Scared to death...just for a second.

We live in the country. The sticks. The boon docks. We have accepted it, love it and wouldn't have it any other way.  Trouble is-there are wild animals out here! And they run free like they own the place! In the past two years we've had various little(and not so little) creatures in our yard (that's to say within 10 feet of the house). We've had, in order of size(just to make it fun!) voles, mice, bats, (all of those have actually been IN the house!) snakes, squirrels(also in the house!), rabbits, stray cats(yep-in the house!), stray dog, raccoons, owls, coyote & deer(not in the house-you crazy?!). Mind you, this is all in addition to the animals we have in our make shift petting zoo outside.  I have no doubts that there are other animals out there too, opposum most likely, eagles (we've seen them up the road and hear them once in a while),we've heard of a roaming bobcat, etc.  I say etc here because I don't dare ponder on this thought too long or I'll never actually go outside to leave the house again!

Anyway my point-when Scott told me there was a fuzzy bear outside the bathroom my heart stopped! Bears have been seen around here, rarely, and not recently, but it's not unheard of.  I suddenly had visions of this 8000 lb fuzzy bear breaking in the bathroom window in search of picnic baskets! I started mentally making a list of all the animals I could save before this fuzzy bear ravished them in his furry.  Cats, ducks, goats, alpaca, Brandon, chickens. Scott would have to fend for himself I'm afraid. I just didn't have enough hands to save everybody!  As it was I might have had to leave Brandon and the alpaca behind! Couldn't hold everybody.
Anyway as I stood there mentally making this list of possible survivors in order of importance I suddenly noticed that Scott was still stood in the bathroom brushing his teeth as if he wanted to have nice breath when he was eaten by the bear! Now, Scott's a thoughtful guy-don't get me wrong, but surely, if nothing else, this would be an opportunity for him to bust out one of his many new guns (Don't get me started on that! It's like an armoury around here. Well crap-now it's started. It IS line an armoury around here but it takes so long to 1. unlock a gun, 2. unlock the trigger, 3. load and 4. get set that if you were to try to ward off any danger with it-even if just by shooting in the air to make noise, we'd all be eaten by the time he got to step 2!) Anyway.

Ok so I've mentally made my list of critters/people to rescue, realized we forgot to pack an 'in case of fuzzy bear emergency kit' so didn't have to worry about grabbing that, decided scott would stay behind as minty fresh bait so I could get away and then I whispered to Scott 'Where is it?' and he said 'On the wall crawling by the bedroom window.'
'On The Wall Crawling By The Bedroom Window.'
I was looking out the bathroom and there was no bear in sight! Hm. This means 1 of 4 things.
A) Scott's gone in sane-most likely with mad cow disease
B) It's one of those super hero bears with invisibility powers
C) In my fright I'd gone blind and was no longer able to see bears
or D) something else.
Now-these aren't mutually exclusive but it turns out the real answer was D)-something else.

Having lived in England for over 11 years I can appreciate the difference in language-believe me there IS a big difference.  There were a lot of little phrases and nuances to learn.  Saying 1 innocent word could mean the difference between you saying you're dressed or naked! So it shouldn't have come as a surprise to me when I realized Scott ment to say WOOLLY BEAR. As in CATERPILLAR! (See how one word can make all the difference!)

Needless to say, it wasn't one of those man-eating woolly bear caterpillars and we survived to tell the tale. I did however learn an important lesson-always know where your 'in case of emergency fuzzy bear survival kit' is! This kit is much larger than our 'in case of WOOLLY bear emergency survival kit' which consists of a camera and a bottle of water-so you can have a sip of water while you take a picture of the caterpillar cause they're so darn cute! (and fuzzy!)

Here's a pic I took using my emergency kit!

Quite harmless and pretty sweet(and tickley!)

We get a lot of these little fellas out by our house.  In fact Scott and I recently had a long discussion about them! You see-they often can be found crossing the road.  Have you ever seen a caterpillar running to cross the road?! It's super funny! Anyway they cross the road.
*I will swerve to miss them whenever possible.  It's just the way I am.  I'm not one for killing much of anything apart from germs in the house. One day we were driving and I said to Scott 'Watch out for that wolley bear' and he hit it! He said 'How can you see them?!' and I said 'They're right there in the road!  Then, as I so kindly started to point out all of the OTHER woolly bears in the road so he would miss them he actually started to HIT them! He says he was trying to miss them but I'm telling you-how hard is it to miss a caterpillar! Anyway he got so bad that he was swerving all over the road to 'miss' them.  Then he started saying I was crazy~where does he get this stuff?! He said if I drove like that I would get arrested for careless driving. At this point I told him 2 things!
1) I swerve towards the OUTSIDE of the road-not into the center of it! and 2) I highly doubt I'd get in trouble for my driving as it wasn't careless, in fact it was EXTRA careful!  I could safely navigate from A to B without intentionally, and in all possible cases actually avoiding, harming any living thing. (if bugs fly into the windshield that's not killing-they are clearly committing suicide-totally different story).
Anyway Scott said he couldn't drive like that, he had to watch the road (at which point I kindly reminded him that these woolly bears were ON the road but he didn't have a rebuttal) & he went back to driving 'in a straight line' (ha! yeah right)

Now I now want a bumper sticker that says 'I swerve for caterpillars and fuzzy bears'. =D
True story folks, you can't make this crap up!