LXVIII: My Country Estate

I recently spent a couple of weeks house-sitting for Tom and Beverly Griffin while they took a trip to Alaska (you may remember I lived at their house for a month or so, back before buying my condo). My job was to take care of the house, the mail, the plants and the pets at their lovely house south of town, which shall henceforth be referred to as: My Country Estate.


It was pleasant to become reacquainted with the pets, who were fairly well-behaved. One funny thing about them is that at dinner or breakfast time, each of them would try to eat out of someone else’s bowl, and would only return to theirs if the other two were already taken. For instance- here is a picture of Bandie (the dog) waiting for Millie to get out of the way so that Bandie can eat Millie’s food, while Raton leaves her bowl alone in favor of Bandie’s dog food:


Later, Bandie eats Millie’s food, while Millie looks on longingly…


So Millie approaches Raton’s bowl, which unfortunately had already been licked clean by Bandie:


One unfortunate thing was that Bandie tended to wake up at odd hours and bark incessantly until I would get up and let her out to relieve herself. For that reason I had the unusual (and involuntary) pleasure of seeing the sun rise.



I also had fun hiking around in the country. And these stacks of Brome hay doubled as acceptable Frisbee golf holes.


Being in the country, I saw quite a bit of wildlife. The weather was beautiful, so I ate almost every dinner on their back porch, where I could see acres and acres of country. I saw a group of five deer playing in their yard, as well as field mice, hummingbirds, fireflies, all sorts of unusual bugs, and a flock of wild turkey. Finally, speaking of animals, in the interest of being one with nature, I learned to enter and exit the house through the cat door.