Taxidermy anyone?

Because we have a plethora of dead animals creepin' 'round this place.

Yes.  Really.

When you open the mailbox and there's a glimmer of hope that you might find a birthday party invitation or a fun magazine and all you find are junk mail and bills, at least you rarely find collateral displaying phrases such as these:



It all started with a SERIOUS stench by our front door.  My dad who has THE NOSE (haha, that's not even what I meant, but yes, it's prominent, I meant he can smell a fart before it actually escapes someone's bum) came over and he gave that look and wrinkled his nose and said, "Something is dead around here." 

Well, the man was right.  We started digging around in the bushes by the front door and couldn't find anything although it was becoming clearer and clearer by the day that something was FUNKY and it was time to really figure it out.

OH MY GOD.  I'm going to throw up just talking about it.  Paul found, tangled in the center-most branches, near the roots of one of our bushes, a dead possum.  Wrapped so terribly around the shrubbery, we are almost certain that is how he died.  Caught in the bush until the smell of decay wafted our direction.  Blech. 

I want to have a soft spot for all of God's creatures but if I'm being totally honest (hello?! It's ME here!) that is one of those animals I could do without.  Their tails, their eyes, their claws, their everything is just, EWWWWWWW, I shudder just thinking about them.

So, Paul admitted he is not a "dead animal guy" (I mean, are there really "dead animal guys?!") so he wasn't about to deal with it and I wasn't even considering sticking my paws anywhere near that ugly beast, so we had to call our local pest control friends to come do away with it. 

Before we made the decision to call Pest Control, Paul and I were both jumping up and down doing a totally spastic freak-out dance in the front lawn, and in a moment of panic, he asked me what I thought we should do. 

"Uhhhh, MOVE!" was my first suggestion.

And "Douse that bush with lighter fluid, strike a match and run," was my second suggestion.  

After I was vetoed, though I truly think he pondered the second option for a while, he called the "DEAD ANIMAL GUYS" (Ha!  They DO actually exist now that I think of it!) and that little possum was OUT.  OF.  HERE.  Well, $84.07 later.  And let me tell you, HAPPY TO OBLIGE, SIR.

And if that wasn't enough small animal death to start your morning off right, there's the story of three bunnies and for totally inappropriate, morbid reasons, they will now be referred to as "Flopsy," "Mopsy," and "Cottontail."

The other night Paul and I were lying in bed and we heard a noise outside our bedroom window.  It sounded like baby birds, and it was so loud that I even mentioned it to Paul; he threw out the ol' bird theory as fact and with that, we hit the pillows and were off to dreamland.  The next evening Paul was in the living room laying on the couch when all of a sudden, the chirping bird we had heard the night before was suddenly IN our living room.  And as he turned his head toward the noise, he discovered that this "chirping bird" was none other than that small bunny we now call Flopsy.  

Cue the bunnies:

FLOPSY:  This little fellow was brought to Paul as a gift, as if on a silver platter.  Buckley had apparently found a warren (I googled this term - one of several options:  nest, colony, bevy, bury, drove, trace, husk...) of bunnies and I am going to choose to believe they were dead in the first place because A., then I feel like it is the bunnies' mom's fault they didn't live instead of our dog's, and B. while Buckley is certainly a lab that has some instinct, she's not quite the quick pup she once was.  I don't think she could actually catch and kill an entire WARREN of bunnies all by her lonesome.  So, because it makes me feel better, picture the bunnies ALREADY DEAD.  Got it?  BUNNIES.  DEAD.  Aren't we feeling good about this?!

So she brought Flopsy inside (through the Dog Door) and set in on the couch next to Paul.  Although he's no "dead animal guy," he stays calm, disposes of it and tells me about it LATER.

MOPSY:  This brother of Flopsy's was presented in a different manner, but left on the same couch.  Last Saturday Paul's mom babysat for us and she called a little panicked around 9:30 PM.  After she had put Lucy to bed she was straightening up the living room (I know, she's wonderful!) and reached down to pick up what she believed was a sock (I just realized how nice that was of her to be willing to pick up a dirty sock of ours...) when "AAAAAAIIIIIIEEEEEEEE!"  She screams because as she is inches from picking this thing up, she is confident it is NOT A SOCK, rather SOME SORT of animal and she's knows it is ALL SORTS of dead.

She calls Paul to say that she just can't deal with it and asks to go lay on our bed to watch some TV.  We get home, and Paul once again disposes of the bunny and is my hero because at this point I was still yet to lay eyes on one of these little buggers.  Though I will say his descriptions are getting more vivid, the words puffy and rigamortis were thrown in there. 

Enter, COTTONTAIL:  Now, this little guy really went on a wild ride.  But we only know the tail end (pun intended!) and it goes something like this:

Last night I was doing some laundry while Paul was outside playing with Lucy.  Taking a load upstairs to fold on our bed I start to separate out the socks from the shirts from the pants, I realize an AWFUL smell has come my way. 

I move to the window, hoping something is dead outside (I'm touchy about these things now!) and that the smell has just wafted into our bedroom.  No such luck.  I check the laundry wondering if somehow Paul has gotten into something at the farm and the stench is just now making its presence known.  No dice.  I then move to the bathroom, running out of options and check to see if any foul trash has morphed into a dead fish.  Negative.

So I continue folding, wondering if it is in my head. 

Halfway through the load I can hardly breathe.  I yell down the stairs loud enough so Paul can hear me outside: "HONEEEEEEY!  It smells like a dead fish in our bedroom!!!"

Delighted - wouldn't you be!? - he trudges up the stairs, Lucy and Buckley in tow.  He takes one step into our room and concurs.  We have a problem.  He starts pecking around as I'm standing there nervous and impatient when I notice Buckley has her sniffer going mad under the bed, where the headboard meets the wall.  I call this to Paul's attention.  He slowly pulls the bed back away from the wall and then calmly turns around and says: "You and Lucy should go in the other room.  I will take care of this."

At this point I scream, "A RABBIT?!?!?  ANOTHER ONE?!?!?"

He physically turns me around and says to go downstairs.  Well, I don't follow instructions well so I stand there panicking and wanting to puke and kind of dancing around until I see him come back upstairs with cleaning supplies and a plastic grocery bag. 

And on that note, Lucy and I were OUTTA THERE.

So after a lot of vacuuming, cleaning the wall, disposing of Corpse Cottontail, Paul says, I think it's a good idea that we wash the sheets.  So at 8 PM last night we are madly doing laundry and vacuuming and dealing with the FOURTH dead animal to come into or near our house in a matter of about 10 days.

AND, please know that we are learning something from all of this; we are no dummies!  The doggie door has been removed for the time being.  Ha ha, Buckley!  No dog of ours is going to bring a FOURTH DEAD BUNNY INTO THIS HOUSE!