Silly things that have happened to you

Hah, brave man for sure! That sparked an old memory I have, not quite as valiant as that but...

It was Oct 31st, out on a service visit to a glass container company in Burlington WI, the hotel they put us up in was the Rainbow Inn, that should have been a clue. That night I decided to take in a movie, so off I go to a near by town Racine, being Halloween and it just came out in the theaters, I went to see a midnight show of "Silver Bullet" scary back in the day, still a little today but by today's standards rather tame ;)

As I left the theater the moon was full, of course...and there was a halo around the moon too, making it look even more ominous. As I drove back towards Burlington, just about to the hotel, a black cat ran across the road, whew that was close! but, it turned ran back and I hit it...SO not only did a black cat cross my path, I ran it over, apologies to the cat's owner but they really should have kept it in doors.

Feeling more than a little spooked I got back to the 'hotel' drove up around to the back, second floor level had a parking lot that circled and went up to the level. There in the lot was an old rusty jeep Wagoneer looking truck, had a tail light partially hanging out/busted but blinking like it was signaling. Couldn't get the door open quick enough lol.

Now it's about 2am COLD got into bed and just about asleep when a LOUD noise came from the bathroom. Seems that the venting system in this 'hotel' was such that if the person directly below you turned on their exhaust fan...it also turned yours on to help vent it out...good to know!

Settled back down to rest and about asleep and I heard a loud sharp TING sound, tried to ignore that but kept thinking SOMETHING made that sound but finally drifted off. Next morning figured out it was just the heater in the room making that noise.

Yeah, I'm brave lol, next visit there years later, they have other hotel choices near by, love progress, so I haven't stayed at the Rainbow's Inn since, by now they may not even be there, dunno. But it's an experience I haven't forgotten.
G2
 
Years ago, I lived in "student co-operative housing." That is, a bunch of us rented a big old house, pooled our food money and took turns cooking & cleaning. Texas summers without air conditioning. Ahh, youth. We had a few cats, and for a cat-door, we had a hole in one of the window screens that the cat could go in and out through.
One night, we are all in the living room, watching a movie: Cat People. Sort of a werewolf movie, but with big cats instead of wolves. So just at the part when Nastassja Kinski is transforming into a were-panther, our black cat jumps in through the window hole, gets her claw caught in the curtain and is hanging there yowling, and everyone is screaming, and I'm laughing too hard to get up and unhook the poor kitty. :D (She was unharmed)


Oh wait, these are supposed to be stories told at our own expense:
I once forgot to roll up my window before driving into a car wash and got a blast of hot soapy water right into my ear. :o
 
Haha I remember that movie, strange stuff.

I can imagine everyone jumped when that cat made it's entrance!
G2
 
taldesta said:
I was a teenager on the farm when my pet tabby (special to me among the lot of barn cats) went missing. The farm was on the Dundas Highway, sounds high speed and vehicular but at the time was a two lane highway leading to Toronto, the big city.
Then discovered sad body of the tabby, flattened dry and thin on the highway, totally devastated me.
I scraped her off the pavement with a flat-mouthed shovel, bawling my eyes out. I buried her on the property. Much ceremony and open grieving.
Three days later, my dear tabby cat came home.
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This is just too funny, cause:
Atleast you were a teenager!

I did the same darn thing about 12 years ago. I had a cat that was about 13 years old. He had moved with me to 3 different houses in two states over the years. . He was my only pet. He never disappeared and was the kinda cat that when you called, he came!
Then while my wife was in the hospital for 2 weeks, every time I came home to check on the house and him for the first week, I could never find him. The food I put out was not eaten. I just knew something bad had happened to him. I had told my wife he was missing and that I put up some posters in the neighborhood.
Then one day coming home from the hospital about 1/4 mile from the house, like you I too "discovered the sad body of a American Tabby, flattened on the side of the road". I too scooped him up with a shovel, buried him under the Olive tree me and my wife had planted when we first moved in.
I went back to the hospital and broke down in unmanly tears telling the wife I had buried our beloved cat. We cried together. Told the whole family about our tragic loss that night in a heartfelt email.

