Tag Archives: Wildlife

After dinner entertainment

The Great Outdoors,

A few evenings ago, after dinner, Dean called the kids to quickly come up to the dining room. They both compiled, Clare from the living room where she was studying for a chemistry test and Andrew from the basement where he was playing a computer game. Dean pointed out the window and we all looked and saw a large raccoon on a low branch of the tulip tree, which stands on the easement about 15 feet from the house.

My first thought was rabies. Aren’t raccoons nocturnal? What, other than rabies. can cause an animal that is supposed to come out only at night, to be visible in broad daylight? Dean suggested it had been scared by another animal from its normal hiding place. It did look rather worried and while we watched, it climbed even higher in the tree. Clare ran for the camera to document our visitor and the rest of us scattered to different windows to watch.

At first it continued its ascent of the tall tree, but after a while carefully climbed back down the trunk and slowly ambled over to the house, opened the garbage can lid and began biting at the garbage bag. I opened the side door and after it scurried away, pushed the lid down on the trash can.

Shortly thereafter Andrew looked out the window of our kitchen door and exclaimed, “It’s right outside the door and looked me right in the eye!” Sure enough there was the raccoon, precariously perching on the railing observing the humans who were observing him. Then it reached over, actually sneered in his raccoon way and opened the trash can lid again, with no trouble at all and began pulling at the trash bag with his teeth.

This time Andrew opened the door and the raccoon once again left. Andrew stood outside for a few moments and Clare noticed the raccoon had scampered across the street, possibly to find a garbage can without so many pests hanging around.

Verizon, phone support & wildlife

Musings, ,

So yesterday morning a Verizon FiOS guy came by and installed FiOS to our house. It went smoothly enough and the technician was nice enough. I guess my recent rash of Comcast issues has left me with a bitter taste in my mouth when it comes to cable techs. The Verizon guy did comment on the bird’s nest of telephone wires in the ceiling of the basement though. He thought it would be a problem, but when he hooked up the phones everything seemed to be working fine. He’d forgotten an extra HDMI cable, so returned about an hour after he left and hooked up our second HD tv.

At 2:30 when the kids weren’t home yet, I picked up the phone to see if I’d missed a message, and there as no dial tone. Here we go again, I thought. It was like it was Christmas Day and my favorite present didn’t work correctly. I’d had such high hopes in Verizon. I was about to call Verizon when Clare and Andrew walked in the door. Clare shouted that we needed to run back to school so she could turn in a permission slip and check for a NYC field trip with her art class. Andrew stopped me on the steps with the news that his shiny new fancy cell phone had been stolen.

Let’s stop here and review my reaction to that news. A good mother would have sat down and said something like, “Oh no Andrew! That’s terrible. I know you liked that phone a lot. You must feel just awful.” I am not a good mother. I closed my eyes, took a breath and said, “You’ll have to buy the next one – and it will be $150 instead of $50 this time.” What an ass I am! He obviously was hurting and I just made it worse.

So I took Clare to school to hand in her check and permission slip. On the way she wondered why I was so upset about the phones (Andrew’s cell and our Verizon issue). She said that if that’s what got me angry I was a lucky person – meaning, I suppose, that I had no real issues about which to be angry. Of course she had a point. She’s pretty cool that way.

When we got back home I did let Andrew know I felt sorry that his phone was stolen, and that he must feel awful. Of course it was too late, the damage was done, but perhaps it made him feel a little better. Maybe?

I then called Verizon about the phones being out:

Verizon (very cheerful male synthesized voice): Thank you for calling Verizon your Broadband and communications company! Para continuar en español la prensa 2. For Billing press 1. For Internet press 2 for everything else, press 3.

Me: [Pressed 3]

V erizon (very cheerful female synthesized voice): Please say or type your ten digit telephone number.

Me: 301-555-5555 (not really my telephone number of course – but I did tell Verizon the real one)

Verizon: Thank you! You said 301-555-5855 Is this correct?!

Me: No

Verizon: Oh, I’m sorry! Please say or type your ten digit telephone number again!

Me: 301-555-5555

Verizon: Thank you! You said 301-555-5555! Is this correct?

Me: Yes

Verizon: Great. Just wait a moment until I pull up your records.

Me:

Verizon: How may I help you today? Say phone for telephone problems, Internet for Internet problems or TV for television problems.

Me: Phone

Verizon: Oh, I’m sorry to hear that you are having phone problems. What is the problem? If you have no dial tone, say: No dial tone.

Me: No dial tone.

Verizon: Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. Let’s see if we can troubleshoot your problem. Ok, many phone problems are because of faulty wiring…(at this point I was not paying attention because I saw medium sized dog trotting up the middle of the street. I wondered where its owner was. As the dog got closer thought, perhaps it wasn’t a dog after all. Maybe it was a huge opossum (it had no hair on its tail) or a coyote (it looked like a scruffy dog, but was not as big as I assumed coyotes to be)

Me: FOX!

Verizon: I think you said box. Is that correct? I’m afraid I don’t understand.

Me: FOX! CLARE THERE IS A FOX OUTSIDE!!!

Verizon: Can you repeat that? I didn’t understand. Or press 3 for an agent.

Me: [pressed three]

Clare: Wow. Mom a fox. It’s trembling. What’s wrong? [grabbing camera and heading towards door]

Verizon (human male voice): Hello, how may I help you today

Me: No! Clare don’t go outside. It looks sick.

Verizon: I’m sorry?

Me: Oh, sorry. There is a scary looking animal outside. I’m calling because my phones have no dial tone.

Verizon: I see here that you just had it installed two days ago.

Me: No, it was installed two hours ago

Verizon: Hmm, let me run some tests. Hold on.

Me: OK. [looking out window and addressing Clare] Oh no, it’s on the porch. I need to call animal control. Maybe it has rabies.

Verizon: It seems that the problem is inside your house. There may be some faulty wiring. Let’s do some troubleshooting.

Me: Oh my God! It looks really sick. And scary looking.

Verizon: Do you think this scary animal might have damaged the phone wires?

Me: No, I need to call animal control. It might have rabies and I can’t because my other phones don’t work.

Verizon: Let’s do some troubleshooting…..

Me: Clare – where is it now?

Clare: In the backyard.

Verizon: If you need to go and call about this animal, I understand. Just call us back and say agent.

Me: Yeah, that would make sense.

So it turned out it probably has the mange (and not rabies) according to the “Wildlife nuisance” number I dialed. The very calm man on the phone told me not to worry, don’t feed it and call back if it was aggressive.

Note: I searched Mangy Fox on google and found that in July 2004 a mysterious creature was roaming Maryland. It turned out to be a mangy fox and not, in fact, a chupacabra

Note 2: Our phones now work. The tech came back and played with the nest of phone wires (he’d previously commented on). After a couple of tries it all worked fine. To be on the safe side, I opted for the wire insurance plan Verizon offers.

Fox

Musings, ,

My daughter spied a fox in our suburban back yard this morning. Apparently it ambled across the yard and around the house. It’s sad that wild animals need to move into residential areas – their habitat is being taken over by humans. What do foxes eat anyway?