Don't Mess With the Zoo-han

Marlin Perkins died on June 14.

1986.

And that’s too bad.

Because if the host of Wild Kingdom was still with us.

I’d have the perfect location for his next show.

My backyard.

From my backyard you can hear the coyotes.

Sometimes see a deer.

A buck.

Or Elk.

(What’s the difference?)

Add our two dogs.

Loads of insects.

Plus a squirrel or four.

And you’ve got a show.

But wait there’s more.

A few days ago my wife and daughter were roaming around the backyard.

When they saw not one...

Not two...

But three..

SNAKES.

Ok, they were garter snakes.

The wuss of the snake family.

Which was perfect for me.

The wuss of my family.

The closest I ever got to a snake was when Ken Stabler was the quarterback for my Oakland Raiders.

But where I come from, a snake is a snake.

And I want no part of it.

Fortunately I wasn’t home for the first two sightings.

For snake #3, I stood by the door and watched my wife pick up the slitherer with a pair of tongs.

And fling it over the fence.

“THAT’S RIGHT... GET OUT,”  I yelled.

From behind the glass.

Unfortunately three was not enough.

A few days later snake #4 arrived.

And I was the only one home.

As my luck would have it, I had just locked myself out of the house by closing the back door.

In order to get back in, I had to walk to the front of the house.

And go through the garage.

As I took three steps toward the path to the garage.

There he was.

Staring at me.

Like the whale staring at George Costanza.

The backyard was angry that day, my friends.

Like an old man trying to send back soup in a deli.

I got about three feet out and suddenly the great beast appeared before me.

I tell you he was ten stories high if he was a foot.

Ok, maybe he was six inches.

But still.

He was blocking my path to freedom.

So I backed up.

Slowly.

Went inside.

Grabbed those same tongs.

And airlifted the big fella into the next zip code.

Or 20 feet.

Whichever came first.

Thankfully I haven’t seen him since.

Thankfully for him, that is.

But that is far from the end of our backyard zoo.

A few weeks ago my seven-year old daughter noticed a bird building a nest.

The nest kept getting bigger.

And bigger.

And before you knew it, it was the full-time home for a momma.

And her brand new chicks.

Fortunately the nest is located in an area where it provided no challenges.

For us.

Or them.

So like John & Paul, we’ve just let it be.

I must say it is pretty darn cute watching the mama dropping fresh worms into the mouth of her babies.

My daughter loves it too.

So much so that she visits her new friends several times a day.

Well today she was outside visiting when we heard a shreek.

Seconds later she was in the house.

“You gotta see this,” she said.

So we headed out back.

Expecting the worse.

And what we found was bad.

Really bad.

Another bird, building another nest.

Inside our satellite dish.

Gasp!

“OH MY GRAVY,”  I thought.

What if I can’t record Glee?

Come on, a man can only be pushed so far.

So I went inside.

Grabbed a ladder.

And those same pair of tongs.

The ones with the rubber tips.

And I got ready for surgery.

I think it was my 12th grade Physics class that taught me.

Metal tongs on metal satellite dish = KABOOM.

So I inched up the ladder, with rubber tipped tongs in hand.

Got myself in position.

And started plucking away at the nest.

Snakes, Deer, Elk, Coyotes, Insects... fine.

Birds messing with my TiVo?

I don’t think so.

We sent the seven-year old inside.

Just in case there was something in the nest that she shouldn’t see.

Good move.

I pulled piece by piece away from the dish.

Like I was Patrick Dempsey inside a fake ER.

Then finally it was time to remove the biggest chunk.

The nest.

I reached in.

Got a good grip.

And yanked the sucker out of its resting spot.

Dropping it ten feet down to the ground.


Take that!!!

As the nest landed on the pavement.

You heard my wife gasp.

Seconds after you heard three eggs crack.

Like it was happy hour at Denny’s.

(I hope my daughter doesn't read this blog.)

Now I don’t take any pride in killing animals.

But a man’s got to do.

What a man's got to do.

To protect his family.

And his Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.

Time For Change

Unfortunately George Carlin was a wee bit before my time.

Rumor has it he was hilarious.

Actually, I’m well aware that he was the first ever host of Saturday Night Live.

And I’m well aware of his seven dirty words skit.

I’ve even used all seven of those words in a sentence.

If you don’t believe me, just ask my kids.

But one of his routines that I have seen, and that made me laugh out loud, is his routine on “Stuff.”

If you haven’t seen it, just click here, AFTER you’ve finished my blog.

I know he was just trying to be funny.

And he was.

But his was act was pretty darn true too.

Like the part about your house being a place to keep your “stuff” while you go out and get more “stuff.”

Or the part about “their stuff is junk” and “your junk is stuff.”

Except he used one of those seven words for junk.

There’s nothing really funny about moving.

I suppose if you are going to a bigger place... in a better place... it can be fun.

But funny, not really.

One of the little hidden gems of moving is the process of changing your address.

If you haven’t moved in a while, you have NO idea what fun you are missing.

Since we are in between homes at the moment, I hired a P.O. Box to be our home address for the time being.

Then I started writing down all of the places I needed to contact to change our address.

There were the obvious ones, like banks and credit cards.

And magazines.

The less obvious ones, like grocery stores and old employers.

And frequent flyer airlines.

And then there are the ones that I forgot all about.

When the list was complete, the tally had reached 77.

77 different places where I needed to change my address.

Talk about stuff.

Some companies made it easy by doing it on their website.

As long as you remembered your user ID.

And your password.

Or your security question.

And the answer to that question.

Other companies make you fax them.

Does anybody really own a fax machine?

Other companies want you to write them.

And then there are most of them who I needed to call.

As someone who is sans employment at the moment, I was fortunately able to carve out some significant time in my busy schedule to get this done.

And that still wasn’t enough.

The first call was to my old mortgage company.

Since I was in full multi-task mode, it was no big deal when they put me on hold.

For five minutes.

Then ten.

Then fifteen.

Really.

Apparently they “were experiencing high call traffic” or something like that.

But I finally got that one done and moved onto the next.

Did you know that menu options have changed?

I must’ve heard that one a thousand times.

“Please pay attention because our menu options have changed.”

Menu options?

Who did I call, Denny’s?

I wish I had a postage stamp for every time I was told that my call would be “monitored or recorded for quality purposes.”

Really?

As if the job of being on the phone with losers like me isn’t bad enough.

There are people whose job it is to listen to our phone calls.

Wow.

I’d rather dress up like a sandwich and hold one of those signs telling drivers that there is a Subway restaurant in that mini-mall.

At least they can listen to music all day.

One of the companies I called had a list of security questions to make sure I was who I said I was.

One of the questions asked, “what county did I live in when I was in high school?”

Really?

First of all, I went to high school 26 YEARS AGO.

Second of all, I went to three different high schools in three different cities on two different coasts.

I can’t remember ANYTHING I learned in high school.

How in the world can I tell you what county I was in?

I was also asked to verify my last four addresses.

Good luck with that.

By the time the day was done, I was wiped out.

But my mission was accomplished.

Well almost.

I still have about 15 to go.

And then I get to do it all again when we find a permanent residence.

That’s where those seven words come in.