Well, the following day when I pulled up in the drive way, BOOM he comes pouncing out of the bushes around the same tree he was supposed to be buried under!!! I liked to fall out of my car. And yes, I went and checked the hole! "He" was still buried. lmao!

Needless to say, the cat lived another 5 years, but the family/neighborhood joke about me burying somebody else's cat under our "Family Tree" still lives to this day!! So, where did I bury MY cat? Under the same tree! :)
Hope everyone had a Merry Christmas.
 
r8shell said:
I once forgot to roll up my window before driving into a car wash and got a blast of hot soapy water right into my ear. :o
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Yikes - this one brings to mind one of my real stupid tricks :rolleyes:

"Years ago" I was going to school and tending bars through 36 hour shifts between Friday evenings and Monday AMs. Would return home to my one bedroom little house on a back road near an ocean beach and 35 minutes away from my night job. Most nights I came home alone about 2AM. Spring time the raccoons would start poking about the yard at night as they are want to do. Could make a hell of a racket tossing the lids off the metal garbage cans or just ransacking with enthusiasm - all out side my bathroom window.

One particular early morning after one of these shifts when I was desperate for sleep I was once again awakened by the raucous raccoons. I was not in the mood. I had in the past thrown rocks, chased with brooms and shovels and other sharper implements and made a loud and (I hoped) terrifying nuisance of myself. Firearms wasn't a consideration - never even came into my consciousness in those days. This night I had no desire to step out into the yard to confront the hooligans. My somewhat sleep muddled plan? Boil a pot of water and drench the scavengers. That would show them that this house was a danger zone!

Cranked up the stove - boiled a gallon of water in a two handled pot and after about 20 minutes when all was ready, with smug satisfaction, I grabbed up my pot of boiling water with pot holders and marched like Napoleon to Moscow to the bathroom - stark naked and determined :thumbup:. I listened and smiled grimly as I heard the critters rumbling in the garbage - waited a brief time to make certain they were in good position then with a battle cry (blood curdling, of course) I threw the entire gallon of boiling water through the open window - er - at the screen :eek: The next battle cry was more of a whimper. Did you know that a metal insect screen to high velocity boiling water is not unlike a solid wall? :confused: My naked self found out soon enough. I heard the raccoons laughing all the way to the woods. They were still laughing the next night :D Took me a while longer to see the humor.

Ray
 
Why this old tale bubbled up from the La Brea Tar Pit of my mind, who knows but.....

Way, Way, Way back when I was young and dumb (about 10 y.o.), I went rabbit hunting with my trusty single shot 22short bolt action rifle. I had taken 3 of the "rats on steroids" when I shot the 4th one of the day. It jumped straight up in the air and came down on the other side of a downed tree limb lying on the ground. I snuck up as quietly as I could so as not to spook the rabbit in the event it wasn't dead yet. Didn't want to have to track it in case it up and ran on me on its last legs.

When I looked over the "log", no rabbit was to be seen, just a hole in the ground about as big around as a soft ball. I assumed that the rabbit in question had crawled in the hole. Don't ask me why I thought that. :foot: I sure wasn't scared of snakes, as rattlers hadn't been seen in the area for 30 years (unlike now, when I find and kill over 30 / year). I just stuck my arm down the hole, felt something "long and fuzzy", grabbed hold of it and pulled. Rather than coming out with a dead rabbit by the ears, I was less than pleased to find I was holding a sleepy but pissed off skunk by the tail.:eek:

That skunk had to be one of the most agile critters on earth that day. He/she kept trying to curl up and bite/scratch my arm. I kept popping it up and down trying to shake the teeth and claws away from said arm. I must have bounced it a little too hard one time and the skunk bounced up enough to release the pressure on the scent vent (hanging by its tail must have pinched the vent closed up to this point). I took a full shot of skunk scent juice to the chest from a range of less than 2 feet.:barf:

I set the world record "skunk tail toss" when I then threw that skunk at least 200 yards, I'm sure.:rolleyes:

I picked up my bag of rabbits and my rifle with tears streaming down my face and my sinuses running and dripping like an elephant with a sinus infection. After walking the 1.5 miles back home, I knocked on the back door, knowing full well that my grandmother would NOT want me coming into the house smelling like a skunk. Remember, I said I was young and dumb, not stupid. :D.

