The 8th Plague

Saturday. A happy Day. A day filled with crossing things off of the never ending, ever growing to do list. My to do list is never too done. Dang List Master app that makes it SO easy to make list after list after list. Never ending list. It makes my heart sing with joy.

Now back to my Saturday. I had cleaned the floor. I had done a bit of work. I had answered emails and inventoried the freezer and the canning goods. And then it was on to harvesting some of my basil. I had several basil plants growing on the patio this summer and they have been all happy and please pick more leaves for your pizza. But we are making our way towards Fall and they are getting a bit tired. I figured that I would just "top them off" and see if I can force a bit more growth out of them before the end.

Out to top off the basil I go. Look at the pretty sky. Happy sunshine shining down. All is right with my gardening world.

In I come with the basil in hand, putting it down on the counter. Lovely green basil. SO happy. I get all my stuff prepped for drying. Paper towels? Check. Old and clunky but still functional microwave? Check. I go to pick off the leaves so that I can dry them in the microwave.......

And something flies out of the basil at me.

I should probably tell you that there will now be some bad language. You have been warned.

Where were we? Ah yes, something green and possibly the size of a 747 flies out of the basil at me.

SHIT!!!! Oh shitshitshitshit! What was that???? Is it on me?? Where is it.

At this point I might have screamed just a bit. Or more than a little bit. And, even though I will deny it if you mention it, I might have done a little jig in the kitchen. Sort of a jumping around and waving my hands in terror kind of thing. My biggest fear, other than the fact that I wasn't exactly sure what had scared the ever long poopoo out of me, was the fact that I didn't know where the offending green flying agent of insect doom had actually landed. I stood there for a moment in quivering fear, waiting for little insecty feet to start climbing on me. It has happened before and I have never quite gotten over it.

And then there was movement. Right there on the lip of my clean coffee travel mug. I drew a deep breath and moved closer.

Run for your LIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIVES!!!!!!!!!

I looked at him. He looked at me and had the audacity to rub his little front feet together as if in anticipation of doing something awful to my psyche.

And then I thought, "I have to take a picture!"

You know I would. How could I not. Thank goodness I had my iPhone in my pocket because I didn't want to actually step away from him in case he decided to go walk about. Several pictures later I was then confronted with what to actually do now. The easiest thing, it would seem to me, was to just carefully pick up my coffee mug and transport the offender to the outside. He was big. I wasn't going to actually smack him with anything because that would then cause a major exposion of bug guts and i just didn't think I could handle the clean up. Call me squeamish. I picked up the mug. I took two steps.....

And he flew at me with evil intent.

I might have dropped my mug, screamed a bit more and yelled some words that even I cannot put up on the blog.

I didn't feel any evil buggy feet crawling on me so I figured, correctly, that he had flown somehwere else. There he was, walking along my cabinet, bold as you please.

What to do now??? I SO wasn't going to actually pick him up. I am brave but not stupid. Then the lightbulb went on. I will get a plastic container and put it over him, slip a piece of paper under to slide between Mr. Locust and the cabinet, thereby trapping him in my homemade cage and then I will transport him outside. The first part worked like a charm until I realized I had forgotten to get a piece of paper.

Well shit.

I removed the plastic container and Evil Locust moved on to climb around on my window. By this time I had both plastic container and paper in hand and I managed to trap him. But even at this time he was still trying to fly out and kill me. He kept throwing himself at the paper as I quickly and gingerly carried him to the sliding screen door.

And then another problem arose. How to get the dang door open. My hands were very much tied up in keeping the killer from getting out. I stuck my little pinky out like I was at High English tea, slid the door open, and just as I did that....... the paper slipped away from the plastic container and Evil Locust made a break for it.

I screamed yet again, loud enough that the neighbors might have thought to call the police. I didn't see where he flew to but I decided to take it on faith that he didn't want to be inside any more than I wanted him to be. I quickly shut the screen door and retreated to my woman cave to survive.

If I act this way with just ONE Evil Locust can you imagine how the Egyptians felt!

 

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Puppy Breath

I fell in love yesterday.

You are asking yourself, right about now,

WHAT ABOUT HHBL???

