The Long Wreck

it looked something like this

On the way home from Knoxville today we encountered a wreck that had traffic backed up for 6 miles.  At that point in time.  I’m sure that distance stretched out as the minutes passed and more traffic flowed up from behind.

One of those informational signs read,

“Left lanes blocked after 640 exit, merge right.”

Did anyone merge?  A few of us did.

Far too many camped out in the left lane (because it was moving faster than the right lane) until they bumped into the flashing blue, red, and yellow lights, THEN they were in an all-fired rush to be let in by the lanes to the right of them.

I let several in ahead of me while we were back in the “Merge Now” area. Afterward I became a real jerk about it.  I do get SO aggravated by self-important people who want to race up to the front of a line that is obviously forming, then force their way in ahead of everyone else.

When we finally got up there 3 lanes of traffic were mooshed over onto the shoulder because a half-dozen fire trucks, a couple patrol cars, some kind of blockade vehicle with lots of flashing lights on it, and two wreckers were trying to clean up a big truck: Ford Excursion I think, that had been pulling a large box trailer.  The truck had obviously rolled over at least once – probably more.  The trailer was on its side 30 feet or so further down the road from the truck.  The firemen were using shovels to scoop up bits of glass, plastic, and metal and toss them back into the truck, turning it into a dumpster.  Which was about all it was good for now.

Once we were past the wreck and the road was wide and clear again, many people stomped the pedal and went immediately to Ludicrous Speed.  I just stayed over in the right-hand lane and poked along at 70 MPH  La, De Dah, De Dum, I’m just a little turtle, pay me no mind.

WHOOSH  WHOOSH  WHOOSH  WHOOSH!!!

The Imposter

Last Thursday I noticed a piece of heavy black plastic hanging down from under the siding along the back of our house. Just 6 or 7 inches long and maybe 2-3 inches at the widest, like it fell or was pushed out from under the siding. “What the heck,” I said to myself, and pushed the plastic back up under the siding. Maybe it was mice. I’d better toss some bait in the crawl space this week.

On Saturday I was walking along with a dog on a leash and this brown head pops out from under the siding and peers at me: Oval, 1¼” long, color of milk chocolate, soul-less black eyes, flicking a forked tongue.

“What the hay fork is this?” I yelled. We stood there staring at one another for a few moments, me trying to decide if I should grab the thing and yank it out of there. Not knowing what it is, that might end badly. Before I could decide, it ducked back up under the siding.

I slept fitfully last night, envisioning going out at 4:30 to turn on the coffee maker, in the dark, and stepping on a snake. I mean, if mice can get into the house around the plumbing through the floor (and they do occasionally) so could a snake. And I don’t have any snake poison to deal with that possibility.

As I finished up with the mid-day dog play session and Sarah Sue Tinyshep and I were heading for the back door, a snake was crawling down from that spot in the back of the house. About 4 feet long. It flumped onto the ground and it had the familiar two-tone pattern of a copperhead. I hurriedly took Sarah out of the way and confined her. I grabbed the poop scraper I use in the kennels – which is not as long as I’d like and not nearly sturdy as something like a shovel, but it was all I had on hand. By this time it was trying to crawl back up the foundation.

snake climbing a wall
Not my snake, not my wall, but you get the idea.

It amazes me how well snakes can grab onto stone, brick, stucco, with their belly plates and climb a vertical surface.

I nailed it just behind the head with my pooper scraper and pushed as hard as I dared without buckling the light weight handle.

A mighty battle ensued.

As it struggled, it was opening it’s mouth and I could clearly see the lack of fangs.

Chocolate colored head not copper, and oval not triangular. No fangs.

This is some sort of imposter snake. Maybe a corn snake, although they are more reddish than this. A yellow bellied king snake looks similar to a copperhead too.

It was still struggling, wrapping itself around my scraper blade trying to … well, I don’t know what it was trying to do. But I decided to use the scraper as a trebuchet and launched it about 50 feet up into the woods. Maybe it will survive. If it does, hopefully it will go hunting elsewhere. If it doesn’t — well, it should not have come slithering around my home in its copperhead pajamas, pretending to imperil me, my wife, our dogs.

