By now you've seen evidence as to how the Yarn Bandit got his name. It all started about six weeks after we got him. I had noticed an affinity for my yarn, but had no clue about his boldness. That day, Bunny's parents and grandmother were visiting, and we were examining Bunny's stash of sock yarn. Sometimes Bunny takes requests, see. Anyhow, I dumped the sock yarn stash on the floor, and us five human adults were poking through it. This is nice, ooh I like that, cool make me some with this, blah blah blah. Then I noticed that, six feet away, YB has pulled two skeins out of the stash and is chewing them.
Consider this for a moment. He snuck into a scrum of five human adults, each with a brain much larger than his, and made off with two of the items they were examining, and none of us noticed.
Bunny is supposed to be careful with her yarn, but sometimes she forgets that putting it away is not always enough. She must also zip all zippers and put it up high somewhere not adjacent to something he can climb. Also, she must not assume that he won't climb a chair just because he never has climbed that particular chair before.
The worst episode was when Bunny came home to find Kirby Tattletale sitting next to a strange-looking brown cord stretched down the hall. When Bad Stuff happens, Kirby Tattletale likes to call attention to it. He probably hopes we'll give YB back. So's I investigate because it doesn't look like yarn at first, but sure enough, YB has climbed into a chair he never bothered with before, attacked a beagle blanket that Bunny was knitting for him, and dragged it out of the bedroom, down the hall, into the living room, past the treadmill, through the dining room, into the kitchen, and then made another living-treadmill-dining-kitchen circle before giving up. It appeared that the yarn had snagged on something under the fridge and broke.
That night, he had the poops all over the place. At least six poop piles throughout the house. The next day we went to the vet. He stayed for a while, got some x-rays, came home. There was a suspicious distension in his belly. Hmmmmm. I wonder what it could be. Then he woke us up howling in pain, settled down, howled some more, then started barfing up.....wait for it........brown yarn from the beagle blanket. The Man, thinking quickly, grabbed it and pulled it out, hand over hand, as YB tried very hard to swallow it back down. All told, there was at least six yards of yarn in there, all in one piece. (It was barf-soaked. I didn't stretch it out to measure it.) And we followed up with the vet (sez the vet, or maybe it was one of Fred's humans, you'd think he'd stop eating after the first few inches when he realized it didn't taste very good), and everything turned out fine, and Bunny made a solemn oath that she would not leave attractive nuisances in the form of yarn where YB could get at them.
And mostly she has, but she forgets. Such as this time. And that brings us up to today.
Bunny came home from work and did something she usually doesn't. She left the house. First she went to Glutton Place to get her last-minute Thanksgiving perishables. This was bad for beagles, but she came back. Then she and The Man both left again to visit Fred's humans on some secret knitting project related business. (Aside: one item of business involves trading in extra yarn of some colors to get more of the other color. I assume that the yarn store wants its yarn back in unchewed condition, but I haven't actually asked, so maybe it's just me. Ooops. I may have telegraphed too much.) Leaving twice in one night is apparently an unpardonable offense. That's right. Tiki got into the yarn I was going to trade in. Chewed it all nicely. Also, he got into my sock drawer, removed a pair of socks, and chewed them.
The yarn is my fault. I packed it up, but left the bag where he could get at it instead of putting it up high. How I envy knitters who can leave their projects out in baskets, or display their lovely stash in bowls on tables. However, the sock drawer is new. That is not my fault. He has never shown any interest in it before, and now I really do have to get that drawer pull fixed properly so I can open and close it easily instead of just leaving it partly open all the time. All least it was cheap white gym socks and not nice handknit socks.
The Man remembers the Night of the Many Poops and The Morning When Tiki Howled, and he doesn't understand why Bunny can't just put her toys away when she's done playing. Bunny is sorry, The Man. Bunny is not trying to hurt Tiki.
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