No fears. I love him too. I love him loads. I love him more that coffee AND yarn.

I was working yesterday, taking headshots for a group of college students. We were all done. The students had scattered back to class or practice or who knows where. I was just sitting around talking with the Deloitte and Touche reps about this and that…….

And then the head of the grounds crew came into the room. And in his arms was snuggled…..

OH!

OhOhOhOhOhOhOh.

I am sorry but I just melted on the spot. A 9 week old, Silver Lab.

9 weeks old means PUPPY BREATH!!!

And ears so soft that you just want to roll around on them.

And eyes that speak the knowledge of a thousand lives.

OK, maybe not that last one but really this little thing had the most soulful eyes on a puppy that I have ever seen. And even as we all stood around and cooed and ahhhhed and fell in love, he gave a big yawn…..

And fell asleep.

If I had been able to figure out a way to not get caught I would have just laid that little puppy right in my spacious camera bag and slunk out.

Alpha you cannot possibly mean that.

Yes, yes I could. But I didn’t think I was going to be able to wrestle that puppy out of his owners arms.

But I thought about it.

The Siren Song

I am spending a few days visiting Mimi the Parental Unit.

Do you know what I am spending the most amount of time on while I am here? Is it hanging around with Mimi, Pilot Man and The Chef?

Is it helping get some things cleaned out and done around The Old Homestead (TOH)?

No, none of that.

What I am spending a large amount of time and a great deal of my limited brain power on is........

Making sure that Max the Magnificent doesn't empty the cat's food bowl on an hourly basis.

My nephew, Austin, has a wonderful sweet lovely kitty kat named Chinese Food, ChiFoo for short. When Max and ChiFoo first met, back in November, there was some hissing on the part of ChiFoo and hope on the part of Max that ChiFoo would perhaps, maybe like him.

Hope springs eternal with Max. And is dashed on a daily basis.

ChiFoo has given absolutely no indication that she will ever love or like or even tolerate Max.

You know, maybe I should revise that. They can be in the same room together, as the above picture indicates, but ChiFoo still hisses when Max walks by. ChiFoo does sneak in a "courtesy butt sniff" when Max isn't looking but when face to face it is all hissing and I hate you.

Where was I on this ramble though dog/cat realtions?

Oh yes, the cat food.

SO, back in November when Max and ChiFoo first met, Max had absolutely no idea that down in the basement there were little nuggest of goodness in the form of a bowl of cat food just waiting for him to partake. And then my niece brought her dog, Wrigley, to TOH for the Thanksgiving holiday. Wrigley went strait to the basement, Max in tow and found the cat food and consumed everything that was in the bowl, then chased the cat all around the basement and up the stairs. After that it was pet craziness for the rest of the Thanksgiving holiday.

We won't even discuss the Great Dark Meat Turkey Caper.

And during that short span of time Max the Magnificent, who has above canine intelligence, made a note of the fact that when the cat was in residence at TOH there might......

Possibly.....

Hopefully.....

Be cat food in the little cat bowl in the basement.

And that darn dog is SO SNEAKY. He knows that he isn't supposed to go down there and steal ChiFoo's food. I will make him lie down by me and he will be there for a time, just waiting. And when he thinks that your attention is now on something else and not on him..... he slowly gets up, looks at you, assess the situation, quietly walks to the basement stairs and descends to see if there are treats.

It doesn't matter if I tell him NO! It doesn't matter if I follow quietly downstairs and catch him in the act. He KNOWS that he isn't supposed to eat the cat food. It just doesn't matter that he is not supposed to.

The siren call of cat food treats is too strong for him to resist.

That poor cat is going to die of starvation before I get home on Thursday.

 

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You Want Me to Feed Him What?

Yesterday was Max the Magnificent’s annual check up.

First off let me say that I am eternally grateful that Max has only a modicum of Lab in him. That means that his anal glands do not have to be……emptied.

We all have to be grateful for something.

But taking Max to the vet is always interesting. And always requires two vet technicians AND the actual vet to get everything taken care of. When Max went to the awful and evil other veterinary service they decided that because he growled at them ONCE when they were sticking a thermometer up his bahoohoo that he hence forth and forever needed to be muzzled when he entered the exam room.

