Random 5 for July 6, 2025 – Summer, squirrel, coffee, end of life stuff, ants

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Holy cow how did that happen? – Two summer holidays are done. One more to go before winter. Summer months are shorter than winter months. July has six days total before it’s gone. I’m working to savor every day. It may require a banana split or some other decadent summer pleasure. (Remember when it was margaritas? Me neither! Aging sucks but it’s better than the alternative!)

It’s official – We have a pet squirrel. He’s not allowed inside the house (although the cats think that would be a great idea!). This little guy was doing zoomies and rubbing his fur on our deck furniture cushions (is that a sign of ownership?). He noshes on the bird feeder; takes a drink from the bird bath; and settles down for a nap. I need to name him.

That was weird! – I made my usual Starbucks run for coffee on the July 4th holiday. It was around 7 a.m. and no one was in the store. There were baristas milling around stocking up and doing stuff but no coffee on the counter. I went to check my phone app to make sure I didn’t order it from a different store (yes that has happened) when one of the baristas who knows me realized what happened. One of the food delivery services pick up an order and he picked up my coffee too. Maybe that was his tip! They remade my drink in quick order, and I had a good laugh (although I thought I deserved a free lemon cake!).

Now for the somber – After doing a victory dance because the wills are done, we have a few odds and ends to finish up. I didn’t have the umph to do it last week. Maybe this is the week. Maybe not. We’ll see.

This is the scene of the hairball debacle.

Out you damn ant! – Morgan barfed up a hairball on the office window ledge and I didn’t see it right away. It attracted ants. Lots of ants. Although the area was thoroughly cleaned, I still have ants coming to visit. It’s a monument for ants to see on their vacation. I can hear mama ant saying to baby ant, “This is where the great hairball was! It was awesome.” Placement of hairballs will be discussed at the next cat board meeting.

So how was your week?

 

60 thoughts on “Random 5 for July 6, 2025 – Summer, squirrel, coffee, end of life stuff, ants”

  3. We’ve begun to have ants appear in one bathroom. Out of nowhere it’d seem. No cat barf to blame it on, though. That was the highlight of last week. 🤷‍♀️

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  7. Treat a squirrel nice one time and he/she is your outside pet for life. Look at my little furry friend Parker. Even if you are not tossing peanuts and putting out a bowl of water, it has made itself at home. 🙂 Ants were the bane of my existence for almost six weeks this year. They did a lot of stops and starts instead of converging at one time. I had a black wasp in the house a week or so ago – it was huge and buzzing at the swag lamp right over my head. By the way, I still have not tried the Spruce weed killer – I did not forget to tell you. Getting the moon and stars to align to spray weeds is as difficult these days as going for a trip to the larger parks with my camera – it doesn’t happen as rain or storms threaten, it’s too hot, wildfire smoke and three days of air quality alerts or just plain stinkin’ hot. The last time the weeds just got weed whipped as it was hot and humid and they were big. You need no rain for X number of hours, no humidity, no wind and it has to be hot … well hot is about all I have and it looks like another week of the same stormy/hot weather. Ugh. Summer is slipping by as you say … Spring wasn’t great, Summer was been nothing special and Winter was a disaster with all the ice and snow.

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    • Maybe you should move? Aside from the hairball which did attract a lot of ants, I had recently purchased a pot of cat grass. I’ve had this stuff by my window for years but the last two pots have attracted ants. I don’t know if they switched soil or something else. It is now out on the deck and no ants this morning.

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      • I sometimes think that would be a good idea – get away from the ant issues and whatever else. I remember having a potted plant at work and it needed more dirt. It was on my desk and I just bought a small bag of dirt at the grocery store, rather than dividing up a bigger bag and having a mess. I’m sure that dirt had fungus gnats as I added the dirt, came into work the next day and there were tiny gnats all over the place. I spooned out all the new dirt and threw the rest of the bag away. I wonder if all the hot weather is affecting the ants? I was downstairs with the HVAC tech today and saw two or three water bugs (rolypolys) walking around. No escaping anything. One time I was downstairs with the HVAC tech and I saw a centipede going up the laundry room wall – the laundry room and pantry room are sectioned off from the rest of the basement and are painted pastel green, not paneled. So I had a shoe downstairs and asked him to kill it please. I’d had this guy for many years as he lived near me, so I always asked for him. I’d have asked any of the techs to kill it. He looked at the centipede and said “no, I’m sorry, I can’t do that – I don’t like them either.” 🙂

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        • I can’t believe he wouldn’t kill it! I don’t like doing it but I will. No ants on the ledge today so I’m pretty sure the plant was drawing them. However, they are back at the area where I feed the cats. Always something.

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          • Not very macho of him was it to say that was it. Now he owns a Wild Birds Unlimited store with his wife so he does not have to be crawling around people’s basements anymore. Bugs and weather woes are going hand in hand. I watch the local and national news online and today I saw three stories about how ticks are so bad this year, they are surpassing the tick population from 2017. That does not give me comfort to know that when it cools off a little and I am finally able to return to the larger woodsy Metroparks again that I might just be staying on the asphalt path and not doing any rustic trails. After last year’s tick that did not attach, I am wary. I’d like to go to the alpaca farm as they have some new babies born a few weeks ago. The owner is nice (I’ve written one or two posts about going there with lots of photos and sent it to him), but that farm is in a rural area and the grass is long and kind of unruly and they don’t trim it as the alpacas graze on it … so I might pass that little adventure up too and just admire the families on Facebook instead. 🙂

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              • I saw that LL Bean made clothes to repel ticks and I think REI does. I bought some bandanas from REI at the onset of the pandemic when you made your own “mask” and they send me e-mails all the time. I follow a Facebook site of Metropark amateur photographers and one of them takes duct tape and wraps it around the bottom of the pant legs and fastens it to his socks … good idea, but those ticks can get into your shoes too I’d think. I always wear white socks to check more easily, no more quarter socks and bare skin.