When my grandmother came to the door, she took one whiff and ordered me to "Strip right now." I was then subjected to a scrubbing of tomato juice and lye soap, liberally rinsed with cold water via water hose attached to the back well. After 4 or 5 washings, I was deemed clean enough to get dressed.

I then cleaned the rabbits, which my grandmother dutifully fried up for supper. I was required to eat outside while everyone else ate in the kitchen.

I was also banished to sleeping on a cot on the back porch for 3 days, eating all my meals on the porch and had to use the old falling down outhouse down by the barn.:o I was NOT allowed in the house until my I passed the "Grandmother's Sniff Test".

Lesson learned - Don't assume you hit the rabbit just because it jumps. :D:D
 
Wow, that's a day you wouldn't forget anytime soon!! :)
G2
 
Thanks Ray and those Raccoons, they are devious and they can scream like bloody murder, we've had them fighting up in our trees before and we thought some woman had been attacked! very eerie sound they can make when they get riled up!
G2
 
Gary W. Graley said:
Thanks Ray and those Raccoons, they are devious and they can scream like bloody murder, we've had them fighting up in our trees before and we thought some woman had been attacked! very eerie sound they can make when they get riled up!
G2
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I used to live in an apartment with a balcony that looked over an arroyo. Those dang raccoons could figure out the patio screen door latches and come in and tear up the pantry.

At one point, we set up some tin cans balanced on broom handles to make noise when they tried to come in, hoping to scare them off. One night, I am awakened by the sound of all the cans falling, and I sit up yelling: "Raccoons!" My boyfriend sits up: "Hey, who the hell are you!" The poor scared frat-boy who thought he was playing a prank on his buddy Joe in the apartment next door, but drunkenly miscounted the windows on the back side of the apartment says, "Oh, S#!@ where's Joe?" He had climbed a tree to the third floor and was so confuzzled, that he started to go back out that way, but the boyfriend was nice enough to let him use the door. It really is scary to wake to a stranger's silhouette in the bedroom doorway, that's how people get shot. We did laugh about the "Raccoons!" alert system.
 
RayseM said:
Very funny! :D Glad you survived - a badger would have made a real mess of you :eek:.

Great thread you set up here Gary.

Cheers, Ray
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Gary W. Graley said:
Thanks Ray and those Raccoons, they are devious and they can scream like bloody murder, we've had them fighting up in our trees before and we thought some woman had been attacked! very eerie sound they can make when they get riled up!
G2
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Luckily for me, we don't have badgers in central Texas. The wildlife folks claim they are every where in Texas except in the far SE corner of the state, but in 62 years, I have never, ever encountered, seen or even heard of anyone around here seeing one. At the time, I did not know that raccoons sometimes take over abandoned burrows.
 
This one happened just about 2-1/2 years ago.

Out back there is an old 90 year old barn. The hayloft was left full of baled hay (about 400 bales) back in the 1970s when my grandmother got out of the cattle business right after the summer hay baling. (separate story - nutshell version - she got tired of being rustled 1 cow at a time and said - "sell'em all" or words to that effect). The hay just stayed up there, "holding the barn down in high winds". :p Well, I decided it was time to clear out the barn and tear it down. So I started removing the hay bales one pickup load at a time.

I would occasionally disturb both rats and rattlesnakes (I HATE SNAKES):grumpy: that had taken up residence in the loft, so I took to using a chopping hoe to pull a bale from the stack so I wouldn't be "Right There" within striking distance when disturbing a rattler. I also took to carrying a 9-shot .22LR Taurus pistol in a left handed holster at the small of my back for right hand draw, loaded with rat shot to take out either one that I encountered. All rats and most rattlers could be dispatched with a single round, but sometimes a 2nd round is needed for a larger rattler.

One day, I pulled out a bale and I swear the biggest anaconda-sized rattler was laying there in a hollow between 2 bales. Did I mention that I HATE SNAKES?:grumpy::grumpy: Good thing I had a gun, right?

