There were quite some winds sweeping through Ottawa today!
I’m hoping these are not the winds of political change, because so far, they bode no good!!!
And how exciting!
First, my dog began to behave ‘weird’….
Yoshi, a golden retriever (whose mom was a rescue while she was pregnant with him – so we knew there would be ‘issues’), he is sweet and loving but, frankly, not that intelligent. When it comes to thunderstorms, he sees that we are calm so he is calm.
Except today!!!
For a couple of hours, he was shaking with fear – on my lap, of course – and drooling this weirdly thin saliva. I have never seen him like this!!!
I tried to console him as best I could, but nothing worked!
Yes, he does get spooked by beeping sounds (like when power goes out and our UPS’s our computers are hooked up to beep periodically), but that is more of a ‘startled’ kind of thing, not actually scared.
And, he is a little bit afraid of cats, but that is more of a playful afraid, not shake uncontrollably and drool type of a thing. Plus, there were no cats here then…
I did not know what was going on!!!
A while after he started freaking out, we kept hearing these weird banging noises from upstairs – except that nobody was there!!! Obviously, for a little while, our house must have become haunted by a ghost. I distinctly recall reading that dogs don’t like ghosts – and that ghosts may make ‘banging sounds’ – so what else could it have been?!?!?
Then, even the rabbit became nervous.
Aside:
If you have not happened to read the few posts of mine where I boast about my (sorry, my son’s) rabbit, let me fill you in:
- he is an English Spot – and if you search YouTube for rabbits which are bold, daring and unafraid, chances are very, very high that that rabbit will either be an English Spot or look like he has some English Spot in him
- Hip Hop (my son named him: he is hip – and he hops!) thinks he is a dog: rabbits are social creatures who live in groups and try to adapt to the group – which makes them way more trainable than, say, cats are. When we brought him home, we introduced him to the dog: who, using dog language, immediately put his chin over the rabbit’s head to show ‘I’m the boss!’ However, rabbits have scent glands in the bottom of their chin which they rub on ‘stuff’ and ‘critters’ they want to mark as ‘their own’ – in other words, if a rabbit rubs any part of you with his/her chin, the rabbit is saying ‘I love you – you are now mine!’ So, the rabbit thought the dog was declaring undying love – and figured he was ‘mama-Yoshi’
- HipHop has since shown a penchant for courting female squirrels while chasing male squirrels away – and dominating any and every dog he has encountered. He has succeeded in this with our dog’s sister, my brother-in-law’s dogs (shi-tsus and a shi-tsu/maltese mix who likes to pick fights with german shepherds – and wins), my neighbour’s two poodle/schnauser mixes and her sister’s dachsund, my parents’ tibetan terriers – even one hunting dog we met while walking him on leash!!!
- The last time we went for an appointment at the vet’s, he bitched down the two cats that live at the clinic AND never looked nervous!!!
- AND, if you were still doubting Hip Hop’s bravery – this bunny regularly goes to school and faces school children!!!
For about half-an-hour, Hip Hop joined Yoshi on the sofa (highly unusual!) in trying to sit on my lap and both seemed, well, frightened!!!
Then, a neighbour came over to tell me that from her house (behind mine), she can see the whole back of my roof flapping up and down violently – and that we should go into the basement, just in case….. She helped me gather up the (way too many) shingles that had flown off my roof and then went home.
Yes, my roof lost a lot of shingles. Many of them are still up in my neighbour’s tree – just north-east of my house. But, during daylight, the wind was still too high to retrieve them – or to assess just how bad my damages are.
The funny thing is – my next-door-neighbour had also lost a lot of shingles! But, instead of going and landing east-north-east of her house, all of HERS landed west-south-west of HER house!!!!
HOW WEIRD IS THAT!!!
Ours were the only two houses in the neighbourhood to suffer this level of damage…
Of course, being good neighbours and also being (reserved) friends, we both got our roofs done at the same time, by the same company…. My neighbour is in the US on a business trip, so her sister is trying to figure out the damage…but it sure does seem weird that the only two houses in the neighbourhood who got their roofs re-done at the same time, by the same company (hey – my neighbour is a smart and thorough businesswoman – if she vets a company to do work on her house, I am more than happy to piggy-back!), should be the only two houses to loose so many shingles off their roof!!!
Oh boy, they must not have done a good job – right?
Except that…
…according to multiple neighbours, a micro-tornado touched down between my house and my neighbour’s!!!
How cool is that!!!
That would kind of explain why their shingles landed west-south-west of their house while our shingles landed east-south-east of our house.
Ah, well, I guess I’ll have to figure it all out over the next few days…
At least, the dog and the rabbit are OK now!
And I still have most of a roof over my head….
Xanthippa's Chamberpot 