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- Written by: Rod Boyle
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I found a mouse trapped in a smooth sided coleman cooler that has been stored in my kitchen. It couldn't get out. And with the hamster gone (RIP), I thought I could begin the big mouse roundup.
I caught it, then released it into Hammy's cage. It hid, afraid, behind Hammy's old straw hut.
The other mouse, if there's only one, began making a pile of noise as if in protest, rattling papers, swinging the chew that hangs from the drawer, always just out of sight, the audible mischief done, but no mice to be seen.
And I went to check up on it a few hours later, but it was still hiding I thought. And so I turned the cage upside-down, mussed in the sawdust, turned over the tropical hut, nothing.
It's escaped. I need to find an old aquarium, something without bars, these mice, they're nimble.
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
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Kids nowadays are spoiled. I tell them but they don’t believe me, about the chicken livers sautéed with onions I had to eat when I was a child, about the year straight of overcooked spaghetti and meat sauce when my father was learning to cook. We went for dinner maybe once a month. They think I’m making it up. I don't think they've ever even tried a brussel sprout. Or a chicken liver. Nowadays, if the pizza has mushrooms on it it’s a lousy meal…
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
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I've noticed my page-rank is dropping. Odd, that, for a long time while my blog sat inactive without a single post I was #1 in searches for "Rod Boyle". But as of late I'm number #9. People with Linked In Profiles are beating me. And people with You Tube videos. Who are these other Rod Boyle's who run golf courses, IT management firms in the UK, I wonder? Bastards, every one of them, I'm sure. Maybe I need to start doing some promotions. I'm not looking for much, really, just #1 in my name. Perhaps I should post a clever You Tube video with me as the star. No one would ever see it because I'm not really a star, not even of my own video. But it would drive up my ranking. OR I could hide hidden links to my site in other sites I build.....
But really, what I should be wondering is why I'm so desperate for Google's Approval....
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
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And so it was the other night that the children's hamster passed away.
Now Hammy was a very long lived hamster, and so it really came as no surprise. She had been quieter as of late, not begging to be let out of her cage, and when I went into the kitchen during a movie I was watching I noticed that she was lying in the middle of the cage. I determined to bring her out to play, picking her up she seemed strangely limp and cool in my hands, and I kind of knew that this was it.
So I sat and watched the rest of the movie, holding and petting her, her little nose poked between my fingers, she would tremble and move about, but only a little. Usually she would stay still for a minute, tops, before wanting to be set free. But not then.
And perhaps a half hour later, feeling her limpness, I determined she was dead.
The children will be a little heartbroken, but they'll take some comfort in knowing that she lived to a great age (almost three years), and had a good life (with alternate days spent entirely free.).
Highlights from her life? Well, as the children aren't reading this I can be truthful. At least half of Hammy's life was a fraud. A double-identity, body double for the original hammy who met with her death in a cupboard way back in the days of the apartment. And one day helping my daughter to look for her I discovered her dead body, not wishing her to see I concealed the death. And it was great sport, the children looking for Hammy, our elusive free-range hamster, up to all sorts of mischief and adventures with the mouse no doubt, the children speculated.
This went on for several months, and then when I moved I had to reproduce hammy, the children were afraid she'd been left behind, so in the new residence I acquired another one, same sex and color. They never questioned the switch.
She had a name, "Night Time" or "Blackie", or something similar, I forget. The children never really knew either, after the initial naming ceremony she became more or less known as "Hammy". And so the new Hammy replaced the old, and sometimes the boy would observe how long lived she was, without the slightest suspicions, they only usually live to be about 3 years of age, tops, and here's ours pushing 5.
She would sit in the cage and beg for food when I would cook, greedily hauling in slices of green pepper or lettuce. We tried her on the Habitrail system, but she'd hole up in the tubes, living on stockpiled food that was soaked in her urine and smothered in feces. We found that gross, and so removed all of the tubing, she could live without it. When she wanted out she'd hang by her teeth from the top of the cage, sometimes she'd make noises, or fill her cheeks with seeds and wait to be let out, as if she were running away from home.
She never ran far. If you were lying on the floor, after an hour or so she'd come to you, run up your sleeve or onto your lap, and you knew she was ready to go back into her cage.
She was a pretty good little hamster. RIP.
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While shopping for the Boy for Christmas I came across something I wanted to buy him very badly. It was a plastic model of a human skull. With removable rubber brain.
"An Excellent Thing" I thought to myself "For him to study...Invaluable preparation for his career as a brain surgeon....".
Now the boy has never expressed any such interest, but I liked it and so was attempting to persuade myself that he would as well.
$100.00 is a lot to pay for a lump of plastic, no matter what it's shape.
"What attracts me to it?", I wondered as I handled the package. It was in a small independantly owned hobby store in the neighborhood. Is it an echo of my own bereft childhood, growing up without a plastic skull of my own to hold onto and cradle? Or is it the fact that it comes in a plain, square box, without illustration, exactly as one would imagine it should come from an anatomical supply house? It is, after all, the perfect "Memento Mori", and when he wasn't playing with it we could keep it on my desk....
I consult with his mother, ever tactful she advises me that his tastes are somewhat less eccentric than my own, perhaps ....
And she lists a pile of things that she's certain he would like, more practical and useful things....
On the one hand I'm somewhat relieved.
$100.00 is a lot of money for a plastic skull.
But I'm saddened as well, by the fact that it won't be able to rest upon my desk. The perfect gift.
I reassure myself that a real one would be better, and I'm right, plastic is a poor substitute for bone. And real ones are everywhere, the trick is to find one, ethically sourced, not from a chinese medical supply house, but preferably ploughed up in a farmers field, although this then raises a whole new set of ethical questions about native rights and burials...