When one of our camping friends died, his widow didn't want to quit camping, and since our son and her kids were such good friends, I suggested I would teach her how to tow her travel trailer. so, she got pretty adept at towing, so we'd go on short trips--us in our pickup & trailer, and she in her Station wagon & Trailer. Her youngest daughter sort of adopted me as her substitute father, so i treated her as good as her daddy did, or so i tried to do. (She still calls me Dad) We were up in northern Ohio on one trip, and upon seeing a sign for a campground, we pulled in, and as my wife stepped out of the truck, a beer can rolled out of the door opening! This wouldn't have been so bad, but the camp was a religious camp! And then, my semi-adopted daughter got out of the car behind us, driven by her mother (Not accompanied by a male!) and hollered:"Hey, Dad, is this where we are going to stay tonight?" Well, by this time, my wife had been talking to the man in charge, and when he heard Debbie say that, we got the "Bum's Rush!" I suppose he saw the beer can, too! A funny thing about that situation was--there was never any hanky-panky going on, but we'd kid about me and my 2 wives and all our kids, wherever we went! We all had gone to Westmoreland Mall one day to shop! I didn't want to do all that walking, so i went to an ice cream store, bought a big cone and went outside to eat it! i sat on a park bench, and began talking to an old guy there. And then, the 2 ladies and 4 kids came up, saying:"Dad, why didn't you buy ice cream for all of your kids?" The old guy gave me a funny look, got up, and walked away, fast! by: Rustyj

I'm wondering if you didn't seal the wall again prematurely, although I couldn't say if another 'critter', or if you just closed in the odor so its taking longer to fade... My former house had an unfinished half basement used for storage. A rat was able to get in to the insulation batting in the basement ceiling from the crawlspace under half the house that was dirt. Several times apparently, there were multiple packets of those envelopes of rat poison that someone (we never did find out which neighbor) had been tossing around for rodent control. Directly below our bedroom closet and just a few feet from the head of our bed. DH fled to his fathers house (lots of help) and the exterminator from the pest control company and I found the rat body after much hunting and testing. We pulled down that insulation and more debris, torn open poison packets, along with the dead body fell down on us than I want to describe. The odor dissipated overnight once the offending carcass was removed and with the help of a fan. Any conceivable space allowing another entry - carefully permanently sealed. The exterminator had an odor-covering spray that we chose not to use and turned out not to need.

Technically speaking, it's not legal to change an addressee on a postage affixed envelope. In reality, the post office isn't too picky about it. Technically, you're supposed to take it to the post office and have it replaced. Like I said, I don't think they're too picky, and have done it before. But we are talking about an organization who sued the Boy Scouts for putting their fundraiser brochures on mail boxes! Ob $aver thought: My favorite is paying bills online. Between postage, envelope and check fees, it's realistically 50¢ per bill saved. I'm saving $25/year easily, plus the gas of going to a mail box. Another favorite is my little "pantry". I hate going to the store and people who have to run to the store every day for something are nuts. Worst case, I can always make a can of soup. Plus I have a few groceries in case of a storm. Another phrase I enjoyed came from one of the spouse-swap programs where the minimalist/frugal wife's motto was "Do I need it? Do I love it? Does it make me money?" If not, toss it. Oh, and I was proud of myself... My washer was dumping water all over the floor and I thought I'd have to replace a washer after only 26 years of dependable service. Hey Joyful, shouldn't that have been under warranty??? ;) Being crippled up like I am these days, I can't do too much but I was curious to see if there was a chance of it just being a hose or something, plus I couldn't really wreck it, so, after tearing it open, sure enough, all that happened was two hose clamps lost their tension. A trip to the auto parts store, 2 - 25¢ hose clamps, maybe an hour, well, couple hours of "work" (more play and confidence builder) and I saved the cost of a new machine and disposal of the old. So what would that be? Anywhere from $100-$500 per hour pay, tax free, and I'm washing away again. Maybe I'll get another 26 years out of it? Well maybe not, but I'd expect a couple years of use anyway. Oh, other little things, like making a non-electric humidifier out of an ice cream pail sitting in front of the heat register. Cut holes in the top to keep the cat from playing in there. Plus I had to set it into a dishpan because she got mad and tipped it over! There's so many things, I can't think of them. But I enjoy reading others ideas too. I guess I try to make money spending an investment. For instance the Frugal Gazette books to me are an investment since they give you ideas and motivation. Use the library for movie borrowing & rental. Bought a few dozen popular movies for $1 each and share them with a lot of people. Shop for things on the internet to see what they'll cost, then know if it's a good buy when you go out. I had to buy a new dryer and saved $200 by buying a floor model at the "BB" Store. Researched things I wanted and checked reviews and the like. My $5/mo ISP has paid for itself so many times it's hilarious.

