Sometimes it is hard to live with close neighbors.. There are things you can control, and things you can't.. like noise, or "screaming" (shrieking voices from 10-years-old and up) kids the second they are outside-just right next to you, to the point we dread nice days (can you imagine this from a passionate gardener?) because they will be out! We do enjoy all the other kids in the neighborhood, except for the 3 houses just next to us! Just our luck!

Anne-Marie (very sensitive to noise-I guess we all have a weak area)

It is not a bunch of laughs usually, but a great read. Do add on to this thread please because I love each and every entry!(perennial forum ,Do You Have a Favorite Childhood Garden Memory)

By the way, He Meant Well entertained me for days! Now I'll have to check out BP saga.

I hate squirrels in my attic, but I keep it to myself and would never admit to anyone in a forum that I've had evil thoughts!

I've never acted on them, though!

Saucy.

Here's a funny post going on right now - there's still time to get in on the action!

Anne-Marie
NY-zone 5

Thanks for sharing this thread with others. I've never visited Tree Forum and would never have found it. In fact I never look in here either. I was doing a search on how to get rid of mealy bugs, found the "least favorite bug" thread, then happened on to your posting. A day later and I'm still enjoying it.

Thanks!

The What's Too Nasty to Compost thread mentioned by Maymo is hilarious as well as very educational. I literally cried and laughed out loud while reading it.

Also check out:
Too Nasty, pt 2,
For Guys Only,
Hey Waaaait a Minute, and
I'm New to This Forum.

Who knew composting could be so funny?

Things could have been even worse for Aqua Dan. Thanks goodness the birds weren't any larger!

http://www.deuceofclubs.com/bm00/bm0011.htm

(Don't worry - just another of my daydreams... but they DO make me feel so much better, even if only make believe)

I am very dissappointed. I was pleased to find a forum on favorites and let down that many of the links won't connect to the posts that are referred to here. How long does gardenweb keep their posts accessible?

Slvr

:-)
Slvr

My all-time favorite (cut and pasted in case the link stops working):

RE: mess-free hypertufa mixing
Posted by: Flowerchild_LI z6NY (My Page) on Thu, Feb 28, 02 at 17:50

Thanks, Artchik! The only thing holding me back, now,is convincing my husband that I need another 93LB. bag of Portland cement!! On my last attempt,at Home Depot, the bag slipped off the cart and EXPLODED on the floor of the store!! We haven't had the courage to return there, yet.

RE: mess-free hypertufa mixing
Posted by: Flowerchild_LI z6NY (My Page) on Thu, Feb 28, 02 at 22:50

Artchik, I haven't even told you the funniest part of the "quest for Portland cement"!!! After the bag fell, my husband (who was already annoyed because he had cement dust all over him...) said some unmentionable things, as a HD employee glared at him....I slinked away. Later that evening, our grown daughter went to check her answering machine. She came down and said, "Did you guys buy Portland cement, today?" We looked at each other and laughed, asking how she knew. She said, "Listen to this message....." "At first," she said " I thought it was an obscence phone call...." The message went like this:
Male voice: Oh, this is dirty.....so dirty. Do you really want to do this?
Female voice: Yes....I really need it. Please.
Male voice: Do you really need this big one? It's pretty messy.
Female voice: Please, just this once. It will last me for months. mumble, mumble Portland cement..
Male voice: Oh, %$&###***&&!! The damn bag broke!!
Artchik, if you're still with me.......my husband's cell phone was on,in his jacket pocket, and, somehow re-dialed the last number (our daughter's) and left our entire conversation on her machine!!!!! We were hysterical!! Thank God, he hadn't called my mother as his last call !! I wish I could have made this up, but, it's true!!! LOL LOL

Now, do you see why he's reluctant to go back for more cement??

I can relate!
Anyway, I will try to find it.
Karalyn

peak

i laughed until i cried.

********************************
Anne V - 01:01pm Sep 9, 1999 PDT
Okay - I know how to take meat away from a dog. How do I take a dog away from meat? This is not, unfortunately, a joke.

AmyC - 01:02pm Sep 9, 1999 PDT
Um, can you give us a few more specifics here?

Anne V - They're inside of it. They crawled inside, and now I have a giant incredibly heavy piece of carcass in my yard, with 2 dogs inside of it, and they are NOT getting bored of it and coming out. One of them is snoring. I have company arriving in three hours, and my current plan is to 1. put up a tent over said carcass and 2. hang thousands of fly strips inside it. This has been going on since about 6:40 this morning.

