Goodbye July (part 1)

... don't let the door hit you on the way out.

Seriously, July was no good to me. In fact I would say it was way overrated. One thing after another piled up in July of 2010 easily making it the worst July of my entire life ever. Ok so this was only the 29th July I have ever experienced, but it was B.A.D.

It all started innocently enough on July 3rd. We decided to take a "nice" hike through the Talladega National Forest. Mr. PD who is now in charge of the Boy Scouts at church decided he wanted to check out part of the trail for an upcoming back packing trip. I thought it would be a great idea to bring our often neglected doggies along for the fun, making this a complete family outing.

We packed up a nice lunch and ate it on the back of the pick up truck before starting off on our adventure. That's where the "nice" part of our little outing ended. The first part of our hike was on a road like this:

Not too bad, nice and wide and pretty free of brush. Well that only lasted for about 10 minutes after which the trail became the "road less traveled." The trail was so overgrown with brush that we were forced to hike single file. Even the dogs had to be single file! So what does hot muggy Alabama weather + lots of brush = ? How about ticks, chiggers, and fleas!!!

The ticks were really really bad. Yes we had insect repellent, but not the good stuff. So we were literally brushing off ticks every 10 minutes or so. When we finally made it to our destination the something or other "Cascades" it was very disappointing. The so called "cascades" were more like trickles. At least there were some small (very small) pools of water at the base of the trickles.

After doing a quick tick check (and pulling a few off) we shed our shoes and dipped our feet in the cool water. I was standing in water about 3 inches higher than my ankle when I felt something bite my big toe! I jumped out of that water as quickly and as high as I possibly could. The culprit?

A pretty big crawdad. The one in the picture is not the one that bit me, he's a lot smaller than the one who thought my peacock blue nail polish was irresistible! After a nice rest we skedaddled on back to the car and made our way to the 4th of July church activity. Once home we had to do yet another tick check (we found several) and all had refreshing showers.

I thought that was the end of my problems. The next day I was covered in bug bites. 27 of them! Apparently the dogs brought fleas home from the hike as well. The next few days were spent deep cleaning to get rid of the annoying little things.

Finally all was well... for a few days anyway. Fast forward a few days to the 8th at approximately 10pm. I had just fallen asleep. Mr.PD was watching some HULU on the laptop next to me in bed. Suddenly through my deep grogginess of sleep I hear a very urgent tone in Mr. PD's voice, "wake up, there's a bat in the room." I slowly crack my eyes open and try to make sense of what I think I just heard him say. He repeats, "there's a bat in here." Mr. PD then tilts the laptop back so the screen illuminates the ceiling. I look up, mind you I'm still trying to wake up AND I'm not wearing my glasses. I think I see something but it could just be the shadow of the ceiling fan.

Mr. PD is talking excitedly about a "plan" .... sneak out of the room.... close the door .... racket... ok let's go...

So I did what any wife would do who has just been woken up. As soon as Mr. PD ran out of the room and closed the door behind him (I think I was supposed to follow... I wasn't really awake for the "plan") I covered my head with the blanket and tried to go back to sleep! Thinking to myself that my hubby was nuts. When Mr. PD finally came back with racket in hand he shut the door behind him and turned on the light. He examined every inch of the bedroom, bathroom, and closet. Nothing. By this point with the lights on and the ruckus Mr.PD was making I was wide awake. By this point I asked the question I'm sure Mr. PD did not want to hear. "Are you sure you didn't fall asleep?"

Mr. PD proceeded to try and convince me that he had been wide awake ... not dreaming ... not crazy ... it was in here! So to make him feel better I joined him in a sweep of the house. Guess what we found? A big fat NOTHING!

We ended up chatting in the kitchen. Mr. PD still trying, unsuccessfully, to convince me that there had been a bat in our bedroom and I being the awesome wife that I am teasing him about his hallucinations. All of a sudden a bat swooped out of some unseen corner of the kitchen right at us. "See I told you!" I really hate it when he's right!

Our new plan was to herd the bat out the front door. Mr. PD still had the racket in his hand and I grabbed a broom. The bat was flying around in circles on the main floor of the house. Imagine a square doughnut, that's the basic layout of the main floor of our house. So this poor bat was flying from hallway, to kitchen, to dining room, to living room in one big circle. I was stationed near the front door trying to keep it from going upstairs and back into the kitchen. Mr. PD was between the living room and dining room trying to keep it from going into the kitchen from the other direction. We were successfully cutting down his flying are and herding him towards the front door when it happened.

Mr. Bat took a sharp turn and dove straight at Mr. PD's face! No one gave Mr. Bat the memo that we are avid racquetball players. We have very fast reflexes when it comes to small objects being hurtled at us at incredibly fast speeds. Needles to say Mr.PD's reflexes kicked in and with small flick of the wrist sent poor Mr. Bat flying across the living room. All I heard was a squeak and a thud.

The poor bat did not have a chance. I put on some rubber gloves and threw him out into the front yard. This guy had a 10-12" wingspan so he was way more menacing when he was flying around!

It took me forever to get back to sleep that night. The adrenaline was flowing and i was now super paranoid about any little object that brushed up against me in my sleep! The rest of the night was uneventful.


... to be continued

Norma