Thursday, August 26, 2010

One for my homiez!

This past week, my parents were out to visit us. Largely because my dad, well retired, still looks for projects to work on, and we settled on replacing the very wobbly wood handrailing on our concrete deck. The deck over the attached garage, so one side has a ten-foot plunge onto asphalt if the railing gives way.
The result was a great deck reinforced with lots of steel bolts and set screws. The old railing were attached to their wobbly posts by some thin wood screws driven in diagonally. The posts are now fastened with some extra brackets driven into the concrete.
But there was a wild animal attack while I was off at work Monday. Apparently, as my dad was working, a baby squirrel must have thought his leg was a tree, and it scurried up to Dad and ran up his leg. In the ensuing confusion, my father managed to get the squirrel off, but accidentally stepped on it. Dead squirrel.
Vanya sees this and immediately makes up a story about how that squirrel was his friend: "His name was Bob... we was the only squirrel friend I had." But he seems to have left it alone by the next day. The carcass has hidden in the woods behind our yard in hopes the local fox will remove it.
But then, that night, after I hear the story at home, I went out the front door and found a chestnut left on our front stoop. It had a hole gnawed into it and the nut inside eaten out.
Apparently, the squirrel's friends had followed the urban ritual of pouring out a bit of a 40 onto the sidewalk in honor of their dead homie.