What's in the Box?

I’ve done my share of traveling. I’ve seen most of our fair country and I’ve been to several countries in Europe a number of times and to Japan a few times. I’ve seen much of Canada and most of Mexico. In all this time though I continue to be amazed at how nice it is to get home and how exhausted I am by the time I get here. And, of course, everyone has their funny travel stories.
One of mine happened as my second trip to Japan was about to come to a close. I’d been in Japan on a job interview and the college I'd interviewed with had made the travel arrangements which involved several changes of planes and a truly grueling return trip.
It began on the wrong foot. As I was leaving my hotel in Nagoya, one of my pieces of luggage just fell apart. It gave up the ghost right in the lobby while I was trying to check out, the seam of the zipper just gave way ripping apart from both sides leaving a gaping hole from which all my Japanese treasures spewed forth: a kimono, some sake, a tea cup, a camera lens, assorted carefully embroidered handkerchiefs.
I just didn’t have time to go shopping for another suitcase and the hotel desk clerk must have realized. In any event, he took pity on me and snagged a box. We emptied my suitcase into the box and he fastened it securely with clear packaging tape.
Domo arrigato.
I was so grateful.
The flight to Tokyo was brief and uneventful. We checked in thru customs and made our way to the next plane and the longest part of the trip. We were returning to CA via British Columbia then to San Francisco then to LA. Although I had a business class seat on this leg, I was still exhausted by the time we got to BC. Oddly, U.S. immigration was there and checked in the US passengers.
The layover in SF was brief, but I practically stumbled off the plane in Los Angeles. I’d been traveling for close to 24 hours. And I’ve never been any good at sleeping on board an aircraft. I’ve always sort of felt I had to stay awake to help the plane stay aloft. Besides, the captain was awake. I hope. I hope. I hope.
Once we disembarked, I got my luggage and loaded it on one of those carts and began pushing my way thru the international zone toward the lobby where I knew my family would be waiting. And because we’d cleared customs in Canada, I didn’t have to wait in line in passport control which was a real blessing.
Avoiding passport control was fine with me until a customs agent stepped in front of me and blocked my path. He looked at me and at my luggage and at the box and asked, “What’s in the box?” “Gifts,” I replied. He looked at the box again and moved aside.
But I hadn’t traveled another 25 feet when a second customs agent stepped in front of me, looked at my luggage and looked at the box and asked, “What’s in the box?” Exasperated and exhausted I snapped at him. “Gifts!” He squinted at the box and then at me and moved aside.
By now I could see the bank of exit doors. The exit. Freedom. Home at last. Home at last. Thank God almighty, home at last.
But it was not to be. Barely 10 feet from the doors, a third customs agent approached me. He sort of held up his hand in a universal gesture that means stop, halt. So, I stopped. I’ve traveled some and I know that the customs agents around the world take their job very seriously – even then way before 9/11 - so, I knew better than to get smart with him, but by now I was getting pissed and reason was about to give way to emotion. He looked keenly at me. He looked at my luggage. He looked at the box and asked, “What’s in the box?”
I simply had to count to ten or explode. I needed to calm down or his thing might escalate into God knows what. One, two, three… I said to myself, but when I didn’t promptly reply he bent down and put his face about four or five inches from mine and very slowly and carefully said, “Do you speak English?”

Little Beasties

Little Beasties

We’re been plagued – some might argue – blessed with little beasties since moving in here nearly a year ago. And it’s surprising. This development is the Oceanside equivalent of NY’s concrete jungle. Nonetheless, the ants were so bad last summer, they got in my car. In the fall, Salvador got run off the sidewalk by a pack a coyotes. This spring, it wasn’t long before we discovered the bunnies having done what they do best – procreate. But lately it’s become invasive.

I’ve battled ants before, but never like this. I have a touch of asthma as do my grandkids, so I don’t like to use poisons and I’d read up on safer options some time ago. So, armed with an enormous container of my baby powder, I put out our line of defense – several, in fact. I left a swath in front of the each entryway and in several of the window sills. Then I put a wide border around the bed even pulling it away from the wall. While any talc will do, I like the smell of baby powder and I covered my dashboard, front and back floorboards, as well as the rear window area. I figured that would do it for the car and I was fine until my teen-aged grandson said the white powder looked a lot like cocaine and asked if I was really sure I wanted to drive around campus that way.

Thus when the tiny beasties showed up this summer, I headed for Lowe’s and armed myself with ant stakes. I put them all around the front entrance pounding them into the hard ground at about half the recommended intervals. When the ants were still about a few days later, I capitulated and got out the big jug of bug spray I’d seen in the outside cupboard. After a liberal squirting, we’ve been ant free for several weeks.

