The Ghost of Peter

Paul Bunyan started ripping apart our bathroom.  I'm not super excited about the mess or the thought that I'm fairly certain the project will take the good part of a year or five but we've started.  I've lived with plywood floors now for eight years and haven't gotten a splinter so what's a few more months?  I'll be excited to paint over the ghastly florescent green paint I've had to weather all these years and I'm definitely pumped to get rid of these tiles I've had to endure too.

Now Peter Hart, I've been told, was a gay man.  I'm sure in 91' when he built his house he probably thought these tiles were cool.  I don't know, maybe he got them on sale, but I'm thinking he definitely most likely really liked them.  So, of course, I'm all nostalgic about taking down what might be the last thing left of Peter in this house.  It's a very tragic thing for him, I'm sure, to watch us pull apart everything that he created or designed or loved dearly about his house.  I'm crazy, I know, but it's just how I think.

So as Paul Bunyan is pulling off drywall and the tiles Peter picked out I'm feeling a little forlorn.  And then Paul Bunyan has to take down the old fan and cut a space in the ceiling for the new one.  And I'm not sure what transpired in that attic, he won't give over the details, but there on my plywood floors, when I went up to check progress, was a dead bat.  WHAT!?  OUR RESIDENT BAT!?!?  Who comes back every year, OR doesn't even leave but sleeps the winter away in our cozy attic?  YOU KILLED OUR BAT?  I was very mad, sad, upset to say the least.  BECAUSE WHAT IF THIS BAT IS PETER!!  Seriously?  What if Paul Bunyan killed the ghost of Peter?  I can't get over it.  The whole night I sulked and pouted while he justified that he thought he was going to get bit and ruined for good by rabies while the bat was flying over his head in the very small space in the attic.  YOU KILLED OUR RESIDENT BAT!!  I would yell.  Don't you know that there are no bats left in this world, which is why there are more mosquitoes, which is why there is EEE killing people and horses and probably a few cats?

I was very upset.

 And then he threw Peter's tub over the balcony.  And that was the end of the discussion.


A few days later I gave Paul Bunyan the gruesome task of killing off two of our old hens and the young rooster who fought for his life in the nastiest cock fight any house sitter could ever witness.  Now before you go and get all upset about us just knocking off our hens I have to let you know that they stopped laying as they were nearing their fourth year, and well, He was just getting a free ride.  I put up a post on Craig's List to see if anyone wanted to come and get them for their stock pot.  One interested guy turned into a no show and that meant that it was time for them to go.  We didn't want to spend time, money, energy to keep them alive over the winter.  They've had a good life and the two hens should have felt very proud about surviving a fox and a puppy who definitely would have killed them if the electric fence wasn't between them. 

Well, this next part of the tale comes from Paul Bunyan.  "Supposedly" he twisted that roosters head enough times to kill the loud bugger.  He left it on the compost heap to bury.  It didn't move.  He assumed it was dead.  Then he went to get the two remaining hens.  He did his job and when he returned to get the rooster to bury he was GONE.  Paul Bunyan searched the woods and surrounding area and couldn't find him anywhere.  And when I came home later that day the rooster was pecking his way around the chicken yard acting as if no one twisted his neck four times in order to do him in.

It's Peter, I told Paul.  He walked away from me.



Well, it's an unfortunate thing that Pig Pig must go this week.  I was worried that after having to put down and cut up and eat his brother, I might become too attached to him.  But I haven't.  I mean he's cute and all,

 but, seriously, this butt is going to taste really good.

I'm just hoping for Paul Bunyan's sake that the ghost of Peter doesn't try to stay alive in Pig Pig.  Because that would just be really really freaky.


I'm sorry I've left this place to tarnish like an old silver earring in your jewelry box.  I'll be back now and then to polish it up.  But don't throw it away.