Everybody roomba!

My dogsit vacation at the Scottsdale resort is coming to an end. For the past three weeks, I've been living someone else's life. At times it's an uncomfortable persona, because I know what is coming next. However, I'm intent on being a person who is enjoying the last few days in paradise. 

Not only does this place have a stove, a refrigerator, running water, and a toilet, it also has a robotic vacuum cleaner. It's running around the floor outside this bedroom as I type this, bumping over the grout in the tiles and banging into furniture. The dog snoozing on the bed behind me appears to be oblivious. 

In addition, this Club Med housing development has an artificial lake, walking paths, and about a thousand dogs, all of whom are despised by the dog in my care. Maddie is not a big dog, and she knows it. She'll leave the bigger dogs alone, but any dog her size or smaller is fair game. She lunges on the leash with teeth bared and lets loose a barrage of insults that you wouldn't think could issue from such a puny creature. She is not a yapper. When she's pissed off, look out.

Maddie is not an obedient dog. She goes where she wants. If I happened to lose my deathgrip on the leash, she would be in the next housing development in a heartbeat. She doesn't care about ducks snoozing on the lake shore. It's the enticing aroma of old dog poop that really floats her boat. As I'm trying not to gag while I bend over to pick up her poop, I berate for the millionth time the dog owners who don't give a shit. Oh, pardon me. I mean, those loving pet parents who for some reason think their dog's poop is a gift to the rest of us. 

Curse you, irresponsible dog owners. 

The robot disk grinding in the other room just ran into the door stopper. Thwangggg! Maddie and I looked at each other, like, wha—? I investigated. The device backed up and went around it. Techology is amazing and frightening at the same time. Now the thing is banging on the bedroom door, like a 6-inch tall ankle-sucking murderer. The first time the robot cleaned, it ate a shoelace. It tried to eat the shoelace, that is. It couldn't ingest the shoe attached to the shoelace, so it came to a halt and wailed for assistance. I unwrapped the shoelace from its wheel and sent it back to work. 

I'm writing a lot on the final novel in a trilogy I started three years ago. My writing process is this: I start out as a planner and end up a total lost cause pantser. The only constraints I have are the easter eggs I wrote into Book 2, with no clue how I was going to resolve them in Book 3. I had to reread the first two books to remember the characters and find the clues I would have to address in this volume. I regret a few things. Yesterday I had a sinking realization I'd written myself into a corner. Last night as I soaked in the bathtub, I found the way out. Tubs are amazing. Showers are okay, too, if you don't have balance issues. Walking is good. Sleeping can be productive, although I never remember the hilarious plots twists and endearing characters in the morning. I have to believe my great ideas are out there somewhere in the ether, hoving around, waiting for an opening, and they will return to me when it's time.

Another disconcerting realization I've had to come to terms with is my failing memory. I used to be an excellent speller. I consistently won my 6th-grade spelling bees, the only time when I felt like a star instead of an alien from another planet. Now I can't remember the difference between its and it's. Well, I know the difference, but if I don't go back and edit my work, I don't find the errors. Like in this blog. I regularly omit articles. It's humbling, especially because I'm supposedly a professional editor. 

We carry on.

Happy holidays from the Hellish Handbasket. 

Welcome to Critterville

In my current dogsit, I sleep on my own mattress, hauled in from my minivan, spread out on the carpeted floor of the family room in front of the fireplace. I have found it is better for my character to sleep on a hard unforgiving slab of maximum density concrete-level foam rubber. A 1-inch layer of memory foam on top of the 3-inch foam is my only concession to comfort. And my binky, of course. A few feet away, my 4-legged charge snores on an 8-inch thick round of polyester batting held in place by a zippered cover of plush beige fleece. When she's curled up in the middle, you can hardly see her. To each her own.

A few nights ago, I heard something buzzing. I wasn't sure if it was my ear, which produces a shrill chatter once a minute for about fifteen seconds or some fresh hell descending on my already mildly hellish life. Then the buzzing stopped, but my ear kept on going, and that's when I knew we had a problem in paradise.

"Is that a cicada in the house?" I mused to the dog as I turned in circles in the middle of the room. The sound seemed to come from everywhere. I don't trust my hearing for obvious reasons. The noise echoed from the mantel. I poked around with my flashlight but saw nothing moving. See previous post about my eyes being tuned to spot small critter movements behind decorative objects. I bent down and shined the light up the chimney. The noise stopped.

"A-ha," I said to the dog. "We've found the intruder."