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  8. It is crazy how quickly summer progresses. Crazy too how ants are able to detect attractive smells from so far away (hair balls attractive?… really, ants?).

    I think your squirrel thinks he has found a bit of heaven on your deck. Food, drinks, comfy seating, and driving your cats nuts.

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    • I got a great picture of him yesterday on the deck railing. He never stays long. It’s just a friendly visit! I put out grapes yesterday and someone ate them all up. The birds will eat them too so I’m not sure who got them.

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  9. Dang, you didn’t get comped on the coffee? Bummer. And double bummer on the ant monument. Maybe vinegar and water with maybe a squeeze of lemon will remove the ant pheromones? Good luck. Hopefully the new week will be full of accomplishments and good tidings. I wouldn’t encourage the squirrel, they are hooligans to the max.

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  10. Hi, Kate – I agree that summer is waaaaayyyy too short — and seems to be getting shorter with each passing year. Wishing you an awesome, ant-free July and August…and for summer to extend well into September!

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  11. I agree about summer going too fast! Slow down!

    Oh gosh, about your Starbucks order. 🤣 I agree, you should have got a cake. 🙂

    Aww, on your squirrel friend. Yes, I am sure your cats would love to play with him. LOL!

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  14. I saw ants this morning and had to fight them off, but I was outside thank heavens. Glad you got your coffee because one must have their coffee. Question – did you get a new heat pump last year? Maybe I’m wrong, but I’m looking for feedback from anyone who did. Yes, it was 100+ outside, and ours just couldn’t keep up.

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    • We bought a new one 4 years ago. Last year something happened and they couldn’t figure out what was wrong. It was under warranty so eventually it was replaced. The company was difficult to work with. I’d never buy a Trane again. Although their technology is supposed to be good, their customer service is lousy. We had to use auxiliary heat for 3 months (the entire winter). It cost us an extra $1500 which wasn’t reimbursed. Their engineers were fighting over what was wrong. Instead of replacing, they tried to fix it with different parts (for 3 months!).

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  16. Lemon cake and a banana split. You must have a sweet tooth this week. I’d love to have a banana although I’d be sorry before I finished half of it. I like your idea of savoring the remaining days of July.

    I like your new family member. We think our house and yard belong to us, but the birds who live in my trees and the squirrels that check my pots almost every day think my trees and pots belong to them. They have to live somewhere.

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    • Occasionally I make my own banana split. It’s 1/2 banana and 1 scoop vanilla ice cream (because that’s all we keep in the house) with a little chocolate sauce. I’d love to get one with all the flavors and toppings but there is no way I’d finish it. Our yard does not belong to us. The deer, squirrels, mice and all the other critters have made the clear. The deer had a party in my hosta patch and all the leaves are gone.

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  17. They definitely should have given you lemon cake! I thought you were for sure done with those ants. I thought your bug guy had them beat. Morgan looks like something is happening on the floor or remembering what happened on the floor. I don’t know if you remember Squee, the little baby squirrel we rescued on the Tiny Ten. We fell in love with him. I am happy we found a rescue and got him there. He was a blur of mischievous activity on our four seasons porch and he was a teeny tiny wrecking ball! Did I mention we fell in love with him? If you name him, he is yours for life!

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    • Fortunately he’s young but not a baby so he’s eager to hop off into the wooded area in the back. I had never seen a squirrel take to our furniture like he did. Made himself at home. I’m sure he could have done some major damage. I couldn’t get a picture of him on the deck. He would scamper off when he saw me. Now I haven’t seen him in a day or so.

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  18. Well I agree about the lemon cake – you deserved some kind of compensation! The great hairball apparently is still attracting sight-seers even though the “monument” was cleaned up. It must have been monumental to still be a popular sight-seeing spot for ants!

    Hugs, Pam

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  19. I bet the cats are loving watching the squirrel. Maybe they have a name for him (other than Dinner.) Never had ants on a hairball…don’t publicize this as a vacation destination please!!

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  20. Actually, the warm season (March to September equinox) in the Northern Hemisphere is 7 days longer than in the Southern Hemisphere. In the Northern Hemisphere, summer months are June, July, and August with 30, 31, and 31 days. Winter months are December, January, February with 31, 31, 28 (29 in leap years) days. Cute cats, btw.

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  21. When we were kids, summer didn’t start until the summer solstice since that’s when school got out. So July 4th wasn’t viewed as mid-summer the way it is now.

    But I do agree that summers always flew by . . . until we moved to perpetual summer here in Florida. 😀

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  22. You absolutely should have had lemon cake. Once animal debris (or kid debris) attracts a bunch of ants, those scouts are relentless. They come back to check the same spot for years.

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  23. You sound perky, and yes, summer is whizzing by.

    I love the new member of the family. He sounds smart since life at Chez Crimmins is pretty good. Let’s hope he doesn’t have an extended family.

    Saw on Instagram how a deer wandered into a convenient store. The kid working gave him a peanut butter bar to get him to leave. He showed up later with his whole family. There’s a picture. Despite the uh-oh the kid must have felt, it was the sweetest thing.

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