Wednesday, Feruary 14

As some of you may know, I live in the thriving metropolis of Boise. It's great, we have stores and restaurants which stay open later then 20:00! Shocking, I know. For those of you who don't, a lot of the smaller towns around the state have laws on the books stating all businesses and sidewalks will be rolled up precisely at 20:00. Those towns that don't follow the mandated time have their roads taken away from them. Don't believe me? Maybe you should read this or this or even this one*.

Boise is growing by leaps and bounds, hence the use of thriving. Within the next few years we might even break 200 thousand people. While we have the luxury of being able to go to the store at 02:00, the down side people freak out of the slightest animal sighting. It's not unusual to have a news story from the west end of town of a cougar being spotted. People freak out, "why wasn't we warned?" Hello, you're living on the boundary of their territory. More then once I've watched raccoons cross the roads in the middle of town. In fact, I drove home and not even a block away from the house a family of raccoons was crossing the road. I ran into the house and told Grilltech who said, "Raccoons, right." (You know the tone.)

One morning, Grilltech is coming out of the shower; the sun is barely clearing the hills. Peaches in the bedroom window and goes on high alert. She’s hissing and batting the window. Grilltech comes around the bed and looks out. Without his glasses on, all he sees is a grey blob and he can’t figure out how a dog got into the backyard. He grabs his glasses and is shocked to realize it’s a raccoon. Since he is a quick minded guy, he grabbed the camera to get proof he wasn’t lying about seeing one. “Raccoons, right.” (Our backyard.)

One crisp fall morning (and by morning I mean 04:30), I was driving to work while Grilltech slept. (We work together and he likes to catch a few more minutes of sleep, while I drive.) I'm coming up on the bridge which crosses the connector, and out pop four white tail deer. I do the girly high pitch squeal** "Look! Look! Look!" Grilltech is shocked out of sleep, halfway expecting to be in the middle of a car crash or something equally devastating. He looked at the deer, grunted something that sounded like "neat" and went back to sleep. Later that morning, it's on the news, some idiot in the general area of where the deer had been with a gun scaring the straights.

Weeks later we're in the house, it's dark and Peaches goes on high alert. She starts growling and hissing at the back door, doing everything she can to help protect the house. Grilltech asks me to open the door and scare away the cat that is annoying his cat. I go flip on the dining room light, and in the dim light I can see four raccoons on the steps next to the door. Once the raccoons realized they had an audience, off they trundled.

For a thriving city, we’re got quite a few critters running around.

And happy VD to everyone!

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* I couldn't find the one about the Dam breaking and cutting Atlanta, ID off from the rest of the state. Guess my Googlefu wasn't strong enough.

** You know the one, it sounds like someone is taking screw driver and driving it into your skull, over and over until you want to throttle the person making that noise to get them to stop.