BUT: Within the next couple of months, they are going to open up full membership benefits to all veterans, regardless of dates of service. The teller my mom talked to said she anticipates it happening by the end of the year.

Score for my dad, who was in the Air Force ‘60-’64. And score for The Sister, who will be able to sign up as a full member once he does. :)

*sigh*

The Inconvenience: “Remember that guy I met at the gun show?”
Me: “Which one?”
The Inconvenience: “The weird one.”
Me: “……………..”
The Inconvenience: “That didn’t really narrow it down, did it?”

Check ‘em out at http://www.montanararities.com – they’re good folks with good prices, too.

Anyway, I finally got up to check and it’s not the washing machine. It’s the random, weird, out-of-place tubular skylight above the washing machine. (Seriously, I don’t know who decided there needed to be a skylight there, but it’s not like enough light even comes through the dumb thing to matter. Very weird.) It just started leaking out of the blue – in like three separate spots.

This is extra-special bizarre because a) we’ve had zero problems with this thing in the threeish years we’ve lived here, during which time we’ve had some serious weather, and b) it’s not raining today. It’s not snowing today. It’s actually sunny at the moment. Balls cold, but sunny.

Theoretically a maintenance guy should be by later to check it out. The ability to call and make that happen makes me appreciate being a renter.

Then I remember I have to stranger-proof the house (read: hide the guns and gun-related implements) and that makes me tired. I swear, there’s nothing harder than looking at stuff you look at every day and trying to spot things that might make “normal” people go OMGZORZ!

Just trust me and click the link. It’s hilarious.

I just want to know if Changeling is going to be playing around here, dammit!

P.S. Quantum of Solace in little over a week, woot!

Something about the way he referred to it as Castle Greyskull – not “the Castle Greyskull,” or “the Castle Greyskull playset,” or “the toy” – cracked my ass up. 

(In case you didn’t know this about me: I have a St. Francis of Assisi thing going on. Lost and injured animals are attracted to me. They find me so I can help them, I swear. It runs in the family – the same thing has always happened to my mom, and her dad before that. Apparently this has now spilled over to Mike. Ooooh, poor Mike. It only gets worse.)

Anyway, ten minutes later, Mike and I were mucking around beneath a bridge, trying to catch a young female mallard who quite obviously had a problem with her left leg/foot. She didn’t do well on land, but managed to flap into a creepy puddle with unidentifiable swimming things (I’m 99.9% sure I saw leeches), which I was not about to go wading into. Fortunately, we were able to herd her out and catch her. 

Turns out the duck had a nasty open fracture above her left ankle. There was about 1/3 of an inch of bone protruding – it wasn’t bleeding and looked pretty dirty, so I couldn’t really tell how old the wound was. Other than that, she was quite lively and not very pleased to be in captivity. Driving home one-handed while delicately holding a pissed off mallard under my arm was interesting. 

Once home, I put her in a box with a towel over the top and set about finding somebody within a two-state radius who actually cares about a wounded wild duck. There’s a vet in town who does wildlife rescue – the office was already closed, but I called the number anyway. I got the answering service. I started to explain that “I found a wild duck with…” and was interrupted with a shrieking ”IS THIS AN EMERGENCY!?” Cheese and crackers, lady, I was unaware I called Animal 911. I explained the duck has a broken leg and cannot live in my bathtub so yeah, it kinda is, but she didn’t seem to understand the practice flipping does wildlife rescue and instead referred me to Washington State University’s teaching hospital. Okay, fine. 

I called over to WSU and after a little phone tag with the receptionist and a vet student and the doctor, they said to bring her on in. Now, Artemis (the lab) had been in her kennel this whole time, and you better believe she thought this was just the icing on her woe-is-me cake. There was a bird in her house and it was hot today, did I mention that and why am I not letting her catch the duck!? Poor pup. 

Anyway, off ducky and I went to WSU. They had a form for me to fill out, and that was pretty much that. I actually feel better leaving her at a teaching hospital than I would with a vet who does wildlife rescue on the side… Hopefully, they’ll be less concerned about the bottom line and more interested in the educational value of the experience. 

I took pictures, for posterity. The first one is my “Here I go again, rescuing things” face: 

And, DUCK! 

I tried to get one of her injury but it didn’t really turn out well with the camera phone.

During the course of this whole thing, somebody mentioned that WSU will accept wild animals from across the state line, with the exception of deer. I wonder what the deal with that is? And if you have an injured deer, what in the hell are you supposed to do with it?

As I explained to Mike, my philosophy on wildlife rescue is that the sporting thing to do is help injured animals so they can live to breed, exist, and maybe be fairly hunted another day. I’d like to think we’re a little more evolved as predators than those that just prey on the weakest members of the herd. This is why I like organizations like Ducks Unlimited, which value both conservation and hunting. 

Ha – put that in your pipe and smoke it, hippies!