is anyone tired of gloves yet? crabapple finds an endless supply. they don't stop arriving in our yard. there are a few other items too.... a breathing mask with a ball of steel wool in it. a newspaper still in it's protective plastic bag. a blue rag. a chamois cloth. garbage. and so many gloves. the other day there was an opened bag of chips......with the chips still in it. but i didn't grab my camera right away and the squirrels and chipmunks finished off the chips.....i guess she's bringing snacks now.

oh, crabby. you exhaust me. i haven't been able to keep up with you the past week or so. the yard is full of gloves and socks and garbage. i talked to the neighbor behind us last week. she had stolen the rubber chicken from him, apparently.....from his basement. so i gave it back to him. and a few days later, it was back on our porch. she had re-stolen it. he told me that he finds her in his basement regularly. he finds her footprints on his computer. and once he found her with a box of kleenex she had dragged from a tabletop and was pulling the tissues out of the box. i returned quite a few things to him. gloves. a bag of bolts. a bag of guitar cleaning cloths.
but despite finding the pilfered items' homes, the yard continues to fill. apparently she's a leafs fan.....she brought a hockey sock in the leafs colours. and a pretty tea towel. a sock. gloves, gloves and more gloves. another mask. and a bread bag full of plastic bags. and i haven't even checked the back of the yard for a couple of days!!!

today the phone book was delivered. they are put at the front door, wrapped in plastic. but crabby brought ours around to the back kitchen door. the bag was all ripped with her little teeth marks in it, but she got it around the house and through the gate and onto the porch. a big phone book. it's heavy. it's awkward. and wow, how she maneuvered that crazy thing around the house!!!
and then had time to find a sock, a headband and a ziploc bag with a cleaning cloth in it.

yesterday's catch....a sealed plastic bag of bolts and some sort of wrench. a pair of rolled socks. a golf glove.
and then our neighbor who lives behind us came by. she told me she was missing her shoe. and her husband was missing an innertube from the garage. they found both at the back of their yard, at the fence that runs between our properties. it appears our little 'crabby thief' couldn't quite get these items through the fence. and they also found a new barbecue thermometer their neighbor had been missing. so, miss crabapple has been a very busy girl.

holy crabby....there are 9 different gloves in our yard right now. all in pairs except for one. a huge garbage bag full of plastic cups. a dog toy as big as her. a rag. and lots of garbage. no wonder she's so tired!

crabby has composed a theme for this morning's thievery. i was just now enjoying the morning, sitting on the porch swing when i heard her distinctive yowl, as she approached with a new find. i grabbed my camera, but missed the actual carrying part. but she had dropped a rubber glove just feet from the porch. i saw a few other things further back in the yard and walked back to find a full (and rather large) bag of rubber bands. and then, just feet away, a rubber chicken. seriously!!!! this is not the first rubber chicken she's brought us (if only fate would smile on my and i could snag a photo of her carrying one). but this is her first thematically arranged heist....that i know of. rubber glove. rubber bands. rubber chicken. ahhh, miss crabapple,

i spent the day sewing on the porch. and just as i was wrapping up the day, i heard crabby screeching through the green. i looked over to find her smiling up at me as she dropped this stolen garden glove at the base of the stairs leading up to the porch. i have the feeling she was busy today, but only this glove made it to our yard.

i have a few crabby stories. overheard conversations about her. and people letting me know about her shenanigans. last week a friend messaged me to tell me he'd been walking through the harbor and saw crabby lugging a water bottle. it didn't make it to our place. but i'm learning that we aren't her only destination. i think her intention is always our garden. but she gets distracted or things get too heavy or the obstacle of fences prove too much for her. for tom overheard a neighbor complaining about the garbage building up at their back fence. and another neighbor explaining "it's that little cat. she carries garbage and can't get it through the fence."
and the other night at rudy and krista's one of our neighbor's up the street asked if we had a winter glove that crabby may have brought us. and he proceeded to perfectly describe the ripped up winter glove that i pictured in the last post or the post before. he'd been using them for heavy outdoor work, until she stole them both and brought them both to us in seperate yards. and unfortunately tom had just done the lawn and thrown them both away.
so that's the latest crabby news.....

after weeks of overcast rainy days, the weather has found a seasonal pattern and crabby is filling her days with thievery once again. during the rainy and overcast days she contents herself with pilfering recycling boxes and dragging newspaper and plastic bags and junkmail into our yard.
but with the fine weather, people are gardening and her favorite item of all is within her reach once again. the lowly garden glove is her favorite target. and somehow, she managed to find a pair of winter gloves as well.
this glove was found among the tulips in the studio garden. and it's mate was stranded under the crabapple tree at the back of the yard at our house. and this pair of gloves carefully folded together were also under the crabapple tree.


and one more little oddity to note. she brought this torn up winter glove and placed it in the studio garden with one of the green rubber gloves. and then brought the winter gloves mate under the crabapple tree with the green rubber gloves mate. keeping them separated but in pairs.
so that is the latest crabapple news......except that we are off to the vet this morning as it appears her diarrhea issues have returned.

well, miss crabapple is back at it. and i caught her in the act.....with my camera in hand. for most of last week it was rainy and cold and all she was able to manage was moving her finds from the yard onto the porch.
but today, during our sale at the studio, i saw her struggling with a bag full of plastic. i went outside and found the items she had already managed to get into the yard. but she was working with all her might to finish dragging the rest of the bag into the yard. she had made it to the driveway....and who knows where she found it and how far she'd already dragged it.