The Continuing Saga, Part II...

Yesterday, it was the dog's turn to make me crazy.

It wasn't her fault, however. I understand why she did what she did...

I seriously wonder why all the weird stuff happens to me. Really.

Here's the story:

Yesterday, I took my niece to lunch. While we were eating, a thunderstorm rolled in.

A very impressive thunderstorm.

I looked at my niece and said "My poor baby."

My said "She'll be fine."

After we said good bye and she went back to work, I ran out to my sister's house to get her two dogs, one of which doesn't like thundersboomers any more than Riley. I also had a couple of errands to run but I wasn't gone any more than 90 minutes. Honest.

I walked into my house to find Riley in the front hall. No big deal. I must've left the hall door open.

No, it was closed. I looked from the door to my dog and noticed she was wet. As in soaking wet.

We went into the house and I looked around. The front window, which I had left open when I left was now closed. The dowel I use to keep it open was lying outside, on my front stoop.

The explanation was clear.

My dog, in a panic because of the storm, had jumped through the window.

When the new neighbor came over awhile later things got really strange.

Apparently, my dog, once she was outside, was standing in the street when some blonde lady stopped her car to check on the dog. The dog, got in her car and then either the lady took her for a drive around the block or she and the new neighbor put her in my house.

Either way, my dog was willing to go off with a complete stranger.

I don't like that. At all.

And I feel awful for leaving her home alone to panic enough that she felt safer going out the window than she did staying safe and dry in her house.

*Sigh*

Random strangeness.

I can't seem to get away from it.

The continuing saga of...

I live a quiet life, really. Work, family, friends, my pets. That's about it. It's not much, but I like it.

So why, I find myself asking myself, do weird things keep happening to me?

The latest tale involved that little guy up there.

It's supposed to be a photo of a little brown bat but it might be a big brown bat and it isn't THE bat, just one that looks like THE bat. I don't know and it doesn't truly matter to the story...

Last Friday morning, when I got home at 0715, I noticed a dark brown spot on the carpet in my bedroom. My first thought, as always with two cats in the house, was now what did they kill and bring inside?

I bent down to look and realized it was a bat.

A week or two ago I wouldn't have thought twice about it but a friend on Facebook posted a link about how they'd found a rabid bat in Ann Arbor.

Yes, that's a good distance from where I live but when I found the little bugger on my carpet, the story pinging within.

I scooped the thing up, without touching it, and put it outside with the garbage. I then went to sleep.

Friday afternoon I had an appointment at the vet's for my dog so I said, casually, "I found a dead bat in my house..."

He immediately made a face and asked if I still had it. I told him I could probably still get it and he told me to get it and take it to the county health department to get it tested. He then proceeded to make my day by telling me that the assumption, when you find a dead bat in your house, is that you have been bitten and if you don't have the bat to be tested, you get the shots...

The article about rabid bats immediately came to mind.

Lovely.

I went home and retrieved the bat, putting it into a Ziploc and into my fridge where it sat all weekend because the Health Department closes at 4:30...

I spent the weekend worrying about my cats, who hadn't been vaccinated recently due to funding problems.

I spent the weekend trying very hard not to think about those shots. Weren't there like 15 of them... directly into your stomach?

Monday morning, the bat went to the Health Department and I spoke with a nurse who told me that I had done everything right and I had nothing to worry about. I had plenty of time to get the test results back and get the shots, if I needed to. Oh, and there are only two shots now and they're not nearly as bad as they once were. I mentioned that my cats hadn't been vaccinated and she said, get them vaccinated and they'll be fine.

I really, really wish I'd talked to her on Friday.

The bat got packed up and shipped off to Lansing, where they would cut off his fuzzy brown head and examine his brain.

The cats got vaccinated, cutting my worries down to just me, but at a greatly reduced level.

I got a phone call on Wednesday telling me the test was negative.

So, things turned out all right...

But again. Why does the weird stuff happen to me?

I guess my life is so quiet most of the time that the fates figure I need a little something every so often to keep it interesting.

Lucky me.