When I discovered I had a hemorrhaging lesion in my brain, I put off surgery for several months to make a will, spend quality time with my son and other family, write something special for him, take hundreds of dollars worth of Olan Mills photos so my son wouldn't forget what I looked like, etc. It's very focusing.
You just never know--imagine seizures beginning at the age of 40, and for years, they can't find the problem with all their tests, and they just tell you it's 'idiopathic' epilepsy. Then when the problem finally grows big enough to show up on a test, they tell you your brain's been hemorrhaging all those years. The human body can make idiots out of the best doctors sometimes.
Speaking of being crushed by trucks, when I was in my late teens, I was driving down the highway next to a giant 18-wheeler, and there was a car in the other lane next to me. Suddenly, the truck started coming into my lane. He didn't hear my horn, which I was leaning on, and I was about to be crushed between him and the car beside me. Luckily, the driver of that car saw what was about to happen and stomped on the gas, flying out of my way just in time for me to get over. I always wished I could have known who it was, so I could thank them for saving my life, and surely, their's too!
Heidi Chronicles - Make Room For Baby
Do you ever give them grapes?
My Mom and I went camping on Jekyl Island, Ga and there were racoons everywhere. One near our campsite that soynged up in a tree right nest to our tent. and a whold clan that came to a restaurant each night for leftovers. I took along a bag of grapes cause i knew that raoons loved them and have pictures of the little (er big ) darlings actually standing in line patiently waiting their turns with their little hands reaching up. it was so fun and they were so cute.
I really enjoy your stories.
~Sheri~
KyWoods,
How awful. Both stories. Were the doctors able to do anything to stop the bleeding once they figured it out? I sure hope that things are going better for you now.
Thank you, Sheri,
I know exactly what you mean about how they wait patiently with their hands out for treats.
Yes, I give them grapes often. We had grapes tonight, in fact. They are quite fond of grapes. Grapes are definitely on their top 10 list. Grapes get a tad pricey to feed too often. I buy them when the price drops to $1.49lb or less, but since we haven't had any for several weeks tonight I broke my own rule and bought the grapes at $1.79lb. Grapes are heavier than they look, so it adds up fast, and that group out there can eat a bag of grapes in minutes.
We also have wild muscadine grapes growing on vines strung along the forest edge like lights on a Christmas tree. Those grapes ripen in late summer or early fall, and the raccoons have a blast climbing around in the trees to eat them. If you saw the picture on the Raccoon Vineyards bottle (another thread), the picture on the bottle of the baby raccoon up in the tree picking grapes was Trouble (as a youngster) eating those wild grapes. I was lucky enough to come out one afternoon and find him up there munching away. He was so adorable to watch.
Lastly, in addition to the massive quantities of wild grapes growning along the edge of the forest, I have several types of domestic grapes, both white and blue, growing in my backyard. My plants are relatively young for grapes, but this year I was happy to see that my white grape is loaded down quite nicely and now the blue Concord grape has set fruit as well. Last year the raccoons ate every single grape before I could taste a single one, and I suspect they will do the same this year.
Thanks for the compliments. Glad you are enjoying the story. Nice to have you with us.
Ruth,
Love the photo! I just want to feed them and play with them.
Yep, my doctor simply drilled a hole in my head and scooped out the problem. The only side effects (aside from the initial unbelievable headache!) is a bad short-term memory and inability to multi-task. But I can still dig in the dirt and feed the critters, so I'm happy, lol.
Welcome, Sheri!
Marylyn,
I read somewhere that kids are much smarter than we give them credit for, that they can smell condescension from miles away and few things will turn them off to a book faster. The source said the 2 worst things you could do in kids books were (1) talk down to them and (2) force the story to have a moral just to do so. Funny thing is this information left me all the more confused. Not being comfortable with kids, I found myself wondering where the line is between talking over their heads and talking down to them. (LOL.You would think this would not be so difficult)
I look forward to reading your story. I will try to remember to read it when I get home tomorrow. (It would be extra helpful if someone could remind me. My memory is almost spent these days.) Anyhow since you say it is 41 pages and I'm already 1.5hrs past my bed time, I had better wait until after work tomorrow to read it. I have a busy day tomorrow. I'm getting off work early to go to the Dr for my shots.
KyWoods,
Well, if you are happy, that is really all that matters! I can't multi-task either. Never could. I think the concept is greatly overrated anyhow. But being happy, and even more important knowing that you are happy, now that's what matters.
