Thursday, October 14, 2010

Introducing: The Saga of Wicky the Wat

Introducing a real-life, ongoing story. I won't know how it ends until it ends...so please hang in here with me. Thanks!
- Rie


Chapter 1 – “Lost – sort of”


“DING Dong!” Doorbell, right in the middle of something I’m doing and….oh, the heck with it. I run to answer the damn door.

“Hi, Mithith Thanahan!” from the cherubic little front-teeth missing boy, Donnie, who lives in the new house bordering our back yard.

“Hey, Donnie! What’s up?”, I prompt, anxious to get back to my task at hand.

“My pet ith mithing – he wan away and I’m twying to find him,” he said, all down-cast. With this, he handed me a piece of wrinkled and curiously stained paper with a hand-drawn illustration of his pet. It looked like a stick with a ball for a head, four little spindly legs, two huge ears, and a stick tail. “Hith name ith Wicky, and I weally want him back” he added, serious as a heart-attack.

“Sure, thing, Donnie…I’ll keep my eye open for him!” And, with that, I closed the door. That was my first mistake. I never asked who or what “Wicky” is.

Three days later, I was lounging in my new lounge chair out back and enjoying the last of the good weather when something suddenly darted from under my gazebo’s decking and into the side garden. It caught my eye, but was too fast for me to tell what it was. “Hmmmm….”, I thought. “Now, what in the heck was that?” A mole – yep, pesky moles! Left-over squatters free from the wrath of Chuckie the groundhog which, it turns out in my infinite stupidity, I successfully “relocated” this past summer.

The day after that, I was standing at my back door, ready to call for Max, my black Lab, who was busy barking his head off somewhere toward the back of the yard. And….to my utter astonishment…. what should appear from under the shed but a little gray and white animal. “Holy cow!”, I mused, “That is the biggest mouse I’ve ever seen!” That was my second mistake: it was NO mouse. And, it wasn’t a chipmunk, or a mole, hamster, gerbil, or anything I had seen recently – and certainly NEVER, ever anywhere around my house. It looked something like a rat to me, but not quite. There was just ‘something’ about it that looked different. Maybe it was the ears, much too large and Panda-bear looking for a rat. Or, maybe it was the short, furry tail, much to skinny to be a squirrel’s tail, and too short to be a rat’s. Then he sat up! He looked all around as if to say, “Did she put the squirrel’s peanuts out yet?” I tapped on the glass window and instead of him scampering away, he turned and looked at me – and just sat there. Slowly and cautiously, I opened the door.

“Wicky?”, I half-whispered, half-called. With that, he turned around and took off back underneath the shed. And, here comes Max, tongue lolling out of his mouth, tail wagging, looking all happy and what-not. “Max! Look under the shed!”, I yell to him. Yeah. Right. Not in this life-time! Labs are not noted for being quick on the draw, and Max lives up to that one, totally. In fact, he excels at it.

Totally stumped, I go over to our wildlife clinic and describe to Rick, our director, what I had just seen. “It sounds like a wood rat, Marie,” he said, adding, ’but I really doubt it because they just don’t live here in PA anymore and are on the endangered species list.” Mainly, he went on to explain, they now live out west. They are also called “pack rats”, and are not true rats (even though they are in the rodent family). He gave me a Havaheart trap for me to catch the little critter with and told me to bring him to the clinic as he would very much like to see one of these creatures up close and personal. Sure thing. Will do, I tell him.

The pieces started to fall into place: a misplaced critter, a little boy looking for a lost pet, both of whom just moved here from God-only-knows where, (but I can make a pretty good and now-educated guess!), and an unwelcome guest taking up residence in MY yard.

That was 2 weeks ago and if you come back to this thread, I will gladly explain my trials and constant misses with Ricky. It’s been a very interesting and harrowing 2 weeks; and all I can say at this point right now is that “Wicky” has so far been very well fed.

Sigh. Why ME? A wildlife rehab volunteer’s nightmare, for sure!

To be continued…..

2 comments:

  1. Note: to continue reading about Wicky, please look to your right and click on each successive chapter's link.

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  2. Please don't be afraid to post comments, if you would like to!

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