As soon as I turned off the light, the noise resumed. Yelling up the chimney did nothing. Banging my hand on the marble hearth was futile. I didn't sleep well that night, dreaming of giant bugs coming down the chimney and swarming my bed. 

The next morning I Googled "crickets in the house." During the night I'd had plenty of time to reflect on the nature of the annoying noise, and I realized it didn't sound like a cicada. It sounded like a manic cricket, not the peaceful Jiminy Cricket kind of cricket, who sings pleasant songs outside your window to lull you to sleep. This was Jiminy on steroids, a dude with a lot to say and a sense of urgency about saying it. Spotted ground cricket, Google AI suggested. 

The next night, the cricket was back, but I had moved on to my next critter nightmare.

That afternoon, Maddie indicated something was amiss on the patio. I saw a young mouse-shaped thing cowering under a plastic stool in the corner by the round patio table. If it had been a cockroach, you can bet I would have been screaming (inside, don't want to upset the neighbors). However, having grown up with pet gerbils and a white rat, I wasn't particularly grossed out. It was just a tiny gray fuzzy thing with a very long tail. 

"Looks like his eye is messed up," I said to Maddie. She edged closer. "No, I don't think so, there will be no  mouse chomping on this patio." 

We both watched as the mouse ran along the wall. 

"You better not," I warned the dog. I opened the sliding patio door and stepped back to let the dog into the house. 

What happened next happened fast. The mouse scampered along the bottom of the sliding door and slipped between my feet into the house.

"No, no, no, not happening! Maddie, homeland security! Get that mouse!"

Maddie stood and watched as I got my dustpan and whisk broom (recently purchased at Walmart but not for mouse-catching purposes). 

"Good thing it can't see very well," I muttered as I cornered the mouse by Maddie's plush round bed, thinking what the heck? I'll never dogsit again. My dogsitting career is ruined. How will I explain to the homeowner that there is a mouse in the house?

"Come on, Maddie, a little help here?"

The mouse ran under the couch, came out the other side, and ran straight into my foam mattress. Clearly, it wasn't tracking very well. I chased it around the perimeter of the mattress with my whisk broom, wondering what rodent god would inspire that mouse to get on the dustpan. It occured to me it would probably not stay on the dustpan for long. Plan B! I hurried across the room to the side table that held my laundry basket, dumped my dirty laundry on the recliner, and went after the mouse with the broom again. 

Failure was not an option. After some scuffling, the mouse ran into the basket. 

I held up my prisoner in triumph, dizzy and breathing hard. I took it outside and set it on the patio table, leaving Maddie to sniff around the family room floor with a perplexed expression, like, what just happened here? 

The mouse hunkered in the corner of the basket while I gave it a jar lid of water and a few peanuts. I poked half a dozen blueberries through the holes in the laundry basket and covered the basket with a kitchen towel. Now what? 

I Google wildlife rescue near me, called some numbers, left some messages, sent a photo with a text. I texted the homeowner and received a phone call immediately. I explained the situation: found an injured mouse, looking for a rehab outfit, yada yada, more to be revealed. The homeowner suggested I should let it go in the fenced area behind the orange tree.

"I want that thing as far away from the house as possible," I declared. This was before I knew that I'd have to drive that mouse many miles away, otherwise it would find its way back, and not only that, abandoning a mouse outside its territory would be a cruel act that would inevitably result in suffering and death. 

"You should just kill it," the homeowner said. 

"I am not a murderer!"

The next morning the mouse was still alive. I received a text from a critter rescue: "Ah, poor little roof rat. Sorry, can't take it, I'm all full up. Thanks for caring."

More Googling informed me the best course of action was to humanely kill the baby rat by bashing its head in. 

I made a little house out of a cardboard box, furnished it with a dish of water and some paper towel bedding. I set it behind the orange tree in the protected area fenced off from marauding chihuahuas. Then I took the laundry basket over there, tilted it on its side, and watched with satisfaction as the mouse scurried into its new abode. 

"Nothing fancy, but it's home," I said. "Good luck to you."

Two days later I checked the box. The mouse was gone. I had some moments of altruistic self-satisfaction. Yay me, I saved one of god's less offensive creatures. 

Yesterday I was sweeping the gravel off the walkway by the gate and saw some bits of gray fur by the fence. 

"Oh, darn," I said, taking a closer look. The head was quite a few inches away from the tail, smashed in and covered with dust. I couldn't be sure the remains belonged to my former rescue, but it seems likely. 

"Ew," I said and shoved the leftover bits of baby rat under the bushes. 

I skimmed a tiny drowned lizard out of the pool. On the bright side, the cricket has moved on. Silence prevails once again in paradise.