Tonight I worked late since I'll be leaving early to get my shots. After work I went by the grocery store for watermelon. I can only go a few days without the stuff. Naturally, while I was there I stocked up on a bunch of other stuff. I love fresh fruit so I stocked up on the stuff.
As I was racing home to feed the raccoon who I figured would be waiting for me at the back door, dark, ominous looking clouds blackened the horizon in the direction of my home. By the time I hauled the groceries in and put the perishable items away, it was starting to rain and threatening to get worse. Torn about whether to try to run out and feed the raccoon in the rain or wait until after the storm and hope that Bast would still be around, I flipped on the outside lights and peaked out the back door. All I saw were rain drops on the patio floor, large raindrops at that. Not a raccoon in anywhere, so I turned the lights back off and just as I was about to turn to walk away, Heidi and one of the other raccoon ran up to the door and stood upright waiving their hands in the air as if to say, "Wait, don't go! We're here!"
As much as I hated the thought of going out into all that rain, I just could not disappoint them after that cute display. I packed my goodies, braced myself for the cold shock of those 1st drops, and headed out to feed them. By that time it was pouring so hard that I could barely see where I was going. I quickly realized that this had been an ill-advised decision. When I made it to the buffet area, blinded by the pelting rain, I tossed handfuls of cat food around and put 3 eggs down near Heidi, then quickly headed back for the comfort of my dry house.
I took a nap to make up for the sleep I'd missed the night before. When I awoke it was almost midnight. I had meant to go back out there after the storm in hopes of feeding Bast. She would almost certainly not be out there now, but I had to try. I walked out there, sat down, and called her name not really expecting to see her. Imagine my surprised when she hobbled out from behind the shrubs where she had apparently been waiting for me all along - or maybe she 'lives' out there these days (or at least at night) in the overgrown areas where the veggie garden used to be. Who knows. For a raccoon who can't do a lot of walking, it's not a bad place to hang out for the night. It has water and sometimes food.
I gave Bast her food and sat down to wait. It was already my bedtime, and Bast takes an hour to eat. It would be a long hour. Then I remember the stem of grapes and handful of gooseberries I had put in my bag earlier in the night for Heidi. Ah, perfect. Grapes were one of the few things Bast liked. I remembered this because she could sometimes get annoying when I was trying to share grapes with the others, and she wanted them all. So I tossed Bast a grape, and as I watched her eat it, her nose in the air the way they often seem to do when eating something yummy, I knew I had hit the jackpot. One at a time I tossed the entire stem of grapes to Bast along with the gooseberries. It was wonderful for a change to see Bast eat with such kind of enthusiasm. She was truly enjoying those grapes. It had been a long time since I had seen Bast enjoy anything. She ate every single one of the grapes, and it had been a large stem, and all of the gooseberries and sat there looking at me in want of more. This was several times the quantity of food Bast used to eat in a single night just a few short weeks ago. Once I convinced her that there really were no more grapes or gooseberries, she started in on the cat food and continued to eat at a good clip for almost an hour.
During this time many of the others showed up. Luckily, I had enough food to go around. Eventually, the crowd grew to about 10-12, and then I heard a very familiar and unmistakable sound. A kit. There was a kit somewhere in the crowd. I knew that sound anywhere. And sure enough as I panned the area with my flashlight, there he was, an adorable little kit over by the pool - and 2 more on the fence. I have no idea whose kits they were. Clearly they belonged to one of those moms with poor parenting skills since the 2 on the fence remained up there alone and crying out for their mom for a while. At the time, with so many hungry mouths around and the food running out, I was too busy guarding Bast to be able to enjoy the kits. A little while later when I looked again, they were gone.
Great image of Heidi and company desperately trying to get your attention when you'd decided to "bag it" for the night!
And how awesome that you treated Bast to all the fresh grapes and berries, and such a good sign that she enjoyed them so obviously and thoroughly. Whatever happens with her in the long run, you have given her the best possible chance for recovery, and some true joy along that way; that's just marvelous, and to your eternal credit.
Sounds like there's another new, know-nothing mother afoot. Will be great when Heidi's well-cared-for kits FINALLY arrive....
Hi Ruth,
I wish I could have gotten that display that Heidi and the other raccoon put on at the back door on tape. It really looked as though when the lights went off they understood that lunch was being called off. They really looked like they were trying to flag me down. Too cute. Wish everyone could have seen that.
