Thievery and Invaders Aka “Schmarotzer” in German

I run a gite. A holiday let.
I also have all manner of ‘vermin’ wandering around the place.
Horses. A donkey. Chickens. Barn cat. House cats. There’s a feral cat creeping around but let’s not count that one.
This post was prompted by me thawing up a frozen pork chop, taking it out of the microwave to put in the fridge – and being distracted by the coffee machine for about 3 seconds.
When I turned around to put the pork chop in the fridge… I only had… a plate.
The pork chop had ‘mysteriously’ made its way across the kitchen counter and was being devoured by… Jezzy.

There goes my dinner.
I’m having fries tonight. Which would have gone REALLY WELL with a PORK CHOP.
Thanks, Jezzy.

It is not her only act of thievery.
I made chicken fried rice, covered the leftovers with a lid, and left the wok on the stove to cool down, so I could decant it and put it in the fridge when it was cooled down.
Only… I forgot to do it.
I found ‘someone’ had robbed all the chicken out of the fried rice overnight, leaving a trail of rice all over the stove and the counter.
While I wondered ‘who’ (Like I didn’t already know) had robbed me, the perpetrator came back… for seconds.

Do you think THAT is bad?

Think again.

I can’t leave a door open.

Invader Chickens are the least of my problems.

Yes. This guy.

If there is an open door… He’ll be inside.

Now, as I said, I have a gite.
That means I occasionally have guests staying.
Last summer, I had a lovely couple staying and thought they’d gone out for the day, so I let the monsters in the garden.
Well, they returned around 2pm, and I’m going “Hang on, I’ll just put them back in the field.”
“Oh, don’t worry. They don’t bother us.”
Now, I always – ALWAYS – tell people to close the doors, because there are marauding chickens, a bottomless pit of a barn cat, and whatnot wandering around, just looking for a place to invade.
So they decide to have a BBQ.
The BBQ is right outside the kitchen.
They were vegetarians, so it was a veggie BBQ.
Twenty minutes after they’d arrived, there is a knock on my door. “Help. We have a HUGE problem in the kitchen.”
I have visions of the cooker exploding, or something, and run to help.
Well.
They left the door open.
And when my darling stallion was done eating the veggies off the BBQ… he spotted the salad.
What greeted me was nothing short of carnage.
There were trampled tomatoes all over the kitchen. On a white floor.
Potatoes liberally bouncing around the room.
The Aubergine had been tried and found lacking and was thus discarded also. Half was lying in the sink, the other… bits… were all over the counter. The floor. The table.
The carrots were no more. There was a half-eaten cucumber. The salad had been expertly ‘tossed’. Several damp leaves sticking to the wall.
The strawberries and melon were tasty, the cream less so. It was slowly dripping over the counter onto the floor.
I have no idea what else he ate.
I just know it looked like a bomb had gone off in the vegetable aisle.
So there I am, trying to manoeuvre a 14.2hh stallion backward out of the kitchen door, while profusely apologizing to my – hysterically laughing – guests. This effort was hampered, because by now Timmy, the mini donkey, had spotted edibles and tried to squeeze past Stormy’s butt into the kitchen. So I had to get rid of the donkey first (ever tried to move a donkey backward, when there is ‘food’ in front? Yeah.), and once he was out of the way back the idiot horse out of the kitchen.
I don’t have any photos. Sorry. They took some, but I forgot to ask for copies. I was, quite frankly, absolutely mortified and embarrassed.
I told them I’ll clean up, and they could have the veggie lasagna I had in the freezer, and any veggies I could find in the house, and if there was anything growing in the veg plot they fancied, to please help themselves because it was Sunday afternoon – and nothing was open to even attempt to replace what the thieving invader ate.
Bless them, they said they’d clean up, and not to worry, because that was a story they’d still tell their grandkids. And that I had warned them about leaving the doors open, so it was their fault. They just hadn’t expected to find a horse in the kitchen…
I chased everyone into the field and locked them in.

So there.
You think a thieving cat, or a dog is a problem?
Think again!