For the past couple of days I have been confusing (and mildly entertaining) my Facebook friends with these status updates,
"Kita's sausages are 30 feet up the tree."
and the next day,
"The sausages are still 30 feet up the tree. And now so is a hoop."
What happened?
I have a flicky, ball-launcher thing that I use to hurl tennis balls around the garden for the dog. She chases them, but as she's not a retriever, she won't bring them back. Therefore, the garden is full of balls and other unretrieved toys.
Anyway, she also has a newish, absolutely favourite toy of a string of plastic sausages. She took them into the garden so she could play with them all day.
I decided to tidy up the garden. Using my flicky ball-launcher. It saves me having to bend down, you see.
I flicked the string of sausages.
It's a very flicky ball-flinger. The sausages went up and up... and didn't come down.
Thirty feet up the tree they hung, wrapped lovingly around a branch.
The branch was thing and spindly. Way too high for me to reach but I figured if I could throw the football at it, I may be able to knock them down.
I made a few unsuccessful attempts. Never was good at netball; I was goal defence due to my height and scariness. Couldn't score a goal then, or now.
The sausages stayed resolutely in the tree.
Kita hadn't seen them go in the tree, but her nose told her that they were "up" somewhere, and that was very puzzling to her. She spent the next couple of days looking for them, sniffing the air and gazing around in confusion. Then she spotted them and tried for some considerable time to work out how a dog could climb a 400 year old beech tree in order to get them back.
She failed too.
Next I tried hurling a couple of hula-hoops at the sausages. That was fun, but ultimately unsuccessful too.
And the one got lodged on the same branch.
I resigned from the task and asked for suggestions.
Mother recommended dragging the trampoline across the garden and bouncing on it holding a garden.
I have to admit I considered this brilliant idea for a while, but knowing my knack for disaster, very sensibly didn't do it. It would not have ended well.
Eventually, after two sausageless days, Tim took pity on the dog (!) and fashioned a long, poking stick from fence posts and cable ties and, within a few minutes, had liberated both the hoop and the sausages.
I think he only did it so I wouldn't send anything else into the tree and also because he didn't fancy visiting me in hospital if I decided to follow Mum's suggestion.
I will only fling balls with the ball-launcher from now on.