As I watched Bast enjoying those grapes and even willing to do some serious stretching to reach the ones that rolled a distance away, I imagined all the health benefits of red grapes and how they probably contained micro nutrients that were missing from even the most well balanced pet food. Hopefully, the good stuff in the grapes will help her healing process.
With so many yearlings out there I suspect there are more than a few of those know nothing moms around. I suspect the crowds and the fighting and such, all the things that were scaring those kits tonight, are the reasons we haven't seen Heidi's kits yet. Because she is such an incredibly good mom, she isn't about to bring them to the buffet until they are old enough to handle the situation without being injured or traumatized by the experience. It is amazing to me to see the difference between how Heidi handles her kits and how many of the others handle theirs. Heidi would just never, ever leave her kits up there on the fence like that all vulnerable and scared and crying out. She's such a good mom. : )
I hear you, Cheryl. What makes Heidi so remarkable (among many other admirable qualities, of course) is that she always puts the young first, whether her own or those of her offspring. It's the way we always heard it should be, but seldom is - whether in human or other species' societies. She really is a very special creature who happened to be born a raccoon, and your observations of other raccoon mothers show that her qualities are as unusual among raccoon mothers as among the human version.
Hi everyone I just got home from Texas...which was a hard task...my trinnie cried so hard and kept saying nana please stay here with me, dont go and when I told her I had to come home she said well take me with you ...its was very deficult to leave she was pulling my heartstrings very hard
its nice to hear the progress of bast even if it is happening slowley
Marylyn...that was a cute story
Ruth such a cute pic of the urban coons
Sheryl, glad to hear you did the contest story...Im sure you did well, we are are worse critics......Im also sorry to hear about your co-worker that was a horrible thing
glad to hear your going back to the Dr and hopefully soon you will be feeling much better...you are a real trooper which never gives up
Jeani
I am vision impaired and have tried to read this thread in its entirety but then everything becomes blurry as I try to skip through and just read the Scutler posts before my vision quits for the day. i was wondering if anyone had taken the time to put all those posts together in one area, or if there was a way for DG to do it and I have not figured out the commands. I cannot find in some areas what became of some of the raccoons and the story is soo heartwarming. I know the replies are imp as well but when you can only read soo much in a day and then pay for it in split corneas the next you have to pick and choose. Either way I really appreciate all the years of hard work and devotion to these amazing animals. Kathy
Ruth,
I loved my dear departed mother, but to be honest she was a bit closer to Diva than I like to admit, and I like Rupert am a survivor. At the buffet, I notice that we have a LOT more Divas than Heidis when it comes to motherhood, and I suspect that is true in the human world as well. Now let me just say up front that Mom didn't let us wreak havoc on others either in stores or in homes. She was very careful about that sort of thing, and we were well 'trained', but as long as we didn't bother anyone we could go pretty much wherever we wanted and do what ever we wanted. We could run with knives, play in the streets, accept rides from strangers, whatever.
I walked a few blocks to the store alone with a list to take to the cashier before I started school - and was eventually hit by a car and left in the street until a neighbor found me. My Mom would send us outside after breakfast and lock the door to keep us out so she could enjoy her soaps in peace. If we were thirsty or needed to use the facilities, we had to knock on the door to get in - and were sent back out promptly when we were done. She would call us for lunch and at dinner time.
When I was 8 we lived near a railroad track. I loved to play on the tracks all of the time, and I would walk the tracks for quite a distance. Sometimes it would be after dark before I got home. Once I found a man lying on the tracks, and walked around him. I would talk to anyone, but he appeared to be sleeping so I didn't wake him. Some distance through the woods behind the tracks, I found a huge sawdust pile in a clearing. It was at least 2 stories high. For a child of that age it was a wonderful toy. I climbed it, walked and ran all over it, slid down the sides again and again. I told my parents about it, of course. They didn't say not to play on it, but years later they did mention that sometimes those things are know to cave in as they may have air inside! Elsewhere in my ramblings I found an old abandoned well. I used to hang over the sides and drop things in there to watch and listen as they fell. Such dangerous things are always exciting to children. These are but a few of the ways I filled my days growing up.