AmyC - Oh. My. God. What sort of carcass is big enough to hold a couple of dogs inside? Given the situation, I'm afraid you're not going to be create enough of a diversion to get the dogs out of the carrion, unless they like greeting company as much as they like rolling around in dead stuff. Which seems unlikely. Can you turn a hose on the festivities?

Ase Innes-Ker - I'm sorry Anne. I know this is a problem (and it would have driven me crazy), but it is also incredibly funny.

Anne V - Elk. Elk are very big this year, because of the rain and good grazing and so forth. They aren't rolling. They are alternately napping and eating. They each have a ribcage. Other dogs are working on them from the outside. It's all way too primal in my yard right now. We tried the hose trick. At someone elses house, which is where they climbed in and began to refuse to come out. Many hours ago. I think that the hose mostly helps keep them cool and dislodges little moist snacks for them. hose failed. My new hope is that if they all continue to eat at this rate, they will be finished before the houseguests arrive. The very urban houseguests. Oh, god - I know it's funny. It's appalling, and funny, and completely entirely representative of life with dogs.

Kristen R. - I'm so glad I read this thread, dogless as I am. Dogs in elk. Dogs in elk.

Anne V - It's like that childrens book out there - dogs in elk, dogs on elk, dogs around elk, dogs outside elk. And there is some elk inside of, as well as on, each dog at this point.

Elizabeth K - Anne, aren't you in Arizona or Nevada? There are elk there? I'm so confused! We definately need to see pics of Gus Pong and Jake in the elk carcass.

Anne V - I am in New Mexico, but there are elk in both arizona and nevada, yes. There are elk all over the da*n place. They don't look out very often. If you stand the ribcage on end they scramble to the top and look out, all red. Otherwise, you kinda have to get in there a little bit yourself to really see them. So I think there will not be pictures.

CoseyMo - "all red;" I'm not sure the deeper horror of all this was fully borne in upon me till I saw that little phrase.

Anne V - Well, you know, the Basenji (that would be Jake) is a desert dog, naturally, and infamous for it's aversion to water. And then, Gus Pong (who is coming to us, live, unamplified and with a terrific reverb which is making me a little dizzy) really doesn't mind water, but hates to be cold. Or soapy. And both of them can really run. Sprints of up to 35 mph have been clocked. So. If ever they come out, catching them and returning them to a condition where they can be considered house pets is not going to be, shall we say, pleasant.

CoseyMo - What if you stand the ribcage on end, wait for them to look out, grab them when they do and pull?

Anne V - They wedge their toes between the ribs. And scream. We tried that before we brought the elk home from the mountain with dogs inside. Jake nearly took my friends arm off. He's already short a toe, so he cherishes the 15 that remain.

Linda Hewitt - Have you thought about calling your friendly vet and paying him to come pick up the dogs, elk and letting the dogs stay at the vets overnight. If anyone would know what to do, it would be your vet. It might cost some money, but it would solve the immediate crisis. Keep us posted.

ChristiPeters - Yikes! My sympathy! When I lived in New Mexico, my best friend's dog (the escape artist) was continually bringing home road kill. When there was no road kill convenient, he would visit the neighbor's house. Said neighbor slaughtered his own beef. The dog found all kinds of impossibly gross toys in the neighbor's trash pit. I have always had medium to large dogs. The smallest dog I ever had was a mutt from the SPCA who matured out at just above knee high and about 55 pounds. Our current dog (daughter's choice) is a Pomeranian.A very small Pomeranian. She's 8 months old now and not quite 4 pounds. I'm afraid I'll break her.

Lori Shiraishi - Bet you could fit a whole lot of Pomeranians in that there elk carcass! Anne - my condolences on what must be an unbelievable situation!

Anne V - I did call my vet. He laughed until he was gagging and breathless. He says a lot of things, which can be summed as *what did you expect?* and *no, there is no such thing as too much elk meat for a dog.* He is planning to stop over and take a look on his way home. Thanks, Lori. I am almost surrendered to the absurdity of it.

Lori Shiraishi - "He is planning to stop over and take a look on his way home." So he can fall down laughing in person?

Anne V - Basically, yeah. That would be about it.

AmyC - No, there is no such thing as too much elk meat for a dog." Oh, sweet lord, Anne. You have my deepest sympathies in this, perhaps the most peculiar of the Gus Pong Adventures. You are truly a woman of superhuman patience. wait -- you carried the carcass down from the mountains with the dogs inside?

