Steve`s Country
For a smile as wide as a country sunrise
Coffee And Chatting. #13
Good morning everyone on this very wet Tuesday! Time to grab a coffee and see what is happening. It has been raining steadily since shortly after midnight. I am sure I spotted Skamper pulling up to the deck in a canoe to pick up his peanuts this morning. When I went out to feed the birds and chipmunks this morning I was thoroughly soaked by the time I came back inside.
I was waiting a bit longer than usual to go out and feed everyone, hoping that the rain might at least get lighter, but I finally had to give in and go feed them. I forgot to check my rain gauge when I was outside so I do not know how much rain we have had so far. The forecast is for 2 to 3 inches (50 to 75mm) of rain. I can believe that. It is wet out there.
My poor flowers. Well, they are supposed to be flowers anyway. They are more like half dead plants of some kind. That is why I have not shown pictures of them. I do not expect them to do much now, after all, it is the middle of August today. They do not have much time left anyway to produce flowers this year. I have one geranium that is doing fairly well and one pot of petunias that is also doing fairly well.
The rest are not worth mentioning at all. My flowers have never looked so bad. Sigh. Oh well, perhaps next year. I think I just saw a chipmunk carrying a mushroom over his head. A natural umbrella. I think I am starting to see things, you know, like imaginary things. Maybe I need more sleep. I did not get much sleep last night, I barely got to spend any time in bed.
I was sick. I have not been that sick in a very long time. Sigh. I think the hummingbirds were sitting in the trees out here waiting for me to put the feeder out this morning. They found it very quickly and sat there drinking a lot this morning. More than usual. I imagine it must be hard for the hummingbirds in rain like this, going from flower to flower trying to get enough nectar to keep them warm on a rainy day. So a feeder makes it easier for them. I like to help out.
Muffin does not really like rainy days too much. Nothing happening outside for her to watch. Usually all the chipmunks are here in the morning, running all over the deck, chasing each other, gathering peanuts, chasing each other some more, being chased by the squirrel. There is only one squirrel coming around right now and that is Copper.
And he does not come around very much now that Jasmine has stopped coming. I wonder what happened to Jasmine, did she just move away? Or did she not make it across the street? A squirrel just cannot fight with cars. They lose every time. I am sharing some older “looking at you” photos today. The top featured image is from one of the lakes we visited last week. Time for some more coffee, thank you for stopping by today! Have a great Tuesday and God bless!
Steve and Muffin.
©2022 Steve McLeod.
The Investigators, Inc. Mystery of Avina. Chapter 12. Kat.
We were going to keep our latest prisoner with us and head to the US for the other 2, but Kat was sick again and I was worried about her. So we dropped off Rock with some of the team to handle the first prison “break” while the rest of us headed home with our prisoner and Kat. I knew Rock could handle this one without any problems. I called ahead to Chung to tell him about Kat.
He was worried too, Kat had been getting sick quite often lately which is not good. She seemed to settle down about half way home, but for some reason I was still worried. There is just too much happening right now. Is it all related, or are these things happening just a coincidence? We took Kat to the clinic right away and Mriya was well enough to check her out.
She found the problem quite quickly, something that her and Chung had been discussing before, Kat was being slowly poisoned! But how? We always check our food to make sure it is okay, so how could it happen? I think it is the same person who messed with my medication and Baldwin agreed. We were already heading back to the US when Chung called me with the news about Kat. How could anyone get poison just to Kat and not to the rest of us?
I had asked Muffin to stay with Kat and guard her and she was very willing to do that for me. She was sleeping curled up with Kat but woke up after a while and was looking around. She noticed the pills that Kat takes sitting on the table by the bed so she went over and holding the bottle in her paws, she put her mouth around the cap and unscrewed it.
Then she sniffed it, but did not notice anything unusual. She sat on the bed for a while but her thoughts kept coming back to those pills. She finally went and pushed the bottle over and starting sniffing again. We have a nurse working at the clinic, she has been there for 4 months now and she came in right then. “Bad cat,” she said angrily, “that is dangerous playing around with pills!”
Muffin began to growl at her when she woke up Kat to give her some medication. “Stop that!”, yelled the nurse. “Muffin, what is wrong?”, asked Kat sleepily. Meow,meow!=Pills have poison, me think nurse do it! The nurse was not able to understand Muffin. Kat pressed her buzzer. “What are you doing?”, asked the nurse, still in an angry tone. Chung came in with a guard.
Meow,meow!=Poison in pills! Me think it nurse. Chung told the guard to take the nurse out. The nurse began yelling and struggling with the guard but he took her out. Chung sniffed the pills. “Yes, some of them appear to have poison, but not all of them,” he said. He took the needle that the nurse was going to give Kat and left the room. Kat called Baldwin to tell him what happened.
He ordered a couple more guards to the clinic and gave orders that no one but Chung or Mriya were allowed in Kat’s room. Chung discovered the contents of the needle was poison also, just enough to make Kat worse, but not kill her. Someone wants Kat to die slowly, that sounds like the way Avina would do things, but it would be kind of stupid for her to do that right now, and Avina is much too intelligent to do anything that would interfere with her plans right now.
We stopped and picked up Rock and the others. Before leaving for the next prison I told everyone what has been going on with Kat. Then on to the next prison where things went very smoothly again and we were soon on our way back home again. It will feel good to have all of this behind us, but, we still have the trade with Avina yet, and I still do not trust her. But we made plans and contacted Avina to set up our trade time at the park.
Rock, Jenny, Sigurbjorn and Rossana joined me for the trade with Avina. Before we got to the park John phoned me. “Hmm, that is quite interesting,” I said to him. The 5 of us arrived at the park with the prisoners. The rest of the team was not far away however. When we met Avina I told her that Krissy comes to us first. Oh, she was angry with that, but she said okay and Rossana quickly took Krissy away. We then gave the prisoners to Avina, she smiled nicely and thanked me for helping her, then they walked away. So did we, but this was not over yet…
To Be Continued.
©2022 Steve McLeod.
