Oops, Elephant Needs a Bandaid…

I was so excited this morning when I woke up.  This was the day that Elsie the Elephant would be finished.

But dang -  it looked like she’d come down with some rare disease during the night. In five or six spots on her legs and tummy perfectly round areas about the size of a quarter had been incised from her skin, leaving the lower layer of paper exposed.

Was it leprosy? Was she infected with a flesh-eating bacteria? Did my cat suddenly develop a taste for paste and paper?

Then, mystery solved. A shiny trail proved the culprit was a slug that had somehow managed to move his slimy self onto the deck, up the leg of the table, and then up the side of poor Elsie.

So now I’m waiting for her bandaids to dry before she can be finished. The slug incident, along with my recurring vision of my Australian shepherd lifting his leg and coloring her yellow, is making me rethink the idea of leaving her outside. She may take up residence in my living room. I may need a bigger house.

Speaking of which, in a previous post I talked about ideas I’ve had about creating an affordable artists’ community, and a lot of readers chipped in with their ideas, from remaking the neighborhood where one reader currently lives, to taking over an RV park (my contribution), to building yurts or straw bale or earthbag homes in some idyllic setting. It all sounded like a nice, but impossible dream.

Then, just a few minutes before sitting down to write this post, I came across another option. I checked the real estate prices in one of the cities that have been hit hardest by the current financial meltdown, and discovered that some reasonably attractive houses are going for less than $10,000. And I thought my $75,000 house in eastern Oregon was cheap!

Artists who have found a way to make a living online might want to start considering places like Elkhart. It would be a way for us to contribute to the revitalization of an area just by living there. And with housing costs so cheap, think of all the free time you could spend doing fun projects instead of trying to make money. Sounds good to me. What do you think?

And tomorrow, you’ll get to see Elsie, I promise. No more slugs. Stay tuned.

Tagged as: artist community, Elkhart, paper mache animals