I didn’t bite her, Alpha. I just didn’t like what she was doing!

They wrote it in BIG LETTERS on the front of the chart. In fact it was in bigger letters than the note that he had to be “pre-medicated” before getting his bordatella shots so he didn’t have that nasty reaction. And when they entered the exam room they crept in like he was going to spring at them from a dark corner and rip their throats out. There was a general lack of caring and empathy in that place and I hate the fact that I actually took Max there for the first 7 years of his life. Can you tell that I loath and despise don’t like them?

My parting words to them were, “You are the reason that people dump animals!” Long story, weak parting comment, lots of tears. I work with what I got.

So when we switched over to Dr. Jeremy I was a bit concerned the first visit. Was Max going to growl? The answer to that was yes. But the reaction from Dr. Jeremy was entirely different. He looked at Max, actually pointed his finger at him just like Grandpa Pringle used to do with me, and told him that there would be none of that. And then just lifted him up and put him on the counter. No fear. No growling. No muzzle. No fuss. And Max has been a total marshmallow there every since.

No one can resist the Pringle Finger.

But that doesn’t mean that he likes everything that happens there, even though they are VERY generous with treats. When it is time for his liver function tests it means that there needs to be two vet techs doing the “holding” and one vet doing the “sticking” and one pet owner babbling inanely in the corner.

Max is in relatively good health for a 12 year old dog. His hearing is selective. His eye sight is not all that great. He does have a lump on his chest which is firm and rather fixed (read that as not good), but it isn’t bothering him and so we are in the “watch and see mode” on that. His weight remains stable. His rhinitis is controlled with daily prednisone. He hasn’t bulked up too much with the low dose although occasionally I will call him Max Schwarzequigger because of the whole steroids thing.

Good thing that he doesn’t play baseball.

Moving on.

The only real problem is……

The smells that emanate from either end. It is bad enough when your dog has farts that most likely resemble the 10th plague of Egypt. You know, from the movie The Ten Commandments, creeping along the ground and smothering. His farts are beyond bad…… But his BREATH!

Oh my Lord and stars and garters.

And the time when it is most apparent is when he most wants to be right up next to you, and in your lap if he didn’t already know that is a banishing offence. It is when he all nervous because there are the dreaded SPORTS on television. Put on a Cleveland Browns game (or anything that could even remotely be classified as sports) and he starts to pant and look all worried and wants to put his head on your thigh and breath on you, hoping against hope that there will be no yelling or gesticulation or general gnashing of teeth.

Did you see the Browns game on Sunday? There was DEFINITELY gnashing of teeth and yelling.

GADS!

So I mentioned the horrifically nauseous stench that escapes silently and gag producingly from my beloved pet.

Dr. Jeremy looked up from his note taking and said,

Oh just give him a tablespoon of organic yogurt with each meal. That should help. And that will be $190. Good to see you.

And again I say GADS!

But Max thinks that my homemade yogurt makes his lovely, highly processed dinner nuggets taste even better!

I aim to please.

Now if his alimentary canal would just stop smelling like a Victorian sewer we would all be happy.

If You Give a Squirrel a Zoo Pass

She’s going to want to eat your cookie.

PhotoKnitSib Erica and I were at the tail end of our second day at the zoo. It was sprinkling, which was a nice change from the constant downpour. We had put away our umbrellas and were watching families board the little train.

And then we realized that we were witnessing a crime. A squirrel theft in progress.

Is there a police code for that?

And this squirrel was so intent on her stroller rummaging that she didn’t really care that we walked up to her and started documenting her nefarious thievery.

Some poor child got off the ride later, expecting to finish his cookie and came in for a rude shock.

Just one question though…….why would you leave a half eaten cookie out in the open on the tray of your stroller on a day when you could likely expect that at a BARE minimum it would be a soggy mess from the humidity in the air. Or more likely it would be waterlogged from the frequent downpours interspersed with sprinkles.

I am just wondering.

Zippety Zoo Doo

I mentioned last week that I had a bit of a weekend trip planned with PhotoKnitSib Erica.

The Cincinnati Zoo.

