did I already post this here?

When was riding horses I had a special shirt which was part of my riding habit, called a "ratcatcher". I never caught any rats in it, but if I ever needed it, it's NOW!
Our Drohobich bache is on the first floor this year there we've only caught 6 mice, last year we did real well at 11 live mice that we can either let go into the wild, or drown in a bucket of water. After temperatures go down to freezing at night it seems like the mouse are holed up for the winter, and we don't have any more problems with them.
I'd been hearing noises in my room though, enough to convince me that a mammal with a heavy tread is living under the floor of my room, and that he's working on some kind of a project. I told Karen who gave me kind of a glassy look, like "oh really", so I dropped it when I could see she wouldn't volunteer to trade rooms. Imagine my vindication when Karen in making before breakfast coffee agitatedly tells me that "at 4:30 this morning the RATS dragged a chain across the floor" under her room. "We should give him a name" she said, "Sebastian, he's building a torture chamber" I really enjoyed that remark and have shared it with some of my friends.
Then we are expecting company to our bache. Our Polish friends, who take care of our mail are bringing it in, so we scurry around our bache and try to make it seem clean and cozy. Cobwebs in doorways are a big problem, Tammy is taller that both of us, and we don't want her getting spider webs in her hair. They come, we have a great time, Karen cooks delicious Oriental food, and we eat with chopsticks. Our friend Sasha is all pleased that he managed to use his during the whole meal, he and Halya refused at first, but we gave them a lesson, and somehow took away their inhibitions. After the meal Sasha said he had a cramp in his hand from the chopsticks! Our steady listener came, (Anya!) D. S. came, all a great success.
Bedtime, Eleanor has the couch in my room. I use earplugs and am out for all night. In the morning she tells me she heard noises in the night, "Oh yeah, that's Karen's friend Sebastian, he's building a torture chamber" Well, Eleanor had heard things that had made her get out of bed, take her flashlight and investigate. "Do people walk by here swishing plastic bags?" she questioned musingly...I volunteered that there is a garbage dump down the street with lots of plastic bags that the wind might blow.
The next morning it’s back to just Karen and me, "Trude, come in here." A tone of voice which prepares me to expect the worst. The scene which greets my eyes is our dumped garbage pail, the plastic sack is chewed up, (rat tooth doily) and the garbage is perforated with rat's teeth...I fled the scene, leaving Karen to pick up the mess, after she finished making my (and hers!) coffee. I hadn't taken my first sip and again, "come here" in tones that got me out of bed again...this time it was the toilet...on the floor were banana peels and an empty milk carton from the kitchen trash...the wastepaper basket was also tipped over. I backed out of there as quickly as my squeamish bare feet would take me. Closed my bedroom door, got into bed with all my covers on. In this race the rats are winning!

Oh, Karen’s first words were, “let’s not tell the girls huh?” Let’s see how fast it takes for the news to get to Poland !

Update: When I emptied the trash the smell was rank, delicious to a rat of course. I learned that in 3^rd grade when we read about Templeton the Rat in Charlotte’s Web. The land lady came by today and we discussed plugging the rat hole. Her suggestion was to let him crawl out into our apartment and die here…I shot that idea down as tactlessly as possible. She’s coming tomorrow with some goop to plug the hole.

Murder in the Village

My gentle readers will remember my post about all the indignities suffered by Bruce, a dog of the village Antonivka. He is named in honor of the martial arts master Bruce Lee. This dog of such a noble name disgraced himself today in the wee hours of the morning.
A young, maimed, chicken was discovered beside his supper dish. In my previous post about Bruce I praised him and his endurance of certain canine sufferings - chickens eating our of his dog dish for example. Well this morning we had no witnesses as to what allegedly did occur, but a dead chicken was found in the proximity of the dog house. This dead chicken's unmolested corpse was found within the reach of Bruce's short chain which attaches him to the said dog house.
This picture was taken as evidence, unfortunately the corpse had already been removed by passersby (who intended to cook it for lunch).
I think we can see guilt painted all of over the face of this dog, but there is evidence of remorse, he wouldn't touch his breakfast, the surviving chickens are eating it all right under his nose.

grafitti artist caught in action

Just in time to wish us all a happy Halloween!

For Anne of Green Gables fans

click here for an interesting video regarding the new L.M. Montgomery book.

Anita wants to make me a chair like this one

this is making the rounds, so I don't want you to miss it

village life

We are really glad to get out of town once a week and go to visit our friend in the village. It's about an hour and a half on the bus from here to get out there. Once we are there it feels like a lifetime away from the world we know. There's no store out there, no public square, no internet, (unless we connect with our cell phones, which I don't bother to do!)
When we arrive the first one to greet us is usually Bruce barking up a storm.

From it takes a village

Here is Bruce trying to defend his supper dish from a Chinese pig. This poor dog suffers all kinds of indignities, even the chickens are bold enough to try to rob his supper dish!

From it takes a village

With young people moving to town to find work and better possibilities there are lots of Ukrainian villages that are quite uninhabited, but that's not the case with this place.  However there are some homes left empty when the occupants go away for the winter.  Maybe I should say empty nests.

From it takes a village

Svitlana, our friend, has a strip of land in front of her house where she can plant potatoes and beets and whatever else she wants to grow. 

From it takes a village

This week we helped her mow the strip to the left in this picture.  I'd never used a scythe before, never thought I'd ever master that skill, but she and I mowed 10/100 of a hectare together. (1000 meters squared, about the whole length of the field, almost to the trees)  It took us about an hour.  When we started I had no hope of finishing, glad we were doing it together!  You can see the scythe in this picture:

From it takes a village

This picture from http://www.vtcommons.org/files/images/scythe.gif is easier to see.  The trick is she told me is to swing it and aim the "heel" to the earth, when I started doing it that way I couldn't believe how it cleared a huge swath in front of me.  In time it became quite normal to take a step and swing my arms, take another step and swing my arms and watch the greens tumble from their mowed down stalks.  That was 2 days ago, and yes, my arms are still sore!
What I found very interesting is that the field was sown with something she calls "oil radishes", people sow their fields with radishes, mow the field then plow the crop under.  This is done instead of fertilizing the ground.  It seems that farmers at home are doing something similar as well.  Click here for the story.
bye! thanks for listening!