Anne V - The carcass down from the mountains with the dogs inside? no, well, sort of. My part in the whole thing was to get really stressed about a meeting that I had to go to, and say *yeah, ok, whatever* when it was suggested that the ribcages, since we couldn't get the dogs out of them and the dogs couldn't be left there, be brought to my house. Because, you know - I just thought they would get bored of it sooner or later. But it appears to be later, in the misty uncertain future, that they will get bored. Now, they are still interested. And very loud, one singing, one snoring.

Lori Shiraishi - And very loud, one singing, one snoring. wow. I can't even begin to imagine the acoustics involved with singing from the inside of an elk.

Anne V - Reverb. lots and lots of reverb.

Anne V - I'll tell you the thing that is causing me to lose it again and again, and then I have to go back outside and stay there for a while. After the meeting, I said to my (extraordinary) boss, "look, I've gotta go home for the rest of the day, I think. Jake and Gus Pong are inside some elk ribcages, and my dad is coming tonight, so I've got to get them out somehow." And he said, pale and huge-eyed, "Annie, how did you explain the elk to the clients?" The poor, poor man thought I had the carcasses brought to work with me. For some reason, I find this deeply funny.

(weekend pause)

Anne V - So what we did was put the ribcages (containing dogs) on tarps and drag them around to the side yard, where I figured they would at least be harder to see, and then opened my bedroom window so that the dogs could let me know when they were ready to be plunged into a de-elking solution and let in the house. Then I went to the airport. Came home, no visible elk, no visible dogs. Peeked around the shrubs, and there they were, still in the elk. By this time, they had gnawed out some little portholes between some of the ribs, and you got the occasional very frightening glimpse of something moving around in there if you watched long enough. After a lot of agonizing, I went to bed. I closed the back door, made sure my window was open, talked to the dogs out of it until I as sure they knew it was open, and then I fell asleep.

Sometimes, sleep is a mistake, no matter how tired you are. And especially if you are very very tired, and some of your dogs are outside, inside some elks. Because when you are that tired, you sleep through bumping kind of noises, or you kind of think that it's just the house guests. It was't the house guests. It was my dogs, having an attack of teamwork unprecedented in our domestic history. When I finally woke all the way up, it was to a horrible vision. Somehow, 3 dogs with a combined weight of about 90 pounds, managed to hoist one of the ribcages (the meatier one, of course) up 3 feet to rest on top of the swamp cooler outside the window, and push out the screen. What woke me was Gus Pong, howling in frustration from inside the ribcage, very close to my head, combined with feverish little grunts from Jake, who was standing on the nightstand, bracing himself against the curtains with remarkably bloody little feet.

Here are some things I have learned, this Rosh Hashanah weekend:
1. almond milk removes elk blood from curtains and pillowcases,
2. We can all exercise superhuman strength when it comes to getting elk carcasses out of our yard,
3. The sight of elk ribcages hurtling over the fence really frightens the nice deputy sheriff who lives across the street, and
4. the dogs can pop the screens out of the windows, without damaging them, from either side.

What I am is really grateful that they didn't actually get the damn thing in the window, which is clearly the direction they were going in. And that the nice deputy didn't arrest me for terrifying her with elk parts before dawn.

Imagine waking up with a gnawed elk carcass in your bed, like a real-life "Godfather" with an all-dog cast. There is not enough almond milk in the world to solve an event of that kind.

And to think, all I was doing was doing a search on "weeping fig" and I found this. lol

peak

Denise

I have to say that was the most I've laughed in quite a while. Kind of a guilty, oh-my-god-that's-horrible kind of laugh but a laugh nonetheless.

I don't know if I'll ever again read the word "reverb" without thinking of this post.

peak

our dog tried to re-upholster our couch with strips of sod ... i had rented a sod cutter and removed sod from a new garden bed and placed the strips along the fence line in the back yard. i watered the newly laid sod really well in order to get it to take root. while i was at work the next day, my dh was sleeping in the recliner and our dog piece by piece brought the strips of sod into the house, through the doggie door, down the steps, into the family room and spread them out on to our couch. many pieces had broken and were spread out all over the floor - many other pieces were strewn about the couch - ground in - they were nice and damp and very muddy - seeing how i had really watered them too .... not quite sure what the dog thought she was doing -she must have spent at least 20-30 minutes or more making trips back and forth from the fence to the house and back again - draggin sod into the house -

M.