Fractured Paw Award Returns

Taylor:  I'm feeling a bit upside down discombootalated.  Could you explain that again?

Merci:  I think you mean discombobulated, bit it makes perfect sense, if you think about it.

Percy:  Yes, We had Jan make this award for our blog back in 2014.  She didn't know we intended to present it to her.  The time has come to bring this award out of retirement.

Marcus:  And you're going to present it to her again?  Her birthday is coming up later this month.  Couldn't we give her flowers instead?

Cyndi:  We could if we had some cash.  This won't cost us anything.

Taylor:  I still don't understand why we would give her a klutz award.

Micah:  To reward her for all those exciting flights and crash landings she's become famous for, not to mention extra chuckles such as the underhanded ball playing that resulted in Jan's finger colliding with Marcus's teeth.

Rusty:  I agree she's is a good source for our humor material.  She does deserve recognition for creative accidents.

Taylor:  What did she do this time?

Micah:  Surely you heard her scream and saw her almost go headfirst down the porch steps Wednesday?

Taylor:  The neighborhood probably heard her,  But what caused that?

Marcus:  It was't me!  I had nothing to do with it!  I wasn't even outside at the time.

Rusty:  We know that, Marcus.  But I'm curious too.  What happened?

Cyndi:  I saw it from the window.  Jan grabbed the railing as she bopped down the steps.

Taylor:  So?

Merci:  So Jan didn't just grab the railing;  she grabbed a wasp on the railing and it stung her finger - twice!

Percy:  Evidently, not only was the pain worse than when she was stung in the arm last year while she was trimming bushes, but when the pain eased, the fingers on that hand itched so fiercely, she couldn't stop scratching for quite a while.

Rusty:  I must have been napping then.  I only knew about the angry wasp that went after her when she tried to let it outside and she whacked it head-on with the glass door.

Taylor:  I think we should present the award to the poor wasps instead of Jan.

Cyndi:  What? Why?

Taylor:  When the branch snapped last year, Jan accidentally hit one so hard with her arm she killed it, though not before it stung her.  For all we know the one on the railing was crushed, even though it managed to sting her twice.  And she cold-cocked another with a door.   Which do you think deserves the award the most - Jan, or the wasps?

This award was first presented to Jan in Fractured Paw Award.  And subsequently in Fractured Musings and two other posts. 

Short and Thin

Taylor:   We are hoping Jan has learned her lesson about attacking - even accidentally - a stinging insect (Flat Black Flying Insect), but she's so absent-minded, she probably hasn't.

Buddy:  It was a fun eight days watching her carefully poke sticks and clippers into the bushes to figure out where its friends and family were hiding.

Taylor:  After church the next day, she did a little trimming in the rain. Clip, clip, here they come, move away.  Okay, it's safe.  Clip, clip, here they come, move away.   By day three she had made the mess in the photo above. 

Buddy:  This is a view of the side of the house.  Weeds and thistles were entangled in the bushes and some were already growing under the siding.

Taylor:  It took her eight days, but she worked her way through all the bushes and then went back to cut them a second, then a third time so they were all short and thinned.

Buddy:  This is the end result of the side of the house.

Taylor:  And this is the front.  Notice the one trimmed down to the stalks and thinned to half the original size. 

Buddy:  It took five days of careful trimming to find what was being built in that bush.  Can you see it?  (Click o the pic to enlarge it.)  This is a close-up from the only angle it's visible.

Taylor:  And this is what the wasp nest looked like the morning after Jan sprayed it and it fell down. 

Buddy:  We're thankful to be rid of those wasps.  Jan was afraid one of us dogs would be stung since we like to water those bushes as we begin our walks.

Taylor: Sorry we don't have any jokes for you today.  Jan can be crabby when she's in pain and that sometimes affects our sense of humor.   But we'll find it again if she didn't throw it out with the shrub trimmings.


We're joining Pepi Smart Dog for today's Thankful Thursday blog hop.

Marcus Two-Step

Micah:  Is it true what I heard about Marcus honking again?

Marcus.

Buddy:  It depends on what you heard.  If you heard he was communicating with geese again, that's sort of true.

Micah:  How can it be "sort of" true?

Buddy:  Well, Marcus sort of thinks he was communicating with geese again.   I couldn't attest that either species was on the same honking dialect.  In fact, I am pretty certain they weren't.

Micah: How can you be sure?

Buddy:  As we walked closer, the geese backed up and began to two-step to our left.

Micah:  So why did Marcus come home so proud of himself?

Buddy:  He thinks he taught them to dance.


PS:  Regarding yesterday's post - Flat Black Flying Insect -  where Jan was stung by the mystery insect.  (She only saw it squashed for a second.)  She tried to cut the same bushes in the rain yesterday, hoping things would be uneventful.  Before long, there were insects flying around, so she retreated.

She really wants to find out where they are hiding, so when it rained a little harder, she thought she would try again.  They came out again.  She came in the house to get her reading glasses.  Wearing them, she was able to stand on the porch and locate one upside down through an opening in the bush.  W- A - S - P!

We've had wasps flying around "on" our porch for years.  Never found where they came from and they never bothered us.  Wasps in the bushes is something new.  These didn't actually bother Jan either.  She researched over the weekend and found wasps can build a nest in a bush and be highly aggressive to someone just walking by.  But there is no nest in these bushes!

Wonder what kind of wasps these could be?  She accidentally "attacked" the wasp that stung her, not the other way around, and so far they haven't bothered her, but Jan is terrified they won't take kindly to repeated disturbances.   Those bushes have got to be trimmed!  Any safe advice?