Pickrell Pirates

Well everone ELSE was doing it, so I guess we ought to as well! Actually I was checking out Becky's blog and saw how many others were keeping in touch with their blogs. What a wonderful idea! So anyway,... I'm going to bore you with my news too! Whoo hoo!

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Location: Ketchikan, Alaska, United States

Now is the time to adjust to yet another new normal. We have forgotten what sleeping through the entire night is like.

Monday, August 20, 2007

Unwelcome Visitor, part 2

Here's the pictures of our little Dracula, as promised. (Oh, on a side note, my dad is sending out emails that he has a grandson on the way. Just to clear that up, we're not exactly sure what we're having, so, it's mostly just wishful thinking at this point.)

There's the little menace. He's all of about 4" total. Still creepy as all get out.





Yes, that's little dot on the top of the door is the bat and that's Rick laying on the floor, covering his head and trying to encourage the winged terror out the door. This may look rediculous, but trust me, I look 100 times more silly with a blanket wrapped around my head, cowering behind the office door, screaming and taking a picture. :)






My hero! That mighty bat hunter! (Rick was very reluctant to let me take this pic. I think he's cute. Guess that's why I married him).

Monday, August 13, 2007

Unwelcome visitor

Okay, so now that I'm back to blogging, my home computer has something wrong with it that doesn't allow me to sign into anything. If anyone has an suggestions, I'd really appreciate it.

My story takes place probably about two weeks ago. It was during that spell of 80 degree weather we were having. We kept the sliding glass door open, trying to cool things down a bit. One night we came home kind of late (the door was closed) and sat down to relax with a movie. It was calm and peaceful. Suddenly, out from the corners of darkness, on wings of terror, swoops our invader. At first I thought, "Oh no! We bird flew into our house! The cats are going to get it." But, oh no. It wasn't some poor, defenseless, cute bird. It was a bat. Normally, I don't consider myself squimish when it comes to small terrorizers such as spiders, bugs, and mice. But I've found that bats CREEP ME OUT! This thing started flitting about our living room and Rick and I immediately hit the deck. It was a rather rediculous sight. I managed to grab a blanket and wrapped it about my head. It's amazing how much movies can affect your perception on real life scenarios. As soon as we saw that bat, we were both thinking: RABIES!!! It's going to get caught in our hair! We frantically tried to figure out what we were going to do. After calling a number of people and no one answering (like I said, it was late), I discovered that the office was safe. So I immediately shut myself in there and left Rick to deal with the bat (in my defense, let me just say that I'm the one to deal with the mice and spiders in the house). Being the ever helpful wife, I jumped online and looked up "how to get a bat out of the house." It's amazing the things you can learn in a crisis. Did you know that only 1 in 1000 bats carries rabies? However, they said that rabies is a big enough risk to just stay away from bats. I was going to brave it and try and throw a towel on that sucker and throw it outside... but I'm pregnant now. I'll let Rick be the man of the house and rescue us.
Eventually, it came to pass that all the doors and windows were opened and all the lights turned out. Our cat, Cid, took a couple of valiant leaps (5 ft. in the air) to try and cat the fiend. He clipped it one time, but it didn't stop the bug-muncher. After that, Cid lost interest and went outside. Isis, our disgrace to the feline species as far as hunting goes, did a good job of tracking the bat. She would follow it intently and her jingle collar would let Rick know in the dark where it was. At one point, Rick was crawling on the floor, thinking it was safe. Isis was near by focusing on something on the floor. Rick shined his light over to reveal that the bat was crawling on the floor next to him.
After three hours of buzzes to the head, jump starts, paniced runs and screams, the bat eventually flew out on its own. From now on, we only open windows that have a screen and close everything before dusk.
I'll get pictures posted as soone as I can. :)