House & Garden

A Tale In Which The Beans Triumph Over That Which Does Not Belong Inside Their House

/ Ally Bean / 241 Comments

Here’s a story, a snippet of life, that’s never happened here before. Please join me while I say a quiet prayer that it doesn’t happen again.

THE BEST WAY TO TELL this tale is to start by telling you that we have a new Oxo food strainer in the kitchen. There’s a reason for this purchase that I will share, BUT first I must explain what was going on at this house a few Saturday mornings ago.

To wit, if you happened to be driving by around 8:00 a.m. and noticed that Zen-Den in his plaid flannel pajama bottoms and white v-neck undershirt was running out the front door holding a food strainer at arm’s length in front of him, you might have been curious.

Further because you’re a person who pays attention you’d have noticed that he was barefoot as he darted through the front yard, making a hasty retreat to the back of the property where there is the big ole forest primeval.

A place where certain critters, alive or dead, belong.

Unlike the place inside our house where he and I found a certain live critter that did not belong.

• • •

YOU SEE WE FOUND a garden snake, about a foot long, slithering around the baseboards in our walk-in closet. I’m not a fan of snakes, albeit I understand they’re useful in the whole scheme of things and I’m cool with that as long as they are nowhere near me.

Or my clothes and shoes.

Particularly the idea of my shoes.

Which this snake may or may not have been in prior to being discovered.

At this point, my gentle readers and kind lurkers, you’re probably asking yourself two things: 1) HOW did this snake get into the house; and 2) WHAT did the Beans do about the situation.

I shall address these questions in the order asked.

• • •

HOW THIS HAPPENED: Because nothing goes smoothly for me, after about two years of dithering around and being indecisive about, we bought a new mattress: a Stearns & Foster Lux Estate with an adjustable base.

It is swanky and ever so comfortable.

However it’s heavy, thus requiring that the front door be open for a long time, many times, while the delivery men carefully carried the new mattress and then the frame into the house. Not to mention that the old mattress + box springs and its frame were taken out of the house through the same open front door.

We think that during the time the door was open, a garden snake who we’d seen living under a bush by the front door, decided to visit. It was hot and humid outside, cool and dark inside, so he decided to go on an adventure.

Which he did by sneaking into our house unnoticed.

Eventually making his way upstairs to our bedroom closet.

[I refuse to entertain the idea that the snake came in with the new mattress and frame. If that is so I’d be too freaked out to sleep on the new bed, so don’t even go there with that idea.]

• • •

WHAT WE DID: Upon discovering the snake in the closet the Beans, who you may remember are no strangers to unwanted critters inside their house, sprung into action. He went to the basement to get a wooden mallet out of his tool bucket while I went into the kitchen to get our food strainer.

His idea, smash it to smush. My idea, capture it in the strainer.

In the end we both prevailed.

Z-D was able to subdue the snake using the mallet to whack it on its head a few times. Then using the strainer I handed to him, he scooped up the probably dazed [but maybe dead] snake. He ran downstairs, out the front door, to the back of the property where he threw it into the woods.

Where I believe snakes belong.

• • •

OF COURSE ALL THAT’S LEFT to tell is the denouement of this tale.

Quite simply, once a snake, alive or dead, touches anything I use in the kitchen, that object is no longer welcome in my kitchen. Or as in this case anywhere inside the house.

Hence we tossed the old food strainer into the recycling bin and promptly bought its replacement.

Lending credence to the wisdom implied in the saying: out with the old, in with the new. 

QUESTIONS OF THE DAY

✅ What is the last largest purchase you made? What is the last smallest purchase you made? Was there a correlation between the two?

✅ When looking for a new mattress which of these variables have been or will be the most important to you:

  • price
  • comfort
  • brand name
  • immediate availability
  • free delivery of new mattress
  • free removal of old mattress
  • current frame will work
  • existing sheets will fit
  • warranty
  • other

✅ Had any unwanted guests lately? If so, how did you get them to leave? Was there DRAMA?

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Look At That: Learning About Cicadas, Laughing About A Credit Card

/ Ally Bean / 232 Comments

The Educational Cicada Part – EEK!

