Unexpected Visitors

Two visits this weekend I wasn’t expecting:  animal and machine.  Let’s start with the four-legged variety first.  I’ll say this wasn’t totally unexpected. I know our chicken yard is enticing to all sorts of semi-wild animals in the neighborhood.  If I don’t get the eggs out of the nesting box before sundown I might as well put up a flashing neon sign:  “Dinner Here!”.  And there’s the variety of scrap food that the chickens, in their poultry stupidity, step on or forget or fling to an unreachable place which can then be reclaimed by birds and animals later.  It was about 8:30 when I went out to close up the coop and collect the eggs.  I had a suspicion I was already too late when I turned the corner and found this:

 

Uh huh.  I don’t see you at all because you decided just to freeze and face away from the opening.  It would have been laughably easy to just shut and latch the door and cart this possum off somewhere else.  But where?  What if it’s feeding little babies?  Once I came back with a flashlight it still wasn’t goin’ nowhere!

 

You really can’t be fooled into thinking a possum is like a large rat.  It’s like a small dog with a pointy nose and long sharp teeth.  And the arrogance!  This guy (or gal) wouldn’t move or be scared away.  It just sat and stared like I was a waiter asking if madame would like anything more before I brought the check while the main course was still on the table.  Finally I got the hose, gave it a well-aimed salvo, and it went running to the fence.  But not before it ate two eggs.  Literally caught with egg on its face.

The next day I heard the low and suggestive rumble that might be familiar to those living near airfield ninety years ago:  the sound of three piston engines lugging a heavy metal plan through the skies.  Here she is, a rare sight these days:

 

It flew over our house multiple times for hours on Saturday, undoubtedly a Ford Trimotor.  How rare?  Only two of these still fly in the U.S..  So it’s like a Clinton who resided in the White House walking past your house.  I found out this one aged from the late 1920s.  Think about that:  a plane that took to the skies during the Great Depression and is still able to break the bonds of gravity while I’m barely able to get off my rear to fetch more cookies from the cabinet.  Here’s what it looks like close up:

 

Movie fans, does this look familiar?  Yep, it’s what Indy, Short Round, and Willie Scott used to escape Lao Che and his well-dressed goons and had to escape via life raft before it impacted in a fireball into the Himalayas in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.  Now you know why I was excited to see it.  The rest of the family?  Meh.  Another plane.