Buh-bye butter jesus

I'm not well-designed for this world. I really don't like it here. I've again failed my mission and probably caused the death of four ducklings. I was summoned urgently, early this afternoon, while clearning the herbivore room. Our neighbor went out onto her back deck to let her dog out and saw six tiny ducklings and their mommy flying away. She didn't know what to do, so she ran over and got me. By the time we returned, we couldn't find any of the ducklings.

Our neighborhood is absolutely insane today, trying to recover and clean up from last night's horrible storm damage. There were chainsaws running everywhere, big vehicles and cherry pickers for working on power lines, and a very loud and chaotic birthday party at the trashy neighborhood troublemaker's house that was spilling over to the whole neighborhood. After all of us looked for a couple of hours, we managed to find only the two youngest babies--the youngest hatched only yesterday! I ran those two over to the duck rehabber (not Fellow Mortals, with whom I normally work), and don't have a great feeling after leaving them. I never worry when I leave someone at Yvonne's (Fellow Mortals).

We returned to look more, and we failed to find them. We brought each of our three dogs over on a leash, hoping one would pick up a strange scent and track it down. They were only worried about sniffing the neighbor dog's poop. We even followed heroine chick's (another trashy neighbor) cat (who she irresponsibly allows to run the streets) into the yard, hoping he could lead us to the missing ducks. No luck. I will be going back out again shortly, but I don't think there's much hope at this point.

So now that I've covered my failure, I can move on to the disaster that was yesterday.

We were having friends over for a grill out. They are AR people, so they're allowed to come into my house, but they've never been here before. I try to make a decent first impression when people come over, so they don't have to worry that we have our kids or animals in a messy environment. The problem is, with this many animals, the house only looks really clean for a few hours. Knowing that, I saved the herbivore room cleanup and the vaccuming until shortly before they were set to arrive.

L & I left the clinic, where I had just had a disgusting mole-like thing removed from my abdomen. It wasn't a mole, but I can't remember what she called it. Anyway, we walked out of the building into blackness outside. It looked like something really nasty was coming our way. I noticed as I drove down the busy street I took to get home that all of the people were standing outside their houses looking up. I couldn't see what they were looking at, but I didn't thing that was a very good sign. I drove the five minutes back home, got out of the car and noticed in addition to being black, it was beyond windy. I started shoving L toward the door, telling her to get in and go downstairs. I saw a bunch of debris--twigs, leaves, etc., blowing toward us, and the wind was stronger. I shoved her through the door and was relieved to have her out of the wind.

M had just returned from work while we were gone and tried to help out by starting the vaccuming. After about 10 minutes, our power went out. The blackness turned to gray/green, and then the horrible thunderstorm started. My first concern was about the unvaccuumed floor. Then I realized that if the power didn't come back on in the next 10 minutes, the roasted potato side-dish I had planned was not going to be possible. I then realized if the weather didn't clear enough for us to grill and the power didn't return, we weren't going to have any food at all! We also had unvaccuumed floors, but M pointed out that at least it was dark enough that you couldn't tell.

I started pacing back and forth and looking out the doors. I had nothing else to do and was getting very stressed. I looked out the back door and shouted. We had a tree down in the back yard. It had fallen over the 6-ft fence of the dog run, and I couldn't tell if L's treehouse was intact or not. I noticed a female purple finch sitting on our garage light, huddled under the eaves, trying to hang on and stay dry. I started to really worry about nests/babies being in the tree that fell. I tried to crawl around and look to see if I could see any evidence of babies but I didn't. I was still concerned, because I couldn't get to the center of the tree. As soon as the rain let up a bit, the finch flew into our lilacs and found better shelter.

The girls and I noticed that the part of the tree that had broken was bright red inside. It really looked like the heart was ripped out and it was bloody. M assured us that it was totally normal, but it was very disturbing to the three of us. It's not quite as bright or clear in the photo, because of the limited light. Poor tree! We will miss her much, as will all of the beautiful critters who lived in/on her.

So our guests arrived. I was wet. We had no power. It was still raining and dark enough that it was dark inside our house, and we needed candles (at only 5:00 pm!) for light. M had the brilliant idea that he could grill in the garage using our little propane camping stove. Then we realized that we couldn't get into our garage without power. Fortunately we still hadn't gotten around to fixing and replacing the garage window that had to be broken into the last time we couldn't get into our garge, so M crawled in that way and opened the door. We sat out in the garage and ate and visited, as it was cooler and lighter outside than inside. L & S played and ate inside--they were happy doing their own thing and hanging with the animals. We had great company, so it turned out okay, but it was definitely the most disastrous dinner party we've ever had! Our power didn't return until around 9:15 pm!

Dej came over to hang with us, because she didn't have power either. She was bored and has never really like storms, so she didn't want to be home alone. Her power didnt' return until around 11:30, and she returned home around midnight. My parents got their power back earlier than we did, and they sustained some major damage as well.

Today while I worked on the Saturday chores, M went in to work for a while (of course) and came back after lunch with a truck, chainsaws, and some of his guys from work. They all worked on clearing the tree for several hours in the hot sun. They got maybe half of it cleared. My dad came over to help after he got his mess cleared, but the guys had already determined that the remainder of the tree mess was too precarious and dangerous to work with, so they would need to wait until Monday when a tree service can come and take care of it safely.

All day today, you could hear chainsaws in all directions. The neighborhood has been pretty chaotic as there are many, many very large trees and power lines down.

Enough for now, as I have to get back out and do some more duck hunting.