January 19, 2021

"There is a crack in everything; that's how the light gets in."--Leonard Cohen, "Anthem"

https://twitter.com/ABC/status/1351424718142906368

That was the one lyric that stuck in my mind and gave me the slightest bit of hope the dark morning of November 9, 2016 when the worst case scenario came to be.

(Ironically I—along with nearly everyone else—was unaware that Cohen had passed away just two days before.)

And that lyric again came to my mind when I saw this picture of the Washington DC sky.

I won’t deny it brought a tear to my eye just thinking about it.

January 4, 2021

Something that happened today that might be useful if Trump still refuses to leave after January 20

This morning I discovered we had a raccoon take up residence in an eave space in our roof. While I have nothing against raccoons in general and did not wish to see any harm come to the creature, I wasn't really a big fan of it becoming a permanent tenant there or-- even worse--making its way into our attic and wrecking havoc in there.

After attempting to shoo it away with a garden hose (which did absolutely nothing; honestly, I think it actually enjoyed it), I was forced to call in a professional to humanely extricate it from our roof.

When the guy from removal service arrived, I assumed he was simply going to set up a trap cage to which it could be lured in. However, instead what he did was get a long stick--about eight feet in length--and placed a rag on the end of it. In turn, the rag had been doused in a mysterious liquid. The removal service guy simply placed the stick in the general direction of the raccoon, and within about 10 seconds the raccoon had climbed out of the eaves space, made its way down the roof, jumped down and high tailed it in the direction of the neighbors (maybe to scout out their eaves space for a more comfortable habitat).

The removal guy then explained what was on the stick; it was the excretion fluid from a male raccoon, and our raccoon being a female (although thankfully with no kits in tow, which would have made the situation far more complicated), females apparently despise this male raccoon excretion fluid and want nothing to do with it.

Thus, if it comes noon on January 20th and Donald Trump has stubbornly refused to vacate the White House premises, I wholeheartedly endorse the tactic of shoving a stick in his face covered in raccoon excretion fluid in the hopes it might cause him to flee.

After all, it does seem to be a foolproof method of getting rid of unwanted squatting pests.