Martin the Warrior

A few weeks ago my washing machine tried to kill me. It was the first, but not the last, instance of attempted murder in this sordid story.

I was just washing my clothing when it started to shake and heave and emit banging sounds louder than the Battle of Thermopylae. When I went to investigate it literally charged at me. A side note, I hate it when people use "literally" to mean "figuratively". But, aside from the anthropomorphizing implicit in the statement, I'm telling the truth here: that washing machine actually lunged several feet toward me as if demonically possessed. For a while my roommate and I did laundry as a team effort, when it got to the spin cycle we would both go and restrain the washing machine so it would stay in one place. We realized, ultimately, that this was both not particularly safe nor a good use of our time. Before we could decide whether we should stop doing that the spin cycle broke all together. So, no trying to kill us = good; clothes still completely wet after come out of dryer = bad.

Our landlady got a washing machine repairman to come over who made an interesting discovery. We had acquired a pet. A mouse was living inside the washing machine and had gnawed through some of the wires (he didn't see the mouse, but did find... evidence of its life inside the machine). We decided to name it Charles Martin. Also, my roommate got some traps from our landlady to kill him. I was a little sad as I went to bed, knowing he couldn't resist the delicious cheese laid out. Poor little guy.

I was right that Charles Martin couldn't resist the cheese. What I was less right about was my assumption regarding his mortality. Because when I woke up, the cheese was gone and the trap was unsprung. Over the next few days my roommate tried various combinations of cheese and peanut butter and every morning the situation was the same: no food, no mouse. He even got up in the middle of the night one time, noticed the cheese was gone, put more in and woke up to find it gone.

Last week, I noticed the trap was different. Hewing to the adage about better mousetraps, my roommate had beaten a path to Canadian Tire's door and bought an evil looking spring-loaded trap with a hair trigger. He put it out, laden with peanut butter, knowing that this trap would get the mouse. But in the morning, the peanut butter was still there. Charles Martin had outsmarted us! He became somewhat of a folk hero in my mind. Much like the protagonist of the excellent Fantastic Mr. Fox (seriously, go see it), he was a wild animal besting us in a battle of wits and stealing our food. His very existance was a critique of our petty bourgeois student life style and our social norms about property.

This morning there was a dead mouse in the trap.

He was grey with cute little white paws and a long pink tail. I buried him in the garden next to the ivy. Requiescat in pace, Charles Martin.

An Open Letter To The Man Who Crushed My Lettuce

Dear Man Who Crushed My Lettuce,
First of all I should say I appreciate you painting my house. I know you're not doing it for charity – my landlords are repainting their properties – but I appreciate you're helping make my house better. I do, however, have issues with where you decide to stand. Now, I don't have an issue that you woke me up today by standing on the roof right outside my bedroom window and spraying water higher up. I was going to wake up anyway around that time to go to work, so really what did that hurt? I am slightly concerned that your standard operating procedure is not to knock on the door first but to climb on to roof outside someone's window in the early morning! How do you know I'm not a 19 year girl. Maybe this hypothetical person would not like to wake up to hear a ladder being pushed against the roof that connects to her bedroom window as a strange man climbs up it. Just sayin'.

But, as I stated, that wasn't the standing that concerned me. When I left for work you were spraying down the porch... while standing on my lettuce plants. Really? Really?

Like, there's a lot of other places in my garden for you to stand. There are areas, for example, that do not have plants growing. There are areas that have more resilient plants, like ivy. There is a wooden path midway through it that has no plants.

Or there's the sidewalk. That's good too.

So, while I'm grateful you didn't wreck any of my other plants I'm not entirely pleased about the lettuce.

Govern yourself accordingly,
The Frugal Veggie

CSI: My Kitchen 2: The Return

I am literally angry with rage. Today, I wake up and head into my kitchen and what do I find. Some animal has ransacked it, again.

Not cool, animal. Again, if it was just the bread that it ate – I would be annoyed. I was planning on eating that bread for breakfast today. But y'know, I eat it, it eats it, it all balances out. But it wrecked and contaminated a bunch of my stuff: pasta, barley, lentils, cornstarch. I wish you ill, little animal. I wish you ill. This time it ate through my screen:

I guess that gives a slightly better idea what it is: probably not a squirrel. Whoever you are, little animal, I'd advise you to get out of here cause the town ain't big enough for the both of us.

CSI: My Kitchen

I awoke the day after Canada Day eager to have some toast. That's funny, I thought to myself, I don't remember tearing the bread covering open with my claws and then devouring it on the floor... scattering crumbs and remnants everywhere. After surveying the scene I also didn't remember ripping open all of my staples and scattering them about either.

Surveying the damage, the intruder had ate my bread and torn through my pasta, cornmeal, lentils (two types) and barley. I decided to throw everything that was pawed through out, given some the diseases animals carry. So I guess I draw my frugal line at "might contain brain-eating parasites".

The intruder entered through the window, I guess I hadn't secured the screen enough. At this point I'm guess it was a raccoon, squirrel or crackhead. A crackhead who wanted bread I guess.

CSI: My Garden

I have started a small garden this summer. There's some dirt in front of my house where my landlords have already planted some ferns and the like and I decided to add some vegetation. Nothing fancy, a few chili plants, some lettuce, flowers from some miscellaneous seeds the Cystic Fibrosis people sent me and four tomato plants.

Four tomato plants... until yesterday. When I woke up that grey June morn I discovered that I now had two tomato plants because half of them were... stolen!

I thought long and hard whether to show this shocking crime scene photograph on a public blog which might, after all, be accessed by orphans or sensitive individuals. Ultimately though, I decided that I needed to share pictures of the devastation that was once one of my tomato plants.

I honestly don't know who would steal a tomato plant. A raccoon? A spaghetti enthusiast? An alien woefully misinformed about the dominant species on our planet? Hopefully it wasn't a radical one tomatoist who interprets the project's goals overly literally.

PS– Yes, I'm aware that I'm going to have to put some sticks down soon and tie the tomatoes to them.