SINCE MID-MAY WE’VE BEEN experiencing Cicada Brood 14 here. Cicadas are insects that emerge into the world on a 17 year cycle. It is their year to show up for 4 to 6 weeks then die.

Cicadas, who have beady orangish red eyes, come up out of the ground and climb on/cling to surfaces that have texture, like trees and bricks and screens. They are everywhere outside the house and when clinging to window screens they appear to be watching you inside.

Not creepy at all. 😳

• • •

• • •

WE ARE PEOPLE WHOSE backyard is a woods, thus the arrival of Brood 14 has not been a joyful experience.

I cannot confirm how joyful the cicadas may or may not be, but from their dramatic random flitting about during daylight hours I’d guess they’re happy enough. After all they are here to do one thing: to engage in amorous congress mate.

After mating the adults lay their eggs and the cicada babies (nymphs) hatch in 6 to 10 weeks. Then the nymphs will burrow into the ground where they’ll live until 17 years hence when they emerge.

While cicadas don’t swarm or sting or bite anything or anyone, they are noisy. As in daily highs of 80 decibels [the sound of a lawnmower] to 120 decibels [the sound of a motorcycle revving]. This is what the newspaper told me and I believe it.

It is deafening.

• • •

• • •

HOWEVER HERE’S THE THING about these intrusive bugs. Remember when we got the new deck and I spent about a year deciding which color of Trex to use so that the deck would look natural as if it was made from real wood from the trees in the forest primeval behind us?

Well apparently I succeeded beyond my wildest dreams. Come to find out Coastal Bluff, the color of our deck, is such a dead ringer for the tree trunks that cicadas love it.

In fact they find it the perfect place to hang out and do their aforementioned thing— then join the choir invisible drop dead.

All day long.

The Amusing Credit Card Part – WTF!

The other day Z-D walked down to the mailbox, dodging cicadas, and came back into the house laughing while holding up a Visa card. I didn’t understand what was going on because we don’t have Visa.

Welp, come to find out the large company he used to work for, the one he formally retired from in the fall of 2022, had sent him a corporate business credit card with a limit of $15,000.00!

Obviously this was a test of good moral character. 🙄

My first thought was, and try not to think less of me when I say this, a vacation in Hawaii would be nice. Or how about going to London, England, for a week? Yep, we could make good use of that credit card.

BUT WE DIDN’T.

Instead Z-D immediately emailed his former boss letting him know what he had in his hand, asking for guidance about what to do with it.

And eventually, about two weeks later, Zen-Den received a snail mail letter from large company that said [of course] don’t use it and destroy it immediately because there’s been a mistake!

‘Ya think?!!

• 🧡 •
Now it’s your turn to spill the beans.
What’s bugging you in your world today?
If a surprise $15,000.00 landed in your hands, through no malfeasance of your own, what would you think about doing with it?
Tell all in the comments below.
• 💵 •

A 3:00 A.M. Tale In Which We Experience Batshit Crazy For Real

/ Ally Bean / 230 Comments

As if last week, a difficult week for everyone, could not have been any stranger…

Forget your ancient church belfry, this tale takes place in modern times, starting in an upstairs suburban bedroom, moving to the two-story foyer, dashing about in 2 upstairs guest bedrooms, and culminating in the downstairs TV room adjacent to the kitchen.

Who is the star of this tale? Zen-Den, of course!

Here’s what happened.

I was awakened from a sound sleep when I heard the rattling of our wooden blinds at the bedroom window. I glanced over at the blinds and saw swooping birdlike shadows at the window. The shadows reminded me of scenes in the Alfred Hitchcock movie “The Birds.”

You see, in my drowsiness I thought somehow the bright light from the lamppost in front of the house was shining through the blinds making it appear that birds were creating shadowy silhouettes OUTSIDE the window.

But I was wrong.

I realized this when I got out of bed, walked over to the blinds to see what was going on at the window, only to learn that what I was seeing was INSIDE the house.

I definitively discerned this when something flew straight at me, swooped over my head as I hunched and shuddered, then dashed out the open bedroom door going into the foyer where it started flying around the chandelier like it was crazy.

Batty, even.

