She Swallowed the Cat to Catch the Bird

I hope everyone had a lovely Easter Sunday or a lovely regular Sunday, which ever you prefer.

Today the sun is shining! OMG! I KNOW! (See this post.) And I am, of course, outside enjoying every minute of it. I bought myself some pink hyacinth the other day and finally had a nice enough day to plant it outside in my flowerbed.

I haven't worked in those beds for a full year and they needed some dirt. Dirt is in the garden shed. Garden shed is always full of spiders in the spring. I braced myself for this as I unlocked the door. Snakes, rodents, I can handle any of them. But spiders? My brain completely cuts off and I go in to freak-out mode. I have been known to slap myself pink if there is a spider on me.

*Pulled open the door*

Spiders scattered everywhere! Well, okay, like three of them crawled away. And I bent over to grab a big bag of dirt and I see the mess. Rats have moved in to my garden shed.

If you've followed my blog (or twitter of facebook even) you know I have these in my house.

And they are completely spoiled and I love them very much. But you can see even from this photo that they like to make messes. They love to dig and rip things apart, like newspaper and fabrics and wood. The unwelcome rats in the garden shed dug into two 50lbs bags of garden soil, and shredded countless unused trash bags, pulling the pieces inside my bags of dirt. And they also ate holes in the back wall and the floor.

I had a "There was an old lady who swallowed a fly" moment, wondering if I could rent a snake to chase the rats away. Somehow I doubt a pet store would let me rent a snake. I can't kill them (see above picture) but how do I get rid of them? I'm going to try some "Critter Ridder" which is basically black pepper. Squirrels cant stand the smell of it, so maybe it'll work on these guys too. If not, I'll try peppermint oil.

And now I'm rambling.

In other news! My Scribe Sisters and I will be hosting a fabulous contest over at our blog, www.sistersinscribe.com to celebrate hitting 500 fabulous followers! We'll have something awesome for writers, but also some great YA reads for you readers that follow us. Details to come at the SIS blog. You will have to be a followers there to enter. :)

The Fatty Ratties

Back in January I had a birthday, and my gift (that I practically begged for for four years) were two little boy rats. This is them then, at about 5 weeks old:

And this is now at about 9 weeks old:

Aren't they adorable?

This week is individual shorts week at Tangled Fiction. I'll be posting my short UNTOUCHABLE a little bit later today. I grew up near the Susquehanna River and spent a lot of time on the railroad tracks and swimming in the river. I was feeling quite nostalgic when I wrote this short. Hope you'll come by and give it a read.

Fiction and furry things

I know I've been MIA from here for a while, but things should start to settle down soon. Dec/Jan are always crazy months for me.

This past week was individual short week at Tangled Fiction. Each of us posted an un-tangled  full short. Stop on over to check those out! :D

Also, I got this for my birthday:

 For this:

 And this:

And their serious cuteness has taken a lot of my attention. :-)

They're names are Poe (after Edgar Allan) and Dowell (after Alexander Beliaev's sci-fi novel, Professor Dowell's head--one of Husband's favorite novels.) they're brothers from a litter born on Christmas and they are cute, and furry, and they are mine. :D