Jan. 1, 2008 Tuesday

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Ten years ago today I wrote the first entry for the Opie Project. We had devised a website for our inventive cat, Opie, who would wander into the woods and return with live critters to let them run around the house. We started keeping a record of his captures to include on the website. We also decided to include an online journal (the "Blog" had not been invented yet). We had everything planned out. But neither of us knew Hyper Text Mark-up Language (HTML). I took it upon myself to learn it, but it took a while. It was June before the website actually went online, but we had been writing entries and keeping records of Opie's captures up since the first of the year.

Here's the first entry from ten years ago. It refers to a mouse Opie had brought in just before Christmas and let loose, to be captured subsequently in a humane trap:

It's a new year and a new Project (that is, the Opie Project is destined for the 'net). I don't know how or when, but it seems like a worthy goal. I've got a buncha books on html, and Adobe PageMill, and ideas. I just hafta make 'em work all together.

And to commemorate the Project's auspicious beginnings, the Christmas mouse turned himself in. We found him in the trap wondering what had happened. After more than three weeks of elusive gnawing and nibbling, there he was. The Wife wasn't home, and I couldn't leave him in the trap, and photographing him in the trap wasn't working. Yet I felt there should be some celebration of this moment. And that celebration is the Hall of Fame page, and he will be the first inductee.

Congratulations, Christmas mouse.

I turned him loose in the woods near the compost heap, and left a coupla handfuls of Tender Vittles as a going-away present. We will miss his constant gnawing at the infrastructure of our home, and his occasional appearance to drink from the cat's dish.

Hey, it's just a mouse.

Happy New Year!