A dog and a frog, a mouse in the house, and the bird we heard

Despite the Seussian title of this entry, every word of this story, no matter how ridiculous it may seem, is true.
The day began quite early for John, Morgan woke up as usual at 6:00 and was excited to begin the day. Since it was John's morning to get up with her, he decided to take her to the non-sanctioned dog park (hereafter referred to as NS dogpark) close to our house. On their way in to the NS dogpark, Morgan was sniffing out the path and she came across something very interesting. As John approached what had grabbed Morgan's attention, he found it to be a headless corpse of what was once a large bullfrog. So John pulled Morgan by and she proceeded to romp around in the NS dogpark for 30 minutes. Morgan, being the rebellious teen that she is, no longer comes when called unless it is in her interest, hence the abnormal hours of attendance at the NS dogpark. If Morgan comes across other dogs, she runs over to sniff them out and playfully maul them if they are smaller than her. After half an hour, John decided it was time to depart the NS dogpark. Since Morgan is now wise to most of the tricks used to corral her in, John tries to herd her to the exit. As they approached the exit, Morgan re-discovers the bullfrog. As John realized what she found, he began a belated and futile effort to keep Morgan away from the frog. Once Morgan realized she wasn't supposed to be near the frog, she picked it up by one long floppy leg and began running back into the NS dogpark. Unbeknownst to most, in his time, John participated in many sports and displayed the occasional flashes of adequate athleticism. This was not one of those times. Morgan proceeded to dash by John and run at least 200 yards in the opposite direction, with the former frog flopping back and forth in her mouth with every step. As possible scenerios of how this would end ran through John's mind, many were falling into the "bad" column and roughly zero were falling into the "good" column. At this point, John decided that distracting Morgan away from the frog was his best chance. Once Morgan had stopped, she turned around to face John and show off her prize. So instead of running directly at her, John turned and ran perpendicular to Morgan's spot yelling all sorts of nonsense to try and attract her attention. Had someone witnessed this, or some how recorded this incident, John would no doubt be a youtube sensation by now. If there is one thing Morgan can't resist, it's something fun happening without her participating, so luckily our ruggedly handsome, yet dull witted protagonist's plan started to work. Morgan started to dash towards the idiotic looking John as he ran around flailing his arms and yelling nonsense. John noticed this and realized that the harder part might be grabbing hold of her once she got near. Having dropped her leash once he started his idiotic run, John would have to control her with his bare hands. He was luckily able to drag her by the collar back to the leash. Having removed the former bullfrog distraction from the park entryway, leaving the park was uneventful. Once they returned to the car, John noticed a foul odor eminating from the dog, and knew an early morning bath would be in order. John proceeded to bathe her back at the house, all the while I was still sleeping soundly. John was rewarded with a pancake breakfast though!

After we went to spin class, we decided to tackle the project for the day. For the past 2-3 months, we noticed our dryer was not drying things as quickly as it used to. Since it is a fairly new dryer, we thought something must be up. Previously, we had heard noises coming from our
attic which is on the opposite side of the wall from the dryer. Jen was convinced that there was an oppossum (whistlepig for those of you from WV) in the attic. John had previously witnessed a bird flying out of the dryer vent leading him to believe that there was a bird's nest in there, thus causing the poor dryer performance and hopefully the attic noises. As John climbed the stepladder outside planning to remove the bird's nest from the vent, and earning an early release from his chores, he discovered that the bird's nest was too far into the vent for him to reach. John now realized that he would have to climb into the attic and face the possible whistlepig to properly fix the dryer. As we opened the attic crawl space, there was yet another foul odor coming from the attic. Hoping that it might have just been a mouse and not a whistlepig, we had placed a mouse trap in the attic 2 months prior. The mouse trap had provided no yield after several weeks and was forgotten. It was now discovered that the mousetrap had successfully captured his prey quite sometime ago. John promptly removed the former mouse and trap and placed it in a dignified resting spot, the dumpster. The impact of finding the mouse was twofold on John's motivation (or lack thereof) for the job. On one hand, the likihood of a rabid whistlepig making the noises in the attic was now considerably less. However, on the other hand, there was now both the smell and remnants of dead mouse to maneuver around. So, our courageous, yet dull witted protagonist dressed for battle and craweled into the attic, utility knife in hand. My job was to hold the flashlight, so glad I am a girl! Once inside, John discovered that the bird had not only nested in the vent, it had also ripped several holes in the dryer hose leading to the vent. Unloading several nests worth of grass and feathers from the attic, we now knew a trip to Home Depot was in the works.

John holds the former dryer vent hose

As John removed the hose from the attic, we then discovered that it wasn't only a mouse that had met it's demise in the attic....

Unfortunate casualties

We both were saddened to find that there were eggs in the nest until we realized that the hot air from the dryer had likely already baked them from the inside out... at least that is what we are telling ourselves. Swearing not to fall victim to the same problem again, John fashions a wire mesh to cover the vent and purchases a semi-rigid hose for the dryer. John crawls into the attic for round 2 and immediatly sees the mother bird hovering by the vent outside. The craftsmanship of the cover clearly was obviously lacking and did not hold up. John then wrestled with the semi ridgid hose and proceeded to break the dryer vent. So, back to Home Depot. Apparently bird nests in dryer vents are fairly common, because we saw a dryer vent there which had a cage like mechanism just for keeping out the birds. Of course we bought that, and a flexible hose and we were off. John was back in the attic for round 3. This was executed by me crawling up a ladder on the side of our house holding vent in place, while John was attaching the hose through the attic. Everything went smoothly there, and when we tested the dryer out it was as good as new. The day's work had come to a close a mere 3 and half hours after this 15 minute job had started. The list of casualties was long, and the list of successes short, please use this experience to benefit yourselves.

The morals of the story are:
1. take your dog to sanctioned dog parks only
2. when your dog is misbehaving and you want her to come, pull a John and run around screaming and flailing like a madman (this and other dog training techniques forthcoming in John's instructional video)
3. an uncaged dryer vent is a virtual pandora's box waiting to open
4. beware o' the whistlepig

*PS This entry was written by Jen, but dictated by John. He is getting into this blog thing and may even post a few times, yay!