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Clarence gets two bells
Wednesday, May 17 2017
Today was as hot as it normally gets in this climate, with temperatures in the 90s by the early afternoon. I was working shirtless soon thereafter. Our house still retains a fair amount of cool from winter and the cold May we'd been having, but all the electronics ensured that the laboratory (which is in an attic) rose to an uncomfortable temperature even with the windows open and a fan blowing on my neck.
Old man Schne11er is the guy who lives in the house just down the hill from us, and it was his son was the one who built our house. He's a retired butcher who spent many years selling dubiously-sourced cheese out of his garage. It's a miracle Schne11er is still alive, what with his morbid obesity, decidedly limited exercise regime, and penchant for whiskey, meat, and cigars. Since his wife ended up in the old folks' home, he's been mostly living alone. I don't know what that's like, though it probably involves a certain amount of sitting outside watching the world go by (Schne11er is not hip to the new trend among the elderly to sit in front of Fox News and watch talking heads get worked up about imagined Hillary Clinton scandals as all the other news channels cover the appointment of Robert S. Mueller as independent prosecutor charged with investigating the Trump campaign's collusion with the Russians). Schne11er doesn't have reason to communicate with us very often, so when I saw his name on the caller ID, I wondered if he needed urgent help. He didn't say anything to our machine, and I went back to work. But then he called back, and it worried me, so I answered. He said that one of our cats (the "brown one") was over at his house stalking "the rabbits" and he was worried the cat would kill them. From the description, Schne11er was clearly talking about Clarence. And it's definitely true that Clarence kills rabbits, something none of our other dogs or cats have ever been able to capture or kill. He probably couldn't kill a full grown one, but he's brought home many dead baby rabbits and given them to the dogs to eat. I told Schne11er I'd come over and get Clarence and try to do something about the rabbits. I can understand an old man wanting to see a family of rabbits thrive peacefully in his yard. Sure, you could call him a hypocrite, what with all the meat he eats every day. But at least he actually eats that meat. Clarence, like a character in a song by Johnny Cash, mostly just kills things to watch them die.
It turned out that Clarence was down in our basement, which is still uncomfortably cold despite the ongoing heatwave. When he became active, I tried putting a little cat collar with a bell around his neck, but it was too small for a cat as big as Clarence. I managed to snap together two cat collars to make a much larger one. It was then so large that it couldn't be made small enough, so I had to double over and sew about two inches of capacity. The result fit Clarence well enough, though it was a bit clunky with all the two snaps, two bells, and piece of doubled material sticking out like a one-inch frying pan handle. Clarence hated it, and was mopey for the rest of the day.
This evening Gretchen and I watched the third episode of the 3rd season of Better Call Saul. I'm mostly in it for the antics of Mike Ehrmantraut, the show's soft-spoken badass; I don't care that much about the threads related to the practice of law, and I'm particularly weary of anything related to Chuck, Jimmy's (Saul's) brother.
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