Twenty-five years ago, there was a neighbor kid who had gotten into the habit of pulling up the plants in our garden for fun. We’d tried speaking with the boy’s mother, fencing in the yard, employing kindness and reason with him, then yelling and threats. We’d even called the police on the youngster in hopes that the officer would put some fear or threats to him to make him stop. He stared intently at the officer, said nothing, and within hours of the talking-to he was right back at it.
My husband said it was time for more drastic methods. He said we needed to set up video surveillance cameras in the yard and record him actually doing the vandalism. The idea was difficult to swallow, but the time to end his malicious acts was long overdue.
We bought enough cameras to cover the entire yard, so we could capture his means of entry, route to the garden, and the acts themselves.
We were excited to know we would have hard evidence that the police couldn’t ignore and in the morning we ran to the window to see if more vandalism had been done. It had. We ran to the computer and set every recording at zero minutes and began to watch the tapes one by one.
Sipping coffee, our eyes peeled on the dozen mini screens we were watching simultaneously, at around midnight, we saw movement on one screen and paused all. We maximized the screen with movement on it and noted it was the camera trained on the back south corner of our fence. We zoomed in to the movement. It wasn’t our neighbor kid. It wasn’t human. And it was an animal the likes of which we’d never seen before. It was then that we noticed a scratching shuffling sound in the attic….
Sarah is the host of Mindlovemisery Menagerie’s Saturday Mix. Sarah says:
Welcome to the Saturday Mix – Mad About Metaphor, 9 November 2019!
This week we are dipping our toes into the pool of METAPHOR. Our challenge is all about the use of metaphor in our writing. You will need to use the metaphor provided in your response – which can be poetry or prose. Our metaphor this week is:
– The idea was difficult to swallow.
Tao Talk 
Ooooh! Nice cliffhanger.
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:) Thanks Sarah
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Who went up into the attic to confront the strange creature.
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The ET Squad :)
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My attic, a few years ago:
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Oh no! Critters in the attic can cause mayhem.
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We had a few years when we just couldn’t get rid. We used to keep chickens so they had access to food.
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I remember the mice digging into the area we kept our chickens also. So much feed gets wasted on the ground with them. Cats can handle mice, but dogs are needed for rats, and then there is the rabies issue. Over 20 years ago, in my old house, a family of raccoons got into my attic. I didn’t have the sense to do anything about it for a month or two. By the time I called the “wildlife wrangler” to trap them, the mess they made was unbelievable. They tore open all boxes of Christmas ornaments and ate any edible from decorations my kids made at school and just generally tore the place up. The wrangler got them with a rope on a stick, put them in cages, and said he took them up to his property up north and released them. He also put steel mesh over every possible entry on the house (they had climbed over from the oak tree out front, which had a hollow they nested in for years.) Never had a problem with them again.
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This was great. I had all sorts of mental images of that animal. 🦒 🦔 🦓
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Good :)
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After the police talking-to didn’t pan out you should have set up an automatic sprinkler system to give that kid a good hosing.
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Oh he deserved at least that. When he became a teenager, he and teenager buddy used to stand in the lot (my lot across the alley from my house) and stab trees and look at me. At that point it was time to leave the neighborhood. I wonder where that little b*st*rd is now. Probably in prison.
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Great story!
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Thanks, Sadje!
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You’re welcome 😉
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I like how you leave open many possibilities…(K)
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Kerfe thanks :)
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Scary mental picture…good story Lisa.
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Thanks, Max!
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That gave me the chills!
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:) :::evil laugh::: good!
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Lol! Loved this! :D very nice take on the prompt!
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Thank you :)
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