I reached back, drew the .22 and shot the snake right between the eyes. :) Saw a few scaled fly off and the snake coiled up and raised its head up at least 2 feet, hissed like hell, with his rattles sounding like 6 tin cans filled with rocks behind a wedding car. I proceeded to empty the pistol at that snake, hitting him a total of 8 times out of 9 shots, based on seeing chunks of skin fly off.:eek:

I was now left with an empty pistol and one VERY pissed off rattle snake that I swore had grown to 30 feet long coming at me from about 8 feet away. Now I'm REALLY HATING SNAKES. :mad::mad: The only escape was through the access hole in the floor that was 4 feet closer to the snake than I was. I chunked the now useless pistol out of the way so I wouldn't trip on it. If I had tried throwing it at the snake (which I THOROUGHLY HATED by this time), the snake would probably have just caught it with its mouth and spit it back at me.

Remembering that I had a chopping hoe in my left hand, I swung it up and took a good old two-handed, overhand strike as hard as I could, aiming at the snake. Well, guess what I learned? A 5-1/2 ft tall guy with 2 ft long arms swinging a 6 ft long chopping hoe overhanded in a barn that is only 9 ft up to the rafters will catch the hoe head on a rafter on every swing.:eek: So I had to choke up on the hoe handle and then started swinging away like Conan the Barbarian. I never counted but I probably whacked away at the snake AT LEAST 30 times from a distance of about 4 feet.

In the end, I ended up with a dead 6 ft 2" rattlesnake that was in at least 6 pieces (I MAY not have found all the pieces) with 19 rattles (and indications of at least 6 rattles broken off), and a cracked chopping hoe handle.

Needless to say, I didn't move any more hay bales out that day. :o

Since that day, whenever working in one of the sheds/barns/out buildings, I carry a .357 Magnum revolver loaded with a single round of rat shot and backed up by 5 rounds of hollow point and a speed loader with 6 more round of HP in my pocket. I also carry a Becker BK9 and a Kabar 1217 while walking around. If I encounter a rattler under 2 ft long while sans pistol, I'll step on its head and guillotine it with one of the aforementioned blades.

While I hate snakes, the only ones I kill are rattlers and copperheads. The garter snakes, king snakes, rat snakes, bull snakes, heck even coral snakes get a pass as they eat bugs and rodents and are not poisonous. Well, coral snakes are poisonous, but if you get bit by one of those, you're pretty stupid, as they don't have fangs and you gotta let them chew on you to get any venom in you.
 
Now that's a good snake story by a fellow Texan!! I wade in the things all summer in the fields up North of you so I can relate to what your talking about !!!!
 
I was disposing of a lot, like several pounds, of wood shavings from a carving project today in the fire pit. As they burned off I noticed a purple transparent plastic thing in the pile. I got curious because I couldn't figure out what it could be, then it blowed up. I accidentally gathered up a lighter with the shavings.
 
Wife caught a mouse in a trap the other morning and put it in a plastic grocery bag. Dead of course. I tossed the bag in the back of my truck, intending on throwing it in the dumpster when I got to work.

When I got to work, I reached in the bed and picked up the bag. Just then a loud SCREECH. I jumped and dropped the bag thinking it was zombie mouse, but it was just the girl in the junker next to me opening the door to her car :o
 
Was visiting my wife's family in her sister's split level house years ago. Instead of turning on the hall light to go down the stairs to the kitchen where everyone was sitting around talking I chose to navigate it in the dark.

Also chose to miss the very first step down and instead hit it with my rear end and fell/slid the entire flight.....all six foot two and at the time, 265 pounds of me. My body made a sound similar to when trash trucks pick up dumpsters and drop them back down to earth.

Naturally, the entire family had to run in there and allow me to die of shame rather than internal bleeding. There was a mixture of facial expressions as I sprung up like nothing happened. Homeowner brother in law's face was aghast worrying about lawsuits, others were full of concern and worry........and of course my wife was doubled over busting out laughing.

Guess who added a small aaa flashlight to his EDC after that?
 
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