But ants are just the beginning. Just after we moved in, I had turned around in the kitchen rather quickly to grab something when I saw a huge lizard dart across the beige tile floor. Fortunately, I startled him as much as he startled me, so he turned and ran outside, and I made a mental note to keep the sliding screen door closed. It wasn’t a week later, however, when one of his kin meandered in thru the front doorway presumably under the screen door which doesn’t meet flush with the floor. The sounds of my screams sent him a scrambling and he must have spread the word amongst his family that a crazy lady lives here as I’ve not had any more unwelcomed guests of his species.

Not following my own advice, I left the screen door open again and invited on two different occasions a local bird in. The first time, I completely panicked. A child in the days of Hitchcock’s famous films, birds terrify me, even parakeets, but a wild beastie in the house was just too much. I ran for the hallway cupboard hoping to get a big bath towel with which to shoo him back outside. When I returned tho I found him walking to and fro in front of the sliding screen door in my bedroom, but it was closed. A clever fellow he, it didn’t take him long to figure out his dilemma and having done so, he hopped back into the kitchen and made his escape the same way he entered.

Later that day, I saw him preening on the roof of my garage. I spoke to him and he cocked his head, like a dog, as if to hear me more clearly. I just explained that I was sure we could occupy the same relative space and be good neighbors, but he would have to stay outside.

He may have talked to his family as well because no one else came to visit, but he came back just a couple of weeks later. This time, he found the garage door open and in he went. The problem is that I was in the garage. And once again, when he was ready to leave, he calmly hopped to and fro this time in front of the sliding screen door in the garage. Finding it closed, he once again figured out his predicament and rather quickly made his way to the garage door and escaped from whence he’d come.

I saw him outside many times after that and we spoke once or twice, until one day I didn’t see him anymore. I think his family may have grown up and left him with an empty nest. I can’t be sure although I can surely empathize. I do hope his wife is still around as I can vouch for him being a good provider risking my wrath and his neck in search of resources.

We’re up on a bluff here, so the green belt outside our unit consists of a fairly steep slope and that I believe has kept the larger creatures at bay. I do see bunnies down to our left just a couple of doors where there is a smallish green belt between two buildings. There is another green area in the other direction by the small visitors’ parking area – just two spaces - and I often see rabbits there bounding about. I hope they stay there. I love to watch them, but I’d rather they didn’t make a personal call.

Of course, we have a myriad of flying creatures who visit frequently. There are some bees currently buzzing about my peach tree, and several different kinds of gnats plague my kitchen. Some around the limes that my husband hid behind a basket and I didn’t find until they’d generated enough mold to provide a chem lab with several experiments. Then there are a persistent few from a different family that would like to make their home in my canisters. Those I’m ashamed to admit, I have to destroy pretty quickly. And there’s yet another variety that have found my house plants attractive. Those I just try to shoo away.

Of course, life wouldn’t be the same without a mouse or two and we’ve just recently encountered one. She came flying across the kitchen floor from the patio door and slid under a shelving unit that is about two inches off the ground. My grandson screamed as if a large coyote had found its way in or at least a giant sized foot long rat, but no, this scream was generated by a little fellow about 2 inches long. My husband jumped up and shoved some dirty clothes under our bedroom door, so it wouldn’t get in there all the while hollering at me to get something,

“Give me something. I’m going to kill it.”

“What?”

“Something. Give me something.”

Meanwhile, I’d grabbed a broom and tried to roughly coax it out of hiding, but it escaped my reach and ran back to the window seeking refuge behind the venetian blinds. When I pulled them back, the little creature scurried outside.

Unfortunately, the screen on the screen door has come out from the frame and this little creature has discovered that it is all too easy to come in even when the door is closed. Thus she has come back a time or two. And none of us were able to get her to leave. Rather, she just disappeared. Thus my husband argues that we should sleep with the doors closed, so she won’t come by. I argue back that by now, she’s probably taken up residence inside.

But the strangest encounter happened just last night after we came inside following the fireworks show. My grandson and I had been sitting out watching the show and he was eating some German chocolate cake with a glass of milk. I had just been snacking from the kitchen – a forkful now and again. This method makes me feel as if I’m eating less than serving myself a whole piece. My husband got home just as the display ended and my grandson took off for the fair. As he put it, it was his shift. We’d both been sharing the responsibility of watching his kid brother in Del Mar while his mother nursed a new litter of puppies in Fallbrook.

As usual, his plate only made it as far as the dining room table where the pizza boxes still sat. I had him take the leftovers of the chicken bar-b-q pizza down to the fair for Patric but my husband had quickly spied the remaining Hawaiian one with Canadian bacon and pineapple. Thus, I’d no sooner gotten John out of the door when Salvador sat down at the table. And, as per usual, he just snagged the nearest plate. A moment or two later, as I was getting into bed, he called out to me.

“What’s dis?”

“What’s what?”

“What’s dis taing?”

“What thing?”

“Dis?”

“I thought it was someting to eat…”  he muttered as I crawled out of bed and went into the dining room. Well, the French do, I thought to myself as he pointed to his plate and gingerly picked up our latest guest then took the snail out to the back door and put it on the patio. Yummy.