Sharing our home

So, one day I was in the office, working on the computer when I started hearing a bird chirping.  I didn't think much of it, assuming that it was just outside the window.  A few minutes later Lucy came in, she just stood there for a minute, and then she said, "mom, what is that sound?"  "It's just a bird," I assured her. "Inside our house?" she asked.  "Of course not!" I answered.  But as I turned around in my swivel chair I heard the chirping again, and it sounded like it was coming from our little storage space, just across the room.  Lucy heard it too and went right over and opened the door.  Sure enough, there was a baby bird laying just inside the door.  With absolutely no fear, she reached down to grab it, and it tried to fly away.  That startled us both, so we called for some reinforcements.  Kenny and Stetson came to the rescue.  Kenny put on gloves, but he didn't need them, the poor baby bird was more scared than we were!  I honestly don't know how he got in there . . . maybe there are birds living in my roof, and this unlucky one just fell out of the nest.  It was crazy, but the kids loved it!!!  They were so mad when we let it go outside instead of keeping it as a pet!

Our unexpected visitor

Right after the capture, the kids thought it was great!

Early last spring Kenny and I awoke to the smell of something burning.  After some investigation, we found that it was our sump pump down in the crawl space basement.  The sump pump had blown out, and the basement was full of water.  Since our water softener regenerated into the sump pump, we had to turn it off.  So, all summer long we had hard water . . . ruined our clothes, dishes, etc.  So Kenny finally got around to getting it fixed - yay!!!  We got a new sump pump and Kenny replumbed the water softener into our septic tank.  Anyway, as he was cleaning up the basement, which was covered in mud due to many floods with no sump pump, he found some friends . . . 

A family of Salamanders!

Again, the kids wanted to keep them -
good thing we had a swamp outside to turn them out in!

These four got their picture taken, but later Kenny found two more!  Can you believe I had six salamanders living in my basement?  At least we don't live down there, and my kids and I are not really afraid of creepy crawly things . . . now if it was a snake, that would be a whole different story!!!  I don't do snakes!