Monday, May 17, 2010

I normally love unannounced visitors.

I remember as a full grown woman (with a couple little ones myself), going over to my parents' house and walking inside.  No knocking, no calling ahead, no nothing.  In fact, I'm pretty sure I had my own key.  Anyway, I wandered the house looking for anyone home.  In the basement family room I finally found someone: my brother's friend, eating cereal and watching TV.  He informed me my dad was still at work, my siblings were at various activities and my mom had run to the store.  It wasn't until later that I realized how odd it was that the only two people "home" didn't actually live there.  My parents had (and still have) a very open door policy.  Because of that, I grew up with an appreciation of and expectation for unannounced visitors.

Really, I love drop by visitors.  I mean, if you can handle a bit (or sometimes a large amount) of mess, I love to have you.  (Unsure if you qualify?  I've made a quiz for you to gauge your comfort level).   However, the crickets that keep sneaking into our basement are not exactly welcome, nor was the family of skunks a couple years back.  Last week I had another unexpected and not too pleasant visitor.  I mean really, neighbors, stop on by, just make sure you're of a HUMAN variety.  Also, you might want to knock before entering that front door the kids left wide open; don't just barge (or fly) in.  Oh yeah, and don't come if you don't know how to let yourself out.  Banging against the skylight is not productive.  I do appreciate that this visitor didn't poop on my furniture.  In case your wondering, I appreciate that with all my visitors.


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20 comments:

  1. I am sure your kids loved the visitor though. How funny. I would choose a bird over the skunks I bet that was awful!

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  2. Did the visitor ever leave? If so how? That would actually freak me out for some reason.

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  3. Both my parents and in-laws have a similar open door policy. Though like you, I had problems being a gracious host when a couple of opossums decided to die under our house (it did NOT smell good).

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  4. Great! I guess many of us have had this happen at one time or another - in my case, when I left open windows without screens. While Joshua was out of town. And Theo (4 months old) had just had surgery and had to keep his hands higher than his heart. And I had been taking a walk with him in the bjorn with his arm tied around my neck. So I came home to a bird in the bedroom - and freaked out!!!!

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  5. Oh my! This happened at our house once too. We couldn't get the poor bird out, and I thought for sure it would have a heart attack. We managed to get it out after a good half hour of it nervously flying back and forth leaving several messes on the walls and the house along the way. Yep, it was gross, but he survived. Love the picture you captured of your visitor!

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  6. Note to self: When visiting Charlotte, do not poop on furniture.

    I think I can handle this. If I bring the baby though, I'm not making any promises.

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  7. Ha! I'm a kindred mom! (A's on all but 12 where I got a B). I'm rather happy with this score!

    We had the same thing...stupid woodpecker won't leave us alone. See? Kindred moms have birds everywhere.

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  8. The last 2 summers we had unexpected guests too. Bats. In our bedroom. At 3 in the morning.

    Needless to say, they were NOT welcome.

    Thankfully they didn't poop in the house.

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  9. Oh man! I remember the time a bat flew into my brother's house and they had to use a blanket to catch it and get it out!

    I love human drop bys though!

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  10. i love unexpected visitors too. but only when they are people that i like, other wise its just a bother...ANIMALS are on my "dislike" for sure!

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  11. Birds inside buildings totally flip me out. There's just something about the way they keep flying at windows, thinking it's the outside (sounds like me...)

    Not quite the new family pet, eh?

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  12. We have a few birds' nests on the front porch, and one bird had a pretty steep learning curve . . . for a while there, every time we would open the front door, disturbed from her nest, she would fly inside. Luckily, this only happened at night, so we could turn on the porch light, turn off all the others, and sort of air-herd her towards the outside. But my kids freaked out a little.

    Good times.

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  13. I love that he animals love to come into your house. We had a bird once and it was impossible to get it out. The bird almost killed himself before he went to the light (the light in the garage and freedom). I bet your kids loved it.

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  14. The only unexpected critters we get at our house are mice and spiders and they stay mostly in the garage. (do spiders poop?)

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  15. I'm with Brenda. All we get are spiders and an occasional roach. I hope spiders don't poop, because if they do I'm sure my kids have eaten it at some point in time.

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  16. you just HAD to bring up the pooping again, how many times do I have to say I'm sorry?!?
    you got a pretty good picture of that bird.

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  17. I love popping in on people...and now that I know you don't mind you may suddenly see little faces peeking in your windows unexpectedly. Unfortunately, I can't promise that someone won't poop on the furniture, that just comes with the territory of small children.

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  18. How long did it take to get that visitor out?

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  19. Ha! We just realized this morning that last year's mama duck is back again for nesting, round 2. It's fun.

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  20. I'm surprised how many birds fly into homes. The first few years in our home, birds would fly down the stovepipe and get stuck in the wood-burning stove. After the second time, I learned to open the big sliding door in that room, then carefully lift the top off the stove, and the birds would usually fly directly outside. We finally put a screen around the top of the chimney. I found a black widow strolling across my front room once, too. I like the spiders that eat mosquitos, but not the once that go after people.

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