I'm so glad your dog is doing well and seems to be well on the road to recovery. We've had several cats bitten by copperheads and rattlers, and most of the dogs survive (even without a trip to the vet) and most of the cats do not. When we have a dog bitten on the snout, we immediately give it Benadryl (we keep the children's liquid type on hand so we can squirt it in their mouth with a medicine dropper) to prevent swelling. We do the same thing with a bite on the paw, where swelling could cut off blood circulation. Our big Rottweiler/Retrieve mix, Duke, was bit on his snout just above his nose by a timber rattler one day while Tim was at a fire on the interstate. He weighed 115 lbs. I managed to get him up close to the house, which was about 300' from where he got bit, but couldn't get him up the steps as he was getting glassy-eyes and woozy. I called Tim and he said he'd rush home as quickly as possible after they got the fire out and he told me to try to hold Duke upright because he felt like if Duke fell over, we'd lose him. I agreed because it seemed Duke was going into shock and fading fast. So, I sat there with that big dog leaning on me until Tim got home and gave Duke the Benadryl. Within a few minutes, you could see an improvement in his condition. He didn't eat for several days, but we got water into his mouth (with a turkey baster) and he slowly recovered. I had been so afraid that the swelling near his nose would interfere in his ability to breathe. We still have one living cat who survived a snake bite from a copperhead more than 10 years ago. It probably was closer to 12 or 13 years ago. His name is Shady (he had a brother named Slim and their mother was named Emimem after her father Emmit, lol) and after he was bitten, a circular copper-colored rash formed around the area on his body where he was bitten. That rash took months to fade, and hair never has covered over the scarred area. We never thought at that time that Shady would outlive his brother and his mother because his health was just pitiful for the longest time. He couldn't or wouldn't eat, and when he ate he didn't gain wait. Ultimately he made a full recovery but I bet it was a year or longer before it seemed like he was finally eating normally and gaining wait again. He's about 15 years old now and has no problem gaining weight at all. After Duke's rattlesnake bite, he was suspicious of anything snakelike for the rest of his life, and he was very cautious, so he did learn from it. He hated water hoses because he thought they might be snakes. He hated to walk past the place where he was bitten and would make a wide circle around that spot instead of walking right past it. I loved Duke and he was a great, faithful companion for many years. , We lost him to heart failure earlier this year, but he lived at least another 8 years after the snakebite and I was grateful for that. We had one cat, Spots, survive being bitten twice by a copperhead, about two or three years apart. The vet said a second bite likely would kill her but it didn't. A couple of years ago our mama cat, Ranger, got bitten in the head/face area and was nearly paralyzed. There is no reason she's still alive except that we had a cat specialist vet who simply would not give up on her. He kept her at the vet hospital for about a week and did everything under the sun to save her. He worked a miracle with her and saved her life and restored her health. I am so grateful for him, and it was worth every nickle because she's a very good cat who means a lot to us. He also did not charge us an arm and a leg for all the careful, time-consuming care that he gave her. Even after he finally let her come home, her face was paralyzed for weeks and she couldn't close her eyes. He told us he thought that the paralysis would fade, but he wasn't positive it would as he'd never seen a case exactly like hers. Eventually it did fade, though. For a while, she looked kind of like one of those Hollywood people who'd had a facelift that arched their eyebrows way too high to be real, you know, , but eventually the paralysis faded and her face returned to normal and she no longer looked like an aging Hollywood star with a face that is, um, abnormally tight. She'd go to into a closet so she could sleep, eyes open, in relative darkness, and I wouldn't let her go outside since she couldn't blink her eyes. I think she stayed paralyzed for at least a month, and didn't go outside until late fall after the snakes were hibernating for the winter. We try to teach our animals not to stick their heads into tall weeds or something where they cannot see if there's a snake there, but you know how animals are...the minute you turn your back, they are off in the tall grass in the fields where they shouldn't be. One year I walked outside and there was a timber rattler coiled up underneath the big pecan tree, with five cats sitting around it like Cub Scouts at a campfire. It was a horrible sight and I thought all 5 of them were about to get bitten. I got as close to them as I could and started throwing whatever I could find....a chicken feeder, a bucket, sticks, etc. at the cats to drive them away from the snake. I was calling them by name but they were mesmerized by the snake and were totally ignoring me. Then a neighbor came over and shot the snake. By then, I had the 5 cats safely indoors. How we got through that incident without a single cat being snake-bitten amazes me, and I felt bad for the snake....it had restrained itself and not harmed anyone but had to be shot anyway so it couldn't come back another day and maybe bite someone that time. It wasn't off in some obscure spot where you'd never encounter it again. It was right in the yard where we all spend a lot of time. Having venomous snakes around is just a nightmare. If I could change anything about living here in such a natural, wild location, it would be getting rid of the venomous snakes. A great local remedy for feeding an ailing pet after it is snakebitten is to mix together a raw egg and bacon grease and feed it to them. The family that farmed the land we now own used to do that when their animals were snakebitten. I try to feed it to the cat or dog as soon as possible after they are bitten. I don't think anything about it saves them from the venom or anything. Rather, it seems more likely that the bacon grease merely tempts them to eat the egg and the egg provides protein for them at a time when they don't feel like eating very much. I have noticed that if a snakebitten animal won't eat the bacon/egg mix, they are less likely to survive the snakebite, but then maybe that's just because their reaction to the venom is so strong that nothing would save them anyway. We have had friends whose expensive competition dogs have been bitten by rattlesnakes and they did not survive even with veterinary care. Sometimes the bite is just too much for the pet to overcome, the venom too strong or in such quantity, the location of the bite, etc, being something that cannot be overcome. One friend of ours, many years ago, took her two dogs to a snake aversion course offered at a local junior college near her. They used shock collars to train dogs to stay away from snakes. That may seem cruel to some, but its goal is to save the dogs lives by teaching them to avoid snakes. Her two dogs were her babies and she lived in a rocky area filled with snakes, so she was doing what she could to keep them safe.