Yesterday morning I was making breakfast, as I always do for Leah and myself. The eggs were perfect, golden yellow in the frying pan. Scrambled lightly with some soy milk and some grated cheese. Yummy looking and tasting, they were a perfect picture of breakfast bliss. _SPURT_, went the ceiling, dropping some kind of fluid directly into my frying pan!
Aghast, I cursed the ceiling, which I now noticed had a drip coming from a vent above the stove in the kitchen. I was quite offended, to say the least! Dripping ceilings get the day off on the wrong foot.
Had I been posting about this yesterday you would have seen a much less measured tone than I can manage this morning.
Luckily, I called our landlord and he came yesterday evening to fix the toilet which was leaking. Yes, there was toilet water (pre-use) in the eggs yesterday. Luckily I was watching just as it happened, and it was localized enough that only half the eggs were ruined.
I had made enough for Leah’s breakfast, my breakfast, and Leah’s lunch — and now there was only enough for breakfast. Ugh! Actually, maybe I can muster up some anger now. _Feel the burn_.
I suppose that ended happily, more or less. Which is to say — I’m grateful that the whole ceiling did not cave in on me. There are worse things than ruined eggs.
Like weasels in the back yard!
I was working away here in the home office yesterday, 10am — 3 hours since the leak event — of course the ceiling was still dripping away. All told we collected about 8 ounces over the course of the day. _Drip. Drip. Drip._ I have a window that looks out on part of the backyard, and suddenly along the fence line I see a little creature running! He was about a foot long, reddish, with a racoon-like black mask! I yelled out loud *WEASEL!* — which I had no idea if it was — but it looked sort of like the creatures from _Who Framed Roger Rabbit_ who hung out with the Judge. Yeah, so most of my natural history education comes from animation, _what of it?_
I was still in my robe, having foregone a shower to that point on account of not wanting to use the upstairs plumbing and exacerbate the drips; but like the fellow in _Account of a Visit from St. Nicholas_ aka “Twas the ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas…” I leapt to my feet and went outside, to do… what exactly? It’s not like I was going to attempt capture… but I was mostly thinking of Leah’s newly planted vegetables in the side yard.
He kept on running and disappeared into the ivy.
Later, I was on the phone with a friend and she said that based on my description, it was more likely a ferret. Ferrets are against the law to keep as pets in California, or so I’ve heard, and I’ve no idea if they are native to Simi Valley — but what I think I saw was a wayward, illegal, pet ferret running through the yard.
I have not seen him since then, or this morning. The new seedlings and plantings remain undisturbed as far as Leah and I can tell, but I’m on the alert for illegal mammals.
And that was just the first few hours of yesterday.
Truly, I never know what’s going to happen next.
four comments so far...
Chances are you probably won’t see him again, unless he found his way home.
From faqs.org:
“Domestic pet ferrets, Mustela furo (sometimes called Mustela putorius furo), are not wild animals.
They have been domesticated for a very long time, perhaps two or three thousand years. They’re not equipped to survive for very long on their own; escaped pets suffer from dehydration, starvation and exposure, and usually don’t survive more than a few days unless someone takes them in. Unlike cats and dogs, ferrets aren’t even large enough to push over garbage cans and scavenge.”
That’s exactly what I was going to say! Also, not only are ferrets not strong enough to scavenge, they often wouldn’t choose to anyway, because after their first year of life, anything that hasn’t been given to them as food is not perceived as food. The only wild ferret is the black footed ferret, a completely different species, which is very endangered (even the wild version doesn’t fare too well in the wild!), and does not live in CA.
I believe that was covered in the FAQ. Next time please RTFA.
[…] contrast to the other day, when my eggs got messed with, today’s breakfast was excellent. Eggy cheesy soy-milky goodness. Oh and salt and […]