It was probably eating mice that were staging for an assault on our home (it IS fall, they do that as winter comes on), so I feel kinda bad about that. But … stepping on a snake in the dark. Nah, not taking that chance.

High(way) Husky Adventure

About 10:00 last night Marie and I were traveling west along I-40 taking a pair of Huskies to meet their transport to NJ when the truck’s engine died.  Timing chain (belt) broke, I think, but I’ll leave that to the professionals at Eastport Exxon to figure out.  With cloudy skies it was really dark out there, a Thursday night: heaviest night of the week for semi traffic, which were whooshing by just feet away from us, rocking our truck with each pass.  The Huskies were scared and screaming their heads off.  If you’ve been around Huskies you know what I mean.  It’s a Husky thing.

What do we do now?

Marie started praying.  Always a good place to start.

I called the Cocke County Sheriff’s Department.  Although they were short handed and quite busy, a Sheriff’s car came up behind us to run flashing lights so no semis smashed us.  Deputies Alex and Heath turned out to be dog lovers and were not gruff with us at all for asking for their help.  In fact I think they enjoyed getting to see the inside of a rescue transport vehicle set up so animals can be taken in and out easily yet ride securely.

That transport, which we were supposed to be meeting at a truck stop on I-81, came to us (which meant going on to Newport, turning around and coming back to where we were) and we transferred the dogs.

The driver of this transport, Melinda, was having a horrendous night before I complicated it further.   Before she got to Nashville a tractor-trailer truck went off the road and burned, closing I-40 for an hour and a half while crews got that put out and cleaned up.  Then she hit another traffic snag in Nashville, so the rendezvous that was planned for 8:30 pm got shoved back to 10:30.  There was another wreck that slowed traffic after she left here and headed north, so it was a rough run for her.  We work with a couple of other transport services, and I’m not sure they’d have been so accommodating if all this had happened to them.  So, Thank you Melinda!

Hartford Towing sent a rollback right out there to snatch our truck from the roadside.  And Tim Holt came out, even as late as it was, to give us a ride home.  All coordinated perfectly (thank you God) so the rollback did not show up before Melinda got there, which would have left us standing alongside the Interstate with Huskies on leashes in the dark, being buffeted by tractor-trailer wakes.

Huskies in NJ
Adam and Cyrus: bewildered, but safe

Our truck is out of commission until it’s repaired, which might be a couple of weeks: they’re backed up too and I didn’t think to schedule this event ahead of time.  But no one was hurt, the dogs got where they were going, we met a couple of nice Deputies, and … it WASN’T raining!

Almost A Wonderful Story

Marie and I were at the Wags-to-Wiggles store (over towards Gatlinburg) for our weekly check-in.  A vehicle pulled up out front and a young woman in a bathing suit got out, ran in, and said; “Can you help us, PLEASE?”
The short version is: they found a parakeet wandering the parking lot at a McDonald’s in Gatlinburg, it is very friendly and obviously someone’s pet.  They called the local Police, Animal Control, Sevier County’s animal shelter, all said they could not help.  These folks were from Georgia, here on vacation, and on their way to go white water rafting.  They can’t keep the bird and don’t know how to help find it’s owner.
Gwen, the store manager, gave us a wicker picnic basket from store stock to put the cute lil feller in.
She also called Stacy, the Manager at the Friends Animal Shelter in Newport, to see if she could take it.  Stacy asked, “Is it orange and green?”
“Yes!”
“I have a lost bird report on him.  His name is Arty.  His owner’s number is …”
“Gwen called the owner.  She lives in West Tennessee and lost Arty 17 days ago while on vacation in Gatlinburg.  She put up fliers, and notified shelters, but had to go back home.  She was coming back out next Monday to search some more.  She has a good friend who lives in Newport who can care for him until she arrives.
We’re all boggling!  What are the odds?
So Marie and I took the bird-in-a-basket back to Newport and into the shelter where The Friend was to meet us.  We were especially careful to not let “Arty” out of the basket because there are several shelter cats who wander the halls and sleep on beds or chairs.  Supposedly they are on vermin patrol, but I never see them hunting.  I think they’re scamming the shelter.
When the friend showed up she was ecstatic that Arty had been found, but asked to see him before she took the basket.  She peeked inside, “Oh … that is NOT Arty.  That’s a parakeet.”
“Yeah …”
“Arty is more of a parrot – much bigger.”
We all glared at Stacy.  “What?  I didn’t know?  We don’t even DO birds here, I put up the flier as a courtesy.”
The friend left to give Arty’s mom the bad news.  A shelter volunteer set Not-arty up in a cat carrier with some water and bird seed (the finders bought him a small bag of seed) and Stacy began calling people who might have birds, or know someone who has birds, or might want to have a bird.
Turns out Stacy hates birds … ever since she watched Hitchcock’s The Birds, she’s had a deep fear of birds and wants nothing to do with them.
Well … it was almost a wonderful story to tell.

