Oh sure, Will encounters spectacular dangerous wildlife on his treks in the hills.

Me?

I was threatened by a goose.

We took a hike up in Malibu Creek State Park. It was a short hike, about a mile and a half (though it was damn hot). We arrived at Century Lake and found a shaded spot with a fallen tree to sit on right at the waters edge. Off on the other side of the lake were two geese. A large female and a smaller male that we decided was probably her offspring since he was a little small and young to be breeding.

Well, they made their way over to us. We were tickled, we were going to get some great photos. Not only did they swim right up to the bank near us, the climbed out onto the muddy short. Not two feet from us. I’m not just saying “two feet” I mean, two feet. There was no zoom used to get any photos. They were right there.

I’m not sure what they wanted, but every time I moved, the big female would look at me and hiss. She’d open her mouth and stick out her tongue and hiss at me. I had bare feet, so I kind of retreated. Of course The Man and Amy (my sister) made fun of me for being scared of the goose, but come on! What’s normal about a wild goose that comes right up to you from across the lake and hisses at you and tries to eat your hat?

I’m thinking about changing my blog template. I think I’d like a three column format. The first two would be like they are now archives and linky love on the far left - main content in the middle. I’d like the far right to have a little more alternative content, maybe stuff that doesn’t change as often, like new CDs I love and some photos I’ve taken.

Any thoughts?

This template is just an adapted one from Blogger (a looong time ago) but they don’t offer anything three column anymore (or anything even remotely interesting, btw). I’ve been looking over at blogskins, but it’s just so tedious to go through their lists ... nothing is sorted by column structure.

Had a few blogging.la friends over last night. This necessitated cleaning the deck upstairs, because we haven’t used it yet this season. So I spent the morning working on getting all the leaves off and dusting the furniture and bannister to get rid of that black LA crud.

The unpleasant surpise of the morning was finding that not only did the raccoons still live in the avocado tree, they’ve been using a corner of my roof as a toilet. There’s a huge pile of raccoon crap there. I’m not quite sure what to do with it. If I get rid of it, the raccoons are gonna think that I’m their slave.

The other finding is that a bunch of wasps or yellow jackets (I’m unsure) have started a nest in the umbrella.

I’m not equipped to get rid of it myself, since my allergy is just a little too risky. I’m not keen on using pesticides either, since we eat off that table. I’m sure we’ll figure out what to do eventually.

First, let’s start with I have feelings of bitchiness, I have taken no bitchy action, made no bitchy comments.

I live on a quaint street and have nice neighbors. They’re damn neighborly. Of late, the neighbors seems to be breeding and many have toddlers. (They also have dogs and cats, but that’s for another post, I guess.)

Folks like to walk their kids around the street (it’s a circle) and the kids will walk or be carried or sometimes ride little bikes of scooters. One family likes to come to the front of our house and either play in our yard (which is all pebbles) or ride their little scooters up and down our front walk.

Our house is like this: we’re pretty close to the street, about ten feet from the sidewalk. The whole front of our house is low windows. We keep our blinds open, anyone can look in and see us watching TV or chatting in the living room. It’s obvious when we’re home, we’re sitting right there. The house has a little walk down to the front door, and a walk that goes the length of the house (under the windows).

One of our little neighbors likes to ride up our front walk on his razor scooter and back and forth in front of our windows. If the windows weren’t there, he’d be five feet away from me. (Okay, he’s maybe three years old, I don’t hold him personally responsible for this behavior.)

This irritates me. It irritates the dog too, and that probably is part of my problem. But I don’t think that my front yard is everyone else’s playground. It’s not like the kid came by and did it once. The kid has come by on three occasions that I’ve noticed (because the dog will tell me if I’m not in the room) and with two different parents. I understand folk’s dog wandering into my yard. I removed the lawn because I understood that too well and replaced it with lovely pea gravel (which just thrills the kiddies, it seems - and the dogs seem to be fine with it as well, I’m not sure the kids know they’re playing with urine glazed pebbles).

I’ve not said anything to anyone other than The Man (who thinks, likely rightly that I should get over it). But I wonder how this family would feel if I took a book and went and sat on their front stoop and read for a while. I’m not sure they’d get my point, and I’m sure I wouldn’t feel any better for it.

I don’t want to put up a fence. The fence in the back yard is fine, we all have dogs and it keeps the peace. But I don’t want to be walled in.

Maybe those motion sensor sprinklers would do the trick? Please advise, gentle readers.