posted on January 17, 2002 08:32:40 AM new
nt = new topic?
I did a little LOL yesterday when a little mystery was finally solved.
I had noticed that my cat seemed to be going through a lot of dry cat food lately (I leave a dish out on the floor for her all the time).
On Monday night I pulled on one of my winter boots and discovered about 1/4 cup of dry cat food at the bottom of the boot. I was puzzled but shrugged it off. Last night I pulled on the boot again and found about 1/2 cup of cat food at the bottom.
A couple of hours later I opened the door to the basement and was startled to see a cute tiny little mouse who quickly scurried down the stairs. I guess it had been using my boot to hoard its food supply.
My cat seem totally oblivious to the presence of the mouse so I'm off to the store this morning to find out how to trap the mouse (hopefully alive so I can set it free in a nearby ravine).
posted on January 17, 2002 10:48:08 AM new
NT is serious. XP is funny.... you've got it bass akwards.
Irene, LOL! My friend had a similar problem with a chipmunk. She bought a "Have a Heart" trap and caught the little rascal.
Then she took him to a park and let him loose...probably to find another house inhabited by a vicious cat. HaHaHa.
posted on January 17, 2002 12:10:07 PM new
NT. Yeah, that's my personality type. But, hey, I can laugh about it!
Stockticker, my cats are into terrorizing and occasional wounding, so they usually corner a mouse and sit there trying to decide what the hell to do with it. Then I decide for them by letting the mouse run into an empty coffee can so I can release it outside.
posted on January 17, 2002 03:39:52 PM new
Saabsister and Helen: I've never had mice before - maybe because I used to have a small noisy dog. I can't imagine my cat cornering a mouse. She's not very agile (Persian) and sleeps most of time.
I had squirrels in my attic about 10 years ago and called a humane trapper to get rid of them. He told me he had to drive at least 7 miles away to release them. Any shorter distance than that, and he said that they probably would have found their way back to my attic.
Snowy: I'm just putting my house on the market next week so don't know how long it will take to sell. When it does, I'm hopping on a plane to go house-hunting. Twice before I've flown into strange cities and found a house within 3 days so I'm hoping I'll be able to do that again.
posted on January 18, 2002 04:47:58 AM new
Nope. The seller dragged out the repairs which would allow full inspection under the house and finally appeared to be trying to hide something, so we aborted. I made a low as-is offer, but she didn't go for it. We're looking again. A long story, but a big bummer here. We'd gotten about 1/4 packed.
posted on January 18, 2002 05:02:08 AM new
krs, when we went through the final walk through on this house just hours before the scheduled settlement, the sellers decided they weren't going to move. All their furniture was here, their clothes were in the dryer, and the dishes in the sink. I had a settlement scheduled on my house later that evening and our belongings were in a U-Haul. Interest rates were 13- 14%. It took us three months to get them out - our lawyer kept them from selling to anyone else by threatening suit and the real estate agents threatened to sue for their fees. The seller had two other houses he could have moved into. (This is probably the reason my husband would prefer to use an architect to renovate our present house than move again.)
posted on January 18, 2002 06:46:03 AM new
That's bad.
This was a series of oversights by both brokers, mine and hers, and I guess her wish to back up on her agreement to repairs of up to $5000. I hadn't asked for near that much, but when she offered it I took her at her word. I had, after all, blitzed the other two offers that she'd received by that amount.
But it really as more than that. In 1996 much of Oregon suffered flooding. I knew that, and we had asked. She said that there had been high water but that only a couple of inches had entered the house in just two rooms and some in the separate shop. I had meantime gotten county records of what went on during that time--even newspaper archive stuff when I could, and I doubted her word. I wanted to have all of the underneath inspected because of that and the access was limited. So she had someone dig, and said it was ready for our final inspection Monday. On Monday the inspector(s) that I'd hired still couldn't get to all of it - coincidently couldn't get to that area under the part that she said had flooded. There were some other less important repairs not completed. So I told our agent to put the brakes on and tell them no deal because she hadn't satisfied the contingencies of our offer. He did, the other realtor entreated, so I told him that I figured it would cost to prevent any future possible flooding and would cost an unknown amount to repair the areas not seen, and to make an offer accordingly. She didn't take it. We didn't suffer much loss. A couple of flights up there, inspection fees, and other miscellaneous stuff. Oh well.
posted on January 18, 2002 08:57:37 AM new
krs, I live in a neighborhood that borders a river. There was substantial flooding during Hurricane Agnes and there has been minor flooding twice since I've lived here. I live far enough up hill that I don't have to worry about the house but do have to worry about the road washing out. It's amazing to listen to neighbors' tales of flooding and how far the river came over the banks - some folks are even quoted in newspaper articles. However, when they sell their homes, they tell a different story.
posted on January 18, 2002 09:12:38 AM new
Yeah. My house in Santa Cruz is above a town called Felton. We had friends that lived in an area called Felton Gorge. In 1981 the gorge flooded so badly that the water level in the houses went to seven feet. It's a miserable mess. The water goes down but leaves houses full of mud, and it's heartbreaking to see people digging out their possessions and sifting through to find valuables. It destroys drywall, carpets, appliances, and furniture and can take months to dry out in a damp climate. This wasn't that bad according to the stuff I dug out of the record, but when I looked at the plat map I could see that if there was a lot of water coming down from the mountain it would take a turn in the river that would cause it to overflow right toward this place. We were willing to take some chances, but I wantd to make sure that we weren't going to have to do big foundation repairs going in. A friend of mine once bought a house and three weeks later his living room sank two feet at one corner because there was a water filled hollow, like a cave, down there.
The Russian River flooded so badly one year in our sonoma county that there was toilet paper strung in trees thirty feet over the nearby road. It's amazing.
posted on January 18, 2002 09:27:10 AM new
My in-laws lived in Sonoma for awhile. I heard about some of the flooding on the Russian River. That area reminds me a little of where I live.
We once looked at a wonderful 15 acre property near here - secluded in a gap between the mountains. You had to drive over the boulders in the creek to get to the house. The house was interesting - stone with English gardens. It had been an early church camp of some type. But the house was in the lowest site on the property and you just knew that the runoff from the mountains would cause flooding.
In my own neighborhood I almost put a contract on a house that was on a hill overlooking the riverbend. A real estate agent who is a friend of ours talked me out of it. She said that half the bank had slipped away during Hurricane Agnes and that the owner had spent about $100,000 on retaining walls trying to save the house.
posted on January 18, 2002 09:10:30 PM new
That's too bad krs, but better to be disappointed now, than to have real problems later. If there's no rush to move just take your time, and you'll find what you want.
