Frankie, Purgatory and the Smog in China

Seven days until Frankie's Big Move.

If you've been counting you'll notice it's seven days and not three days due to one little word not appearing on one piece of paper of many, many, many papers to close our new house in Mobile.  That's right. The closing of our house was cancelled at the last minute because Greg's name didn't appear on an insurance paper that had NOTHING to do with ownership of a house.

Yes, I am in House Closing Purgatory.  

Poor Frankie was the primary victim of one little word.   Once we closed on the planned Friday date we would promptly run to Lowe's and buy fence posts and cement and for an entire weekend put up Frankie's new privacy fence.  The completion of said fence would take the entire week but those all important fence posts needed the attention and dedication of four persons.  Once posts are up the pickets could be completed during the week after everyone got off work.

In the mean time I would be back in Birmingham packing and preparing Frankie for the big move.

That everything would work like the Boulder, Colorado's Atomic Clock is denying the very real existence of House Closing  Purgatory.  Closing was postponed to Monday.  

So Frankie's Fence was not going to get done in time.  Four adults of which only one is a Frankie Expert try to decide on a solution.

My favorite is the one where Frankie will live in our friends's screened porch for five to seven days.  

If that idea didn't cause you to drop to the floor and laugh your arse off then you don't currently own or have ever owned a 100 pound sulcata tortoise.  

Another idea involved putting up a temporary metal fence.

Really? 

I guess the thing that is hardest for people to understand is what a 100 pound sulcata tortoise will do once he topples the metal fence like it's tooth picks. Frankie will go on a big walk.

Unlike dogs, sulcata tortoises don't stick around their neighborhood.  Sulcata tortoises don't respond to whistles to beckon them home.  Large sulcata tortoises walk until it's dark.  A Sulcata Big Walk is much farther than most people can image.  

So, I put my foot down.

In seven days time I will drive Frankie five hours from Birmingham to Mobile, all the while Frankie drops buckets of poop and gallons of pee in our small Prius automobile surrounding me in a fecal smog that will rival the near record smog in Harbon, China where visibility is less than 10 meters.

Did I mention there will be a howling cat, too?

With Frankie and large sulcata, there is no easy path:  it has to be done thinking the worse and acting to avoid it all all cost.

I wonder where I can buy a hazmat suit.