Of mice and bats that are even bigger, and bolder, then pesky insects around these parts and their nightlife.
— When the Smilin’ Moose opened, some people expected there might be mosquitoes in attendance when the big patio-styles windows were opened. What they didn’t expect were the occasional visit by one of the downtown bats, which left one of the bartenders literally stunned. Just like at the Freedom Value Center when while gassing up, one was seen doing foot-high flips off the pavement. Between those two incidents, fittingly, 93X played Bat Country by Avenged Sevenfold.
But that was nothing compared to a couple of bat encounters on my entry level job — that Ozzy wouldn’t even be able to top. When one took off midday and started swooping over the top of a quartet of cubicles, I grabbed a baseball bat from by my door — why it was there I don’t remember — and swung blinding. Oddly enough, I connected with such force that the guts flew 15 feet away and landed on the bosses desk.
So a few nights later, before deadline on a weekly newspaper, I played rock radio but it didn’t scare away another bat, which took a perch on the crevice between a 15-foot-high ceiling and the wall back in the print shop. I grabbed a pen, this time, and threw. It pierced the bat and it fell dead on the floor.
That was enough for me to have a sign, “Our hero,” placed on my door. Such would not be the case with the last rodent encounter of which I will tell you. I was part of a two-couple tandem that saw a mouse when getting ready to go out for the evening, and the women insisted they simply would not leave without the mouse being caught. They then waited in the car in the garage. So, the brainstorming men that we are, we found a half a hot dog in the fridge and put it in a napkin, with the end barely pointing out. It was displayed briefly as we walked over to the garbage can — see honey, we caught the sucker — and then off to see the band. (We love the ’80s, but I don’t think it was Ratt. Maybe Modest Mouse).
— A fan at Buffalo Wild Wings quite wildly cheered a three-pointer even though it provided a whopping 15-point lead with only 90 seconds left in a loss by the Miami Heat in an NBA Finals game. What made it interesting was that he was wearing a LeBron James jersey from back in his days with Cleveland. A few nights later a man who said he was born in Mexico requested with broken English that the basketball be switched off in favor of soccer’s World Cup. He was surprised to find that the bartender was even more fluent then he in the ways of soccer, and that the brackets were listed on the wall. The man, who later moved to Texas, then talked with me in a wideranging conversation that included a lot of references to traditional Catholicism, such as is practiced in Mexico.
— Those same people might not like it that so many people again flooded over the border to St. Croix County to get married, this time same-sex couples taking their earliest advantage of a new Wisconsin law. A few weekends back, a couple of lesbians introduced themselves and accepted kudos from the band on just being engaged. At the time, I just had to ask, I assumed that they were from Minnesota with all the hub-bub that’s being going on there about gay marriage. Turns out that they were from right here in Hudson.
— There have again been a couple of noteworthy deaths, and one of these people, Randy Westerling, was thought well enough of to have his remembrances posted on three different store marquees in town.
— One his last day of work at Green Mill, an employee was held in such high esteem that his car was criss-crossed inside and out with a police line as a gag, even though the car was such a junker it was virtually a crime.
— A man getting his ID checked at the Smilin’ Moose had apparently been at another concert that Friday the 13th. He said of the stripes on his arms, “I got poison ivy when I was in Somerset.”