Note To My Fellow Dinosaurs

I was at my veterinarian’s office and I quipped that if they were an airline I’d be getting frequent flier miles as often as I find myself going in there.  The lady behind the desk said, “We have a rewards program.  You need to be on it, it will save you a lot of money.  Just go to our website and download it.”

I went looking for Cedarwood Veterinary Hospital’s rewards program.  I found it and was sent to the PetDesk web site where I found:
.      What devices does the app work on?
.             PetDesk is available on IOS and Android devices (Mobile or Tablet).

Not available for a Windows laptop.  Rats!  I felt like lodging a complaint for discriminating against us dinosaurs who don’t have a smart phone.  I decided instead to gripe about it to my best bud: Electro-Man Mike.

Mike is a retired network engineer who knows computers, networks, and security stuff inside and out.   Mike told me that Android emulators are available to run Android aps on a windows machine.  He even gave me a link to a web page that listed and reviewed a fair number of them.  I went with BlueStacks, the top rated emulator.  Top rated and free … can’t beat that!

I installed BlueStacks, booted it up, went to the Google store from within the emulator, located the PetDesk ap, and installed that.  When I booted up PetDesk it asked for a small amount of information and WHALA: my veterinary records were sitting there in front of me.  It was kind of spooky how easy that was.

So if you encounter any other of us dinosaurs who don’t have a smart phone but want to use one or more aps made for an Android phone, tell them to Google “BlueStacks Android Emulator”.  And try not to get stuck in a tar pit.

Mustang Memories

It’s funny the tracks our minds take sometimes.  I don’t normally sit around thinking about the Mustang automobile, but today is has been on my mind quite a bit.

It started with a discussion with artist Donna Gregg about the artwork she’s doing for the Dogwood Days event coming up in May.  That event is centered around a classic car show.  I sent Donna a picture of a 1953 Skylark to use in her drawing.  She asked if a ’65 Mustang would work — she learned to drive in her dad’s ’65 Mustang and  it has always had a special place in her heart.

That got me thinking about the 1964, ’65, and ’66 Mustangs.  And the article I wrote about the 1967 Mustang Wagon.   Then I remembered my most recent encounter with a Mustang.  It was late on a dark and chilly night, at a truck stop on the edge of nowhere.  And I was given the opportunity to help some people out of a pickle.

The Mustang’s Tale

Marie and I were to meet the HEARTS LLC animal transport truck at the Pilot truck stop on the edge of Bulls Gap Tennessee, about an hours drive from us, to put one of our foster dogs aboard for his ride to New Hampshire.

Their instructions said that we should arrive at the meeting place early in case they caught a tail wind and were running ahead of schedule.  They would wait at each stop no more than 10 minutes.  We left home a little extra early in case we encountered any problems along the way.  There were no problems and we arrived in time to watch a group of young men push their snazzy Ford Mustang up the road and into a parking spot at the McDonalds which serviced the truck stop.  The driver got out and they all went inside.  Tough way to go out for a burger!

We were still waiting when these guys came back out.  They stood leaning on the car, one of those modern-retro Mustangs, talking and joking around.  I figured they were waiting for someone to come with a gas can or something.

After a little while one of the fellas approached our truck, I rolled the window down, and he politely asked if I had a set of jumper cables.  Pah!  Do I?  I always carry jumpers, a tow chain, flash light, small gas can, basic tool kit … I’m old school.

“I sure do.”

“Do you think you could give us a jump?  Our battery died.”

I checked my watch, we still had about ten minutes before the time the transport was expected, “Yes, I have time for that.”

