Tag Archives: critters

dumb bird

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This morning a bird got in. I’m not sure how it got in. I had let the dogs out and set about loading the dishwasher. Then I heard Artemis crying to come in, so I opened the door but she didn’t come in. As soon as I went back to the dishwasher, I heard her again. I called to her that she would have to wait, under the fool me once rule. But then Cobie came and bumped the door open. I didn’t leap up to close it again, although I should have. The air conditioning was already running. It turned ugly hot a few days ago, kind of sudden, after a long cool summer so far.

After I finished loading the dishwasher, started it, made my coffee, and took my empty-stomach pills, I went to close the door, and that’s when something really large started flapping around the lamp just above my head. I startled hard, because I thought it was a bat. Then I saw it was only a bird. I closed the door. I decided a bird could wait. Like, until Mr Moth woke up. I had not had coffee yet, for god’s sake. I wasn’t even wearing pants yet.

Nobody should attend a wildlife rodeo without pants.

So I came to The Keep. I gave out morning treats. I opened my laptop without drama, a welcome change of pace since it’s been squirreling around lately. I started to play Pearl’s Peril, which is what passes for morning meditation with me. I heard a bunch of yapping, woofing, and meowing from the kitchen. I wondered if it would wake up Mr Moth. I felt no particular compunction to make sure it didn’t. Then everything went silent. The dogs came back to The Keep and lay down. This did not bode well for the feathered one.

Cry havoc and let slip the ckatten… Here came Artemis the ckatten. She leapt and twisted and stampeded up and down my shelves and across my desk. I looked up, and there was the bird. I’m not sure what kind. It looked kind of hawklike, but regular bird sized. I stood up and ushered out the dogs. I tried to usher the ckatten, but forget that. She had more havoc to wreak. So I snagged her and ejected her forcefully. She twisted in midair and I slammed the door in her face. She sat there yowling. I can’t believe Mr Moth slept through that, given the proximity and all.

So, bird in The Keep. Flying from edge to edge. Crapping. It crapped on my diploma. It crapped on my photographs. It crapped on my Done is Better than Good sign. Damn bird. I decided to hell with air conditioning, there’s a crapfest in here, and opened the window. Bird is too dumb to fly out. It keeps flapping around the top edge of windows and doors, looking for places to perch. Now is not the time to perch, dumb bird. Now is the time to fly the hell out of here. I opened another window. Still it wouldn’t fly out.

Okay, bird. I get that (a) there is a reason for the term “bird brain,” and (2) fear doesn’t make anyone smarter even if they have a magnificent brain to start with. But fly out already!

Dumb bird fails to comply with my wishes. It tries to perch on the upper edge of a poster. Don’t crap on my puppy poster, dumb bird! I pick up a dust mop and try to steer the dumb bird toward an open window. A metric crapton of hamster seeds fall out of the dust mop all over The Keep. I, dumb human, switch to a yard stick. Dumb bird outfoxes dumb human and evades yard stick, crapping in a few more places just for good measure.

It is not too surprising I was outfoxed by a dumb bird. It might not have been in the house in the first place if I had not been outfoxed by the ckatten so thoroughly and often that I gave up trying to keep her indoors.

Anyway, once upon a time I owned two finches. When one would escape, I sometimes captured it by throwing a towel over it. But The Keep is towel-less, as I failed at the Hitchhiker’s Guide. Especially since the only things I remember about that book is the number 42 is important, and something about keeping a towel handy, which I obviously have not done. I don’t know what, if anything, the Guide might say about being trapped in a Keep, besieged by predatorial pets, with a dumb bird. So I had to use my head. Before coffee. Not cool. After a few minutes of chasing the poor dumb bird around with a yard stick, I had an idea.

Since I wasn’t wearing pants, never mind a skirt–I only own two skirts, one I only ever wore to Porfolio Review and the other I have never worn–I decided I would do what heroes always do when bandages are needed. Who knows, maybe a hero would also do this if trapped in a Keep with a dumb bird and no towel.