I played in the forest often and got lost in the forest once late in the afternoon. I panicked, cried, and wandered in all directions calling out for my Mom until I had no possible way of determining where I might be or which way to go. All I could see in all directions was just more trees. Luckily, I finally managed to wander close enough to home for my Mom to hear me yelling. She had walked out onto the back porch for something and heard my screams. She didn't come into the woods after me, but she yelled back, and I was able to follow her voice. Once I got lost, if I had wandered in either of two directions I could have wandered for 10's of miles and only gone deeper and deeper into the forest eventually finding swamps with giant water moccasins laying up on the sides and finally the river. I was 9 then.
That same year my brother and I discovered that we could climb the pole (that was there for electricity) beside Dad's workshop to get onto the roof of the little building. It wasn't one of those prefab metal things. It was a small, wooden building in the back yard designed to match the house. It had a regular roof with shingles just like the house. We would climb the pole (with the power lines coming off of it) onto the roof and then jump off over and over and over again. Mom was watching her soaps. I don't even know if she knew we were doing this, but she never told us to stop. (This among many other adventures might help to explain my bad knees and back and my arthritis since the type of arthritis I have is just due to a wearing away of the cartilage between the bones something that no doubt began with the jarring experience of jumping from a 1st floor roof a bazillion times.)
Sometimes I didn't take the bus home from school. Instead I would walk from school to the library or to the shops downtown. Then I would walk all the way home. It must have been some 6 - 8 miles most of which was highway where I walked on grassy shoulders along heavily traveled roads to arrive home near dusk. I didn't even have to call my mom to tell her I wouldn't be home on the bus. I could just show up whenever.
Like Rupert, wherever we went we kids were allowed to go off on our own unsupervised. When I was 5 and he was 6 my brother took me around our grandparent's pond in a leaky row boat. Neither of us could swim. As the water came in, he gave me a can and told me to bale the water out while he paddled. Unfortunately, the water was coming in faster than I was able to bale it out. By the time we were nearing the shore the boat was starting to disappear below the water. Well, you could still see the boat through the murky water, but it was definitely sinking. Even as the top of the boat was maybe 2in under the water, he was still paddling, and I was still baling. Neither of us seemed particularly frightened. I think we were too young to realize the danger, but the same thing that put us in danger probably saved us as we sat calmly in the sinking boat until we touched shore and were able to walk to safety.
Looking back, I shudder to think of all that could have happened. Luck was surely with me growing up. To be honest, I'm a bit jealous when I watch Heidi with her kits. She is a role model for how parenting should be done. From her I have learned a lot and not just about raccoons. I suspect that many humans could learn a lot from watching her with her babies - and that is something I would not have expected to be saying, that humans could learn better parenting skills from animals.
Oops! Sorry. Didn't mean to write my life story. Forgot where I was...
Hi Jeani,
As I read about the little one tugging at your heart strings, I could just feel your pain. I guess there was just no way around it. You either had to move in with your daughter and stay until the GD got married or disappoint her by leaving too soon. But it's wonderful to be loved, isn't it? And at least you had several wonderful weeks to spend with her and the rest of the family. Plus in many ways it must also feel good to be home again. Bittersweet, but good.
Hi Kathy,
Welcome to the Heidi Chronicles. It is so nice to meet you. Sorry to hear of the difficulties you are experiencing. Have you tried either of the following:
(1) Use the menus at the top of the page to make the font bigger. If you haven't done so yet, I would highly recommend it. If you need help with this, please let us know. We will be glad to tell you how.
(2) Use the "find" feature (again on the menus at the top of the browser page) to search for "scutler". Then you can do "find next" to skip down the page from one "scutler" post to the next.
Once again it is time to move to a new thread as this one is getting too long to load well for our dial up friends.
Here is our NEW THREAD: http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/1016205/
Please remember to 'watch' the new thread, or as many have been doing, just post something on the new thread to auto-watch it (if you have that feature turned on). We don't want any of our friends to get lost or left behind!
Just a reminder that this is the end of this thread. please go to: http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/1016205/
OK, how did you get the thing to show up blue like that?
Susan,
I don't see a blue thing. Need more info please.
Edited to add that if you are referring to the color of the links (which are green on my screen), I put them in bold and italics.
This message was edited Jul 18, 2009 7:40 PM
OK, now they are green on mine too. LOL
OMG! LOL, now they are BLUE on my screen!
I think this color thing, blue vs green, is a DG thing that has something to do with whether you have access that thing - or something like that.
Once you click on a link, the blue turns to green....can we go over to the next thread now? *whines about having cruddy ole dialup*
Just a reminder that this is the end of this thread. please go to: http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/1016205/