You Can't Just Bacon Poop Anywhere

Once upon a time I went to happy hour with a friend and it was bacon night at the bar. You could order a giant plate of bacon for not much money along with your cocktail. What could be better -- bacon AND cocktails? Maybe some fried green tomatoes -- but I digress.

The point is that my friend couldn't have any bacon, because she was staying at the house of some very observant Jewish friends and they told her she couldn't bacon poop in their toilet. So she had to have salad.

This made me sad for her and utterly fascinated. I mean, it's a toilet. For what other purpose would one use a toilet except to flush things that you won't otherwise put elsewhere? I can comprehend the principle behind having separate plates and cookware for things that ought not mix. But the potty???? And really, how would they KNOW someone had bacon pooped in their toilet? For the record, being a most respectful and principle-of-the-matter girl, she declined the bacon.

Then I started wondering, how close to the house can the bacon poop get? If their neighbors stuff themselves with pork products, expel and then flush, does the pork poop whoosing into the sewer system past their house cause an issue? What if a dog has eaten bacon and poops in their yard? Do those Beggin Strips count, because I am pretty sure that isn't real bacon.

Then I started obsessing about what else one couldn't poop in their toilet.

• Definitely no cheeseburger poop.
• No shellfish poop.
• But what if you had, say, a grilled cheese sandwich for lunch and then meatloaf for supper? Would the cheese and the meat mix in your tummy and create a sacrilegious poop? (Note: This would be a terribly unhealthy diet and should be avoided.)
• Shrimp and grits would be off limits, for sure.
• No pork products at all.

The next logical step was to worry that I had inadvertently bacon pooped some where I should not have. But, really, I try not to do that sort of thing any place except at home. It's just too embarrassing and weird. I realize that I am probably unhealthily uptight about it, but that's just the way I feel.

Who hasn't been in a public restroom and been serenaded by the person next to you in a way that you wish would just stop? Work is the worst. I just don't want to share that kind of information with my colleagues or they with me. Okay, okay, I know. Everybody poops. I've read the book. BUT STILL!!!!

The mind boggles, really. It is so complicated. There is a whole world out there with rules and regulations on what you can poop where and I never knew. It makes me wonder what else I don't know about and through my ignorance am sending people to hell right and left. (Is that what happens if one is exposed to bacon poop? That is the problem -- I just don't know!)

I do hope the children's book authors are working on their next iteration entitled, "You Can't Just Bacon Poop Anywhere" and they will answer some of these questions, because I really am curious and this isn't the sort of thing you can ask just anyone.

The Bat Scared Santa's Reindeer Away

On Christmas Eve, we returned from merry-making with the neighbors -- lunch and presents with one then dinner, tree-trimming and presents with another. I had just settled on the sofa with a book and a dog in my lap when I saw the shadows of wings fluttering in the hallway. The scene was not unlike an old horror movie where the maiden is tucked into bed, sees the shadows of bat wings, thinks she must be imagining things and moments later is sucked dry by a vampire.

Luckily, I'd seen that movie and yelled to Drew that there was a bat in the house. Henry, our tiny kitten, confirmed it as he raced along the hallway, looking straight up and leaping at the bat, ready to go in for the kill if only his tiny kitten legs could catapult him to the ceiling.

Let me tell you, bats are creepy. They're all well and good in the outdoors, flying out from under the Congress Avenue bridge in Austin, off to eat their weight in mosquitos. Flying about in your house on Christmas Eve is another matter. C.R.E.E.P.Y. And wrong. And libel to scare Santa and his reindeer away.

Our first problem was that none of our rooms on the first floor have doors. It isn't that kind of house -- it flows, it has big formal rooms for entertaining. Plus, most of the windows don't open, so we couldn't just shut him up, open a window and hope for the best -- as advised by the neighbor who has had bats in her house before. Plus, who in their right mind would leave the relative warmth of indoors to go out in the frigid Pittsburgh winter temperatures? Not me. Not the bat.

Drew, a city boy through and through, was just as freaked out as I was, but because he is the boy he was called upon to vanquish the winged intruder. Drew grabs a shirt box and brandishes it as a shield to protect himself. I hand him the broom and then duck into another room laughing hysterically as Drew repeatedly hits the deck as the bat flutters by.

The bat finally settles on the ornate plaster work just above the murals in what has been dubbed "the music room," because George Gershwin played the piano there when he was in town. Naturally, it is the nicest room in the house and not one that you'd want bat guts splattered all over, so my plan of bashing him with a broom was nixed.

Drew stood there trying to reason with the bat: "Man, you really can't be here any more. This is really uncool. It's time to go. Come on man. Out you go." I pointed out that he wasn't trying to reason with stoned guy at a party and the parents were on their way home. It was a BAT. Obviously, that tactic didn't work. Instead, I thought whipping cat toys past Drew's head in the direction of the bat might get him off the wall and out of the pretty room. Alas, I didn't tell Drew that I was going to throw the cat toys, so he nearly had a heart attack thinking the bat had an aggressive friend. Oops.

We opened the door in the music room. Turned on all the lights, thinking the bat wouldn't flap into really well lit rooms and I went to the garage to get the net I bought when I had to fish the dead fish out of the pond. After 5 minutes or so of Drew trying to screw up the courage to put the net over the bat and repeated laments of "he's looking at me! He's looking at me with his beady, creepy bat eyes!" Drew did it. Then the bat just started walking along the wall, trying to get out from underneath the net. I'm screaming "poke him with a stick! poke him with a stick!"

Eventually, Drew did poke him with a stick and the bat fell into the net, Drew rushed outside, shut the door and then worked to release the little invader from the net, so he didn't get stuck and die. Me, I operate under the take no prisoners theory of: If something comes in my house and it shouldn't be there, I get to kill it. Guess that's the Texan in me.