Prickly Situation

I forgot to tell y'all about something cool I saw awhile back. It happened in September...

The boys and I were going back and forth from the old house to the new, moving stuff. On the way back to the old house, I saw a man walking onto the edge of the road about 2 miles ahead. What the hell is he doing?? It's a super busy road - 3 lanes on either side of the median, speed limit 50 MPH. People are slowing down and most are stopping in their lane, some are actually pulling over.

What's that in front of the man? A dog? Too low to the ground. A beaver? What.....


Have you ever seen a porcupine? A for real, in the wild (sort of), not a picture, not in a zoo porcupine?

I have!


The above picture is of the man who I originally saw. The poor little porcupine! He was obviously confused and didn't know what to do. I can only guess the man saw him in the street, trying to cross and pulled over to make sure the porcupine made it. He was clapping his hands behind him and trying to get him to go. I don't know where the little guy came from or where he was headed. Oddly, this went down right next to the Natural Science Museum! The museum is surrounded by fields of really tall, wild grasses. Maybe the porcupine wanted to try out the delicious cafes across the street?

If you look at the background, you'll see a man in a motorcycle helmet and he's got a tiny black backpack in his hand. He came into the road and used the backpack to gently push/encourage the porcupine in the direction it was originally heading (crossing the road). The hand-clapping man was doing his best but as you can see, he wasn't really dressed to play with porcupines.

I just happened to have our camera in the car and got a coupla decent shots before I was able to move again and be on our way.

Here's a closer shot...


Beautiful, isn't he?

So why did the porcupine cross the road, Ruth!

Yarn Has No Legs

How's this for Things You Don't See Everyday...

Last Friday was the 8th anniversary of the Columbine High Massacre. Columbine High is a mere 25 miles away from our house, so you can understand that people around here are a little closer to this subject then most.

Every year on the anniversary, there are shenanigans. Fake bomb threats and such. Mostly kids looking for a free day off from school. Last Friday, someone took it a little far. The high school closest to our house had an actual bomb go off. It was a firecracker with a bunch of stuff attached to it that some silly kid set off behind the high school. They quickly identified the kid and tackled/arrested him, then searched his stuff/locker. They found another bomb. The other one was an actual incendiary pipe bomb that could've done some real damage. I found out all these facts on Sat. On Friday, this is what I saw....

(Sorry, no pic's) Davie and I were heading out of our development to go volunteer in Trev's class like we do every Friday. There was a cop car coming into the area and heading up the street. I looked up the street and saw another cop car and a big white thing that looked like a horse trailer. Thought nothing of it, went to school. At school, the kindergarten teacher gave me a memo (then asked me to hand them out to all the kids to take home) informing the parents that someone had set off a smoke bomb at the high school and they knew who it was and they were having a meeting.

When we came home an hour later, all the neighbors were outside and there were 4 cop cars and that trailer thing at the top of the street. I started to drive up there to see what was going on, got halfway there and saw that the horse trailer was actually a Bomb Squad truck!! I turned my little minivan around and went home. (I'm not one of those people who hear gunshots and go outside to see what's happening!)

I called my friend, Rachel and told her what I'd seen. We both figured that the high school kid in question probably lived at the house in trouble. Her daughter was still at school in their daycare program but she came home and got her anyway. Didn't bring her home in the neighborhood but took her a couple of miles away to the McDonald's.

I called Dave and told him and I was a little freaked out. He said, "Calm down, if there was a problem, they'd evacuate you." I'm thinking, yeah, right, what if they don't know about the problem til it's too late!

Although I was freaked, I was also pretty calm about it. If you picture my house, then go to my backyard and look at the house behind mine, then cross the street in our development and go up about four houses... that's where the bomb squad was. It'd have to be a pretty big bomb to reach us.

In my head I was inventory-ing my yarn. I called my friend Elizabeth (in Kentucky) because I was still weirded out and needed some adult company I could talk to (can't tell the boys, didn't want to scare them). I told her, "If something happens, what about all my yarn? The boys can run but the yarn has no legs!" We both laughed and she said, "Wow. Now I realize the extent of your obsession!" I told her, "Took this long, did it?"

The bomb squad and friends were there for about four hours and now everything's back to normal for us. I imagine, since they were there for so long and were wearing there big full body armour things (Dave took us out for pizza and insisted on driving by the house in question) that they may have actually found some stuff. Who knows. I feel for the family. I also feel for the boy in trouble. Maybe it was a stupid prank, maybe the kid's actually got some issues. Either way, he's screwed up the next few years of his life pretty good. Especially in light of the Virginia Tech nightmare.

Still a bit jumpy, Ruth!

Things You Don't See in Tucson

1. Grass Stains on little boys' pants.

2. The kids playing outside for hours without frying to a crisp.

3. People drinking water from the tap.

4. The children's parks are actually full of children.

5. Neighbors hanging out outside their homes, actually being neighbor(ly)s.

(I was actually excited about seeing grass stains on Davie's pants yesterday. I know, I'm a dork.)