Leah's Luck

What a day it's been for Leah! It began this morning when she woke up and discovered an email on her phone from DePauw telling her who her roommate will be and which dorm she’ll be living in next year. She let out an excited scream and proceeded to give us the scoop.

Her good day and good luck continued when she came along with us to Pike Bay for some fishing. After about 15 minutes she had already pulled in 3 or 4 fish! In fact, we ALL ended up having good luck as we ended up with 35 fish total (25 rock bass, 10 perch) after only a couple hours of fishing.

We came in from fishing at around 1:30 p.m. That’s when Leah’s luck took a turn for the worse. She got out of the boat and I gave her a few things to carry up to the cabin. She took about two steps on the dock and proceeded to step off the dock and right into the water! It wasn’t deep, but it was so sudden and unexpected that she went totally under water!

We all started screaming and yelling. Worried that she might have hurt herself, I ran over to find her yelling, "My phone!" and holding it up for me to save. I grabbed it at the same moment Tom jumped into the water next to her. I thought he was jumping in to “save” her, but he immediately grabbed our softside cooler (which was quickly filling with water), and yelled, “My phone was in the cooler!” He reached in and didn’t feel it, so began to panic and yell, “Oh S—t! It’s in the water!”

Luckily, before he dove in to rescue it, I reached into the cooler, felt it, and pulled it out. It was a little wet, but still working. Leah’s was working too. So all’s well if the phones are well! Oh, and Leah was okay too. Even though she fell right between the dock and another boat, she miraculously didn’t get one bump or scratch. After a few tears, she found herself laughing as she plodded up the dock in her soaking wet clothes.

We had lunch and then Tom went to work cleaning fish, while Beth, Nicole, Leah and I headed out for the Mi-Gi-Zi trail with our bikes. We were about four miles into our ride, when we all heard a loud “meow! meow!” Since it sounded like a kitten, we just had to stop. As (Leah’s) luck would have it, a few feet off the bike path, in the brush and tall grass was the cutest little kitten we had ever seen! Leah managed to reach carefully into the brush, and pick it up! It didn’t even try to run away.

After gushing over it for a few minutes we all stood there debating what to do next. None of us had the heart to leave it there (okay, I’ll admit that was my first instinct, but that was before my daughter pulled the cute little thing out for me to see). We didn’t know how we would get it “home” or what we would do with it once we got it there. After unsuccessfully trying to strap it into my helmet with my iphone arm band, we decided the safest place for it would be in Leah’s sling bag. It rode the remaining 10 miles in the bag, at times meowing very loudly, and at other times just resting quietly. Nicole and Leah named him “Migizi” and decided to call him “Migi” (pronounced like “McGee”) for short.

Tom came to meet us near the end of the trail, and was quite surprised to see Leah’s cargo. He, like all of us, wondered what we were going to do with it. Beth and I tried to guess what kind of cat it was (long haired, nice markings, very clean and tame), and where it came from. We knew we would have to make sure it didn’t have a microchip before claiming it as our own. Leah has been asking for a cat ever since our cat Dash died, and we have considered it, but were hesitant to take the plunge. Back at the resort, we got permission to keep him on our porch, since generally no pets are allowed, and Migi was soon paraded up and down the resort for everyone to admire.

Since it was Tuesday night, the adults (Mom & Dad K, Deb & Roy, Paul & Melissa, Beth, and Tom & I) all went to Bemidji for the date night special at Tutto Bene’s. We enjoyed great food and conversation. We had to stop at WalMart after dinner though, to get some cat litter, cat food and a feeding bowl. Most of the kids had pizza from the resort lodges, and then went to take in a movie. Tomorrow we will try to find out if Migi has an owner that is looking for him. If not, I think Leah will always call this one of her luckiest days (despite falling in the lake)!