Do you love the zoo? I do too! (stop sounding like Dr. Suess!).

If I showed you ALL the photos that I took….(700+)….you would never come back here to my humble abode.

If I showed you all the photos that I have whittled down as the “keepers”…….(350+)…..you would run away screaming. But I THINK you can handle a few photos right?

I knew you could.

Let me start off by saying that for the past 10 days or so we had been anxiously watching the weather. And with good reason. At first there was a 40% chance of rain…then 50%….then 75% chance. But if there is a 75% chance of rain then that also means that there is a 25% chance that it WON’T rain right? But if you are a betting person………

I would bet on rain.

Yup, it was wet this weekend at the Cincinnati Zoo. Sunday was worse than Saturday by far. This was my view for most of the day on Sunday….

Believe me when I tell you that it is difficult to take pictures when you have the umbrella handle stuck under your left armpit, a 20 pound backpack to contend with and you are trying not to get your camera and long lens any wetter than it has to be. Fun times. We soldiered on, tough photographers that we are.

And there was wine in the evening. Thank goodness.

There were lots of kids hanging around the park. It was Hallzooween weekend. I have A LOT of pictures of kids. The cuteness factor was in overdrive.

Erica is often at the zoo to photograph the “Running of the Cheetahs”. She is searching for the perfect cheetah in full run picture. She often achieves it. I have seen her pictures so I know. Me on the other hand……

First try. I was going for a sense of movement…….

Hmmmmmmm.

Weirdly artistic but certainly not what I was going for. Heck I didn’t know WHAT I wanted to do. How fast can I google motion blur as I am waiting for the next cheetah run?

Pretty darn fast.

Nope.

Well I will settle for this one for the first time around. It won’t go up in the Cincinnati Zoo photos on Flickr but I can live with it.

But enough about Cheetahs. Let’s see what other animals were on display.

All I could do, while standing watching the Orangutan, was sing the songs from Jungle Book.

Now I’m the King of the Swingers, whoa, the jungle V.I.P. I’ve reached the top and had to stop and that’s what’s been botherin’ me……

Help me.

Who are you looking at?

A hungry cougar eyeing a meatball. Or perhaps it was just the small, and tasty child that was standing there.

Leave me ALONE

Lounging Lemurs. At least I think these are Lemurs…..

Monkey Misery. Can you see the rain falling. Yeah, that was fun.

Bonobo Breast Self Exam. I will spare you, for the moment, the photos of her examining her offspring’s fecal matter. And then taste testing same. You can thank me later.

Who knew that Polar Bears liked pumpkin so much!

If I don’t stop this we will be here until next week! I could fill up an entire week of blogging just with the photos of the Bonobos. So as we close the zoo edition of the blog lets just end as you knew I would…..

With animal butts.

I know. You are overjoyed.

You’re welcome.

Semi-Wordless Wednesday–The SQUIRREL Edition.

Today is my “home” day. That means that I am home all day.

Amazing how that works!

I have on my flannel pants, my SVA sweater shirt, a pair of toasty hand knit socks and my pseudo-Crocs. I am a fashion EXPLOSION! Aren’t you glad I am not showing you a picture of that. You can thank me later.

On to the squirrel. The thing I love about having bird feeders in front of my office windows is that…the birds come to them all the time. And the occasional squirrel. I don’t obsesses about the squirrels all that much because they aren’t on these feeders all that often and they cannot really get many seeds out so they just leave them alone most of the time. But every once in a while the squirrel hoard sends out someone to see if the seeds have somehow become miraculously available.

How do I get to those seeds! I can see them darn it but my arms are too short!

Maybe I can justht chew the barths.

Oh wait! There are some seeds here at the bottom. Sweet mother I have found sustenance!

 Oh yum. Crunchcrunchcrunch.

Whose that! What is she doing? Why is she pointing that thing at me?

AHHHHHHYEEEEEEEEE!

DID YOU SAY SQUIRREL!!! I MUST SEE THE SQUIRREL!!! LET ME OUT TO SEE THE SQUIRREL!!!

Squirrel Butt!

Sorry, that last one was just a gratuitous objectification of squirrel anatomy.

I couldn’t help myself.