Fleece throw aka my impromptu babushka

Calmly, you would have been proud of me, I woke up Z-D who was oblivious to our winged intruder. I told him something was wrong, something creepy was flying around, and that he needed to get up to investigate. I also told him he’d be in the lead during the investigation.

I’d follow behind, on his six.

Utilizing my natural ability to scream loudly when under attack startled.

Without complaining he got up, dressing in jeans and a ragg wool knit beanie, and started walking around the upstairs rooms while I followed behind him, still in my jammies but with a plaid fleece throw [photo above] wrapped around my head like a Russian grandma in her babushka.

Quickly we realized that what I thought was a bird, was a bat. And that Z-D needed to get a broom from the garage, leaving me to stand alone in the foyer defending myself by screaming and holding a heavy doorstop [photo below] in front of my face, using it like a cross meant to keep vampires away.

This might have been helpful, maybe.

Heavy doorstop aka my potential weapon

The rest of this tale is what you’d expect if’n you’ve ever chased a bat through your house. We turned on lights everywhere. We got him out of one room, closed the door; then got him out of another room, closed the door; so on and so on, et cetera, et cetera. This went on until we were downstairs in the TV room where the bat was trying to hide on the floor in the shadows near a lounge chair.

Zen-Den saw him, wacked him with the broom, held him down, and shouted for me to get a cookie sheet from the kitchen. Which I did, putting it on the floor so that we could carefully slowly slide the bat, who was still alive and squeaking, onto it while Z-D used the broom to hold him down on the cookie sheet.

Together we slide our captive to the back door where Z-D then tossed the dude, who got into our house somehow but we don’t know how, outside into the snow.

The bat was shocked, but still alive, and gave us the evil eye as he straightened up and flew away into the night, no doubt as perturbed by this experience as we were.

And that, my gentle readers, is how it came to be that we experienced batshit crazy.

For real.

QUESTIONS OF THE DAY

Have you ever had a bat flying around inside your home? Assuming you didn’t want a bat flying around inside your home, what did you do to get rid of it?

Bats are known for their exceptional hearing abilities. Do you see the irony in a bat waking me up in the middle of the night because I’m extremely sensitive to sound? Am I part old bat and don’t know it‽

What’s the last batshit crazy thing that happened in your world? Tell all, we need to know.

~ ~ • ~ ~

The One About The Stink Bug Hunter & His Preferred Tools Of The Trade

/ Ally Bean / 286 Comments

Photo via Washington Post

Our May temperatures have been warmer than normal, enticing brown marmorated stink bugs to emerge earlier than usual from their winter digs. While they cause no structural damage to buildings, they are a nuisance.

Kind of creepy to see in my opinion.

We rarely find them inside the house [unlike the roller shade situation earlier this year], but notice them when we sit on our screened-in porch.

One of us [not me] has decided to wage war against them, like the semi-retired suburbanite that he is. While Indiana Jones had his hat & a whip, Zen-Den has his fly swatter & toilet paper.

The fly swatter he uses to slap stink bugs off the screens or walls;  the toilet paper he uses to pick them up and squish them before he flushes them down the toilet. He is on a mission, carrying these items with him whenever he steps onto the porch.

The Stink Bug Hunter’s preferred weapons.

Thus equipped with the items seen in the photo immediately above Zen-Den has become a menace to stink bugs. He stalks them while we sit, ostensibly to relax, on the screened-in porch.

He is ever vigilant.

Hence I’ve learned to put my preferred beverage into a Tervis with a lid so that stink bugs, pursued by my sweet baboo the Stink Bug Hunter don’t land in my drink.

As they are wont to do.

And further, as a long-time married person who sees humor in many things, I’m entertained, enthralled even, by the tenacity of a man who has decided to attempt to reign victorious over stink bugs.

As if that’s going to happen. 🙄

• • •

QUESTIONS OF THE DAY

What kind of insect do you dislike the most? When confronted with them do you jump into action like Zen-Den to kill said insect?

Are you, like me, a fan of sitting outside with a beverage at hand? If so, factoring in the time of day, what is your preferred beverage? Do you need to have a lid to put on top of it?

What’s new with you? Got any tales to tell about your life in the merry month of May?

• • 🤔 • •