Wild Strawberries

Something is in the air.
The full moon must be here or near.
Sounds are erupting in the night from the dark eery depths of the woods.
Strange things are happening to those we love...

A few days ago Gigi found some wild strawberries in the yard and decided to eat them.
They have turned her into a creature from another world.
One that pees in strange spots and who sleeps in her own bed all night long.
Granted, I have NO IDEA why she likes to eat the wild strawberries.
They are two millimeters big and taste like wet leaves with a hint of kleenex.
They are nasty.
But she found them and declared them to be "dewishes!"
Since consuming the yard delicacies, she has decided to disrobe from the waist down and pee in the sandbox and to do the same at the top of our basement steps.
Even more bizarre is this.
She slept in her own bed all night last night.
The last time that happened was.............................
never.
98.7% of the time she meanders into our room in the wee hours of 11pm and either is swift enough to sneak in unnoticed between her father and I or she plows into the bed stepping on my calves and punching me in the eye.
The other 1.3% of the time she manages to climb the ladder of the bunkbed and squishes herself in next to her sister.
Other than the strange bathroom habits, maybe I should let her nosh on as many wild strawberries as she can find if it means staying out of my bed.

The other strange night happenings occurred only one night.
So far.
Last evening Zoe was showing us a dance she's learning for school.
It's to the song "Locomotion" and she wanted Chad and I to sing for her while she demonstrated her moves.
In our very best soprano and bass voices we were in the second verse of the song (how we actually knew most of the words to that atrocious song baffled us beyond belief!) and were just rounding up to sing "Da da do da we wah hey hey, let's make a train now" we were stopped cold by the sound of screaming.
High squeals of death and doom reverberated into our ears from the front yard.
I said "wow, that bird hates our singing FOR SURE!"
But then Chad yelled out "NO, the cat has a baby bunny!!!!!!"

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

If you've never heard a screaming rabbit, it's not a pleasant sound.
It was shrill and desperate and awful to hear.
Chad and Zoe rushed out the front door and chased Firecracker the cat across the yard.
He never did let go of that bunny!
Pandemonium ensued inside where I was with Gigi who was crying "is the baby bunny dead?!"
and the were dogs trying as hard as they could to get outside to help in the chase.
Zoe finally caught up with the cat as he ran into a bush and she smacked his bum hard and he let go of the baby.
She scooped up the cat and Chad got the other felines inside so they wouldn't go after the wee bunny either.
After much panting and exclaiming from the cat wrangler herself, I got a towel and headed to the bush.
Would it be a bloodbath?
A panting, near death ordeal for the girls to witness?
It was not.
We found the baby and it seemed ok.
We had thwarted a kill just in time.
We had seen his mother watching the entire catnapping close to where Firecracker had picked up the baby initially.
She wasn't moving a muscle.
So, we went to that area of the front yard and placed the baby in his towel up against a tree close to where she had been sitting.
This morning he was gone.
Mama had come to get him or he had jumped away on his own.
Either way, we have scolded the kittens and told them to be nice.
Yeah, right.
This morning we found Popcorn sitting in the driveway next to a disemboweled rat.
I don't know if he caught the thing or he just happened to find it and decided to claim it as his own.
Either way, I think they too have found the wild strawberries and they have had a profound affect on them as well.
Turned them into THE KILLER CATS OF CHESHIRE FARM!

Too much excitement for me, that's for sure.
Today I hope everyone urinates in the proper places and all baby creatures are left in peace.
But we all know,
kids will be kids and cats will be cats.


p.s. my own "animals should be friends with everyone" conscious is screaming at me to say...don't hate our cats. they are very good felines. we have them to rid our house/barn/yard of mice. they do behave specific to their species and hunt other things. our dog has the same instinct as well. Lola has caught and killed squirrels and attacked baby birds in their nests. so as it is when you live in the country. nature and mankind's best friends sometimes collide.