Dog-Food Eating Zombies!

SUMMARY: In the dark, they come and steal our food.

We know that we have night-walking, flesh-eating zombies in our yard in the dark of night from time to time, because I often find plums from my tree that's on the west side of my house in the pond over on the east side of my house with some of their flesh eaten away.

We keep our dogfood in a giant garbage-can-like bin on the back porch next to the kitchen door because there's no room in the kitchen and, even though it's a nice bright kitcheny white color, really garbage can decor is out. Haven't had any troubles with that, except for one year when the really desperate rats chewed through the lid. (Had to have been desperate; who would eat dogfood when there were plums available? And oranges? And apples? And lobelia flowers? OK, I don't know who's eating all my lobelia flowers.)


Thanks to the miracle of white plastic tape--all the versatility of duct tape, except bright kitcheny white--I repaired the lid, so then they chewed under it, so then I had to repair that and also scare them away by putting rat traps in and on the bin for several nights running. Didn't catch anything, just scared them off. Clever rats.


But, to no one's surprise, I digress.

Yesterday morning, I came downstairs to discover the dogfood bin tipped over on its side with food cascaded out across the deck. I don't know whether Tika was more excited about smelling the zombies who were responsible, or about scarfing down the food. Wait--I do know. It was the food. But then, after we had collectively cleaned up the food, tremendous quantities of zombie-odor sniffing occurred.

Last night, after agility class and before bed, I latched down the lid on the bin. It latches pretty good; it is such a secure latching that I have to call a knowledgeable expert, like maybe a desperate 5-year-old, to unlatch it; I personally have to struggle with it for most of the morning to get it open after latching it.

Plus it is a heavy bin with all that dogfood (40 pound bags of food, you know; it takes almost 2 bags. Although admittedly it is now down to maybe 20 pounds) so I know that, with the lid latched, it is one secure mother-feeder.

So, at around 1:00 this morning, Tika informed me in no uncertain terms that zombies were afoot and she needed to go do something about them. Human Mom, however, was very tired and didn't want to get out of the toasty bed and argued with Tika about it for about 5 minutes and finally had to shut all the upstairs windows before Tika gave up and settled back to bed with an indignant Huff.

This morning, the bin was on the opposite side of the deck, beyond the cute little wrought iron table and chair, tipped over, lid off, with food cascading across the deck and over the side into the garden. Tika spent a good 10 minutes checking for food and zombie clues.

Maybe tonight, if Tika tells me about zombies, we'll come downstairs and give them some really good Woofs to scare them off. Might not let Tika loose in the yard; Remington tangled with a zombie one night and we both regretted it for weeks caring for his wounds. We just want to scare them a bit. Of course, these could just be giant mutant angry rats about TMH having wiped out their cousins in the attic. I wonder whether rat traps would scare them off? Or the zombies, either?

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Of course, if I were a *useful* blogger who didn't want to take up all of your time, and mine, too, snapping photos and digressing along, I COULD have had a post that read simply, "Coons getting into dogfood on deck. Must do something." Better luck next time.