So as I backed the truck out, they pushed the car across the drive so it was nose-out in a parking spot and I sidled up in front.  I got out a flash light, we hooked up the cables, and they gave it a try.  No go.  That battery wasn’t just dead, it was necrotic.

I revved up my engine a little, they waited for a couple of minutes and tried it again.  Their engine turned over a few times then caught and a throaty growl burst forth as the engine flared to life.  A cheer went up!

We cleared away the cables, buttoned up the hoods and I got out of their way.  They wasted no time getting on the road home.  Probably a wise move.

That transport truck never did arrive.  They’d had a flat tire and sent someone in a car out to retrieve their passenger and bring him to them.  As it turned out, we were going to go right past the place they pulled off the interstate and could have met them there.  But we didn’t know that until she was already there to get Spartacus.

So it was a late night of multiple adventures that all turned out well … as long as those boys got home okay.

Weirdness

My truck died this evening.

dead truckIt’s been running fine. At least it has since the last time I had it towed in and repaired.  That’s been a few weeks.  I moved it so I could mow the driveway (yes, I mow my driveway) and when I went to move it back it started up, started to move then went completely dead. I mean big blue rock dead. Nothing at all, not even an idiot light lit up.

To make this short(ish) I fixed it. But what I found to be wrong is SO bizarre I have no idea how it got that way and was running at all.

It is running now. I told my boss that I do plan to be at work tomorrow after all. But if I don’t make it, check for reports of alien spacecraft sightings! Continue reading “Weirdness”

Tale of the Toolbox

Last week there was a fence/gate repair job that needed doing at work.  A co-worker, Bobby, and I were asked to take a look at it and see what we could do.  The boss had some parts that might help.  They even had a toolbox … of sorts.

Bobby had recently been assigned the task of cleaning out several junk drawers, finding all the tools and putting them into a donated toolbox, sorting through the rest: toss the detritus and sort the usable “stuff” into big plastic bags by category.  So our task now was  simpler.

However, the toolbox consisted of 3 hammers, a half-dozen badly abused screw drivers, and a pair of pliers.  We decided to bring tools from home and do the job the next day.  Bobby wasn’t there the next day, so I accomplished the job with the tools I brought.  All I was missing was a set of deep sockets (which I didn’t have but Bobby did) and a ratchet.  But I did the job with a crescent wrench.  The sockets do the job faster and with fewer bloody smears on the fencing, but a crescent wrench will do in a pinch.

I wanted to double the hinge at the top of the gate (which is at least 8 feet wide, maybe more) to keep it from twisting the hinge again.  I lacked one part and a couple of bolts to do that.  I picked up the hardware on my day off.  I also decided to assemble a usable toolbox.

My Toolbox History

Continue reading “Tale of the Toolbox”

Adventures in Dentistry

Another article from my moldy-oldies file, but when originally published folks did find it entertaining, so I’ll pop in in here.

Yesterday I renewed a relationship that has for many (many) years been neglected.  No, not neglected: avoided;  stringently and purposefully avoided.  I made a trip to a dentist.

You see when I was a wee lad, long (long) ago, my parents would take me to the dentist every year for a check-up.  And it seems he would always find a cavity or two to drill out and fill.  Early on they used Novocain and I don’t remember it as being particularly torturous – not fun by any means, but not like being stripped naked, covered with honey and tossed into a fire ant hill. Continue reading “Adventures in Dentistry”

For a Peek Inside

This tale was written years ago, filed, lost, found, lost again,  recovered again, and now posted here. For friends and relatives who often jump to conclusions, this is ancient history:
I am not sick.

medical emergency, doctor, hospital, testing, costThe small pick-up truck hurled along the winding, bumpy mountain highway, the tighter turns and bumpiest spots elicited increased groaning from him.  The driver looked away from the road just long enough to glance at him and ask, “Are you alright?”

He was curled up in the passenger seat clutching his belly.  He reached over and gently patted her arm, “Just ignore the screaming and wailing from this side and get us there as quickly – and safely – as you can.”

Eyes back on the road she steered through another curve and retorted, “If it gets too bad, I’ll just turn up the radio to drown you out.”

“Good girl.”  Continue reading “For a Peek Inside”