladas. And we shared the utter bliss of a cold, sparkling bottle of Mexican soda, made with actual, honest-to-Go sugar. The Mexicans, being a fine and wise people, simply refuse to drink anything with corn syrup in it. Try it some time - go get a Mexican soda from your local Mexican grocer's, and keep in mind as you try it that it isn't just different. It's better.

That was last night. Today we had pancakes, and then T did a lot of self-directed play while I took the underwear off the lampshades and mopped up the tequila and otherwise removed evidence in anticipation of Janneke's return this afternoon. We picked up Q around 10:30, and had leftover pancakes for lunch - in the afternoon, T's pal Hazel came over, and between that and the Fox Soccer Channel (Q's new favorite pastime), I was free to continue wiping up the bloodstains.

(Of which, all kidding and hyperbole aside, there actually was one this weekend. Like I said: Highly effective.)

The evening's fun came when I realized that, when I had cracked open the well holding the failed tail light, and had discovered that by simply twisting it, I could, as if by magic, re-activate the offending bulb, I had simply walked away, happy with myself - and left the lights on. So I had to jump start the Prius - a car with a thousand-pound battery in it. The irony! But it didn't take long, and it allowed me to erase my image as forgetful buffoon with still another in a long series of images of steely-eyed manliness - this time, automotive, rather than man-versus-nature. Either one works.

And that's it, in a nutshell. Janneke came home and the rest is history. So I'll sign off, having brought you up to speed, and having made Williamstown safe again for sunflower seeds. Take care, be in touch, and, as always: Don't tell Janneke.