I took off my shirt. I figured I could use it as a towel, net, dumb bird-catcher. Not that I wanted to, because it’s white and hasn’t any stains on it yet, and I really didn’t want it crapped on. But sometimes sacrifices have to be made. As I finished pulling my shirt over my head, I caught my last glimpse of the dumb bird, streaking out the window and away as though it had caught a glimpse of hell’s depths.

I think I have a complex now. Take off my shirt, terrorize a bird.

I hope you have an idea today, and that it doesn’t result in you needing body image therapy.

the whateveritis in our garage

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We caught the WhateverItIs; it is a WhateverItIs no more.

I suspected a raccoon, mostly because I didn’t think cats, squirrels, or possums could pry the lids off food-grade five gallon buckets of dog kibble that I can’t even get the lids off of half the time, and also because I’ve actually seen neighbor cats in the garage. (And once in the kitchen.) But I never heard any cat noises, not even when Kelly got hurt.

Adding to the doubt is the fact that none of us have ever seen a single ‘coon in this neighborhood in the going-on six years we’ve lived here. (Nor a ‘possum for that matter.) We smell skunks quite often, to the point that I call this neighborhood Skunkridge at times.

Adding to the fun of this week (which events included my accidental overdose on my medication, due to which I am still feeling like death in a bag) was that our visitor, the WhateverItIs, had gone from the garage to the attic, and possibly into the walls. The dogs would just randomly start barking at the walls, or racing through the house whining at the ceiling. And Kelly’s bark would be that full on terrier YARK that people–including me–hate, like a railroad spike through the head, possibly more so when you’ve poisoned yourself with diabetes pills.

I started to worry, because there’s this one wall behind the tub that Artemis the Ckatten got into, and followed it down into the basement’s drop ceiling, crashed through, and landed amid an avalanche of ceiling material, on Mr Moth while he was doing homework. So in between trying to do my (hideous, kill me now) video assignment–not so easy when [a] all the neighbors are using their leaf blowers right up until they put them away and then get out their snow blowers, and [b] dogs are breaking out into random barking sprees, and [c] you’ve poisoned yourself and can’t breathe.

We really didn’t want the WhateverItIs in the house.

Mr Moth asked me if I had any suggestions and I suggested a box trap, and he said he didn’t know where to get one, and I said I didn’t either, and then he thought of Tractor Supply Company, which I always call Quality Farm and Fleet because once your company name is registered in my brain it will never be changed, I’m looking at you too Revco and Lawson’s. So he went and got a trap and we baited it with Oliver’s slightly crusty gooshy fudz leftover from morning. Mr Moth somehow finagled the whole thing into the attic entrance (it’s not a real attic, more of an access space).

We also had some discussion about how, if he didn’t catch anything, he would dis-arm the trap before he went to bed because we didn’t want anything caught for a long period of time out there with no water and it’s ten degrees, ugh. Also he was pretty sure we were trapping a cat. I was pretty sure we weren’t. But neither of us was completely certain.

Forty-five minutes after trap deployment, Kelly YARKed so I got up and went to the door, opened it, and then heard the trap close. I hollered, “You got something!”

It took some wrestling to get the thing out of the attick, but this is what we caught:

Some time ago Cobie caught a turtle in the yard and I took it out to a pond I know of and let it go, and to my surprise the turtle made an about face and hauled ass away from the pond and toward the tree line. Mr Moth took this critter out there and turned it loose and it streaked away across the frozen water. I think–I hope–it is a good place for raccoons, I see a lot of road killed ones there, but I think that is more a factor of the booming population than that the road is particularly bad. There’s water, and trees, and hopefully this ‘coon can make a living there.

However, I am not a huge fan of raccoons, and this one is presumably the varmint that hurt Kelly to the point she had a seizure. I realize she would have killed him/her if she could, so no hard feelings, but yanno…you hurt my dog and you ain’t even paying rent, so Mr/Ms Raccoon, you gotta go.

It looks bigger in the photo than it is. It was actually about Kelly-sized, and she weighs about 20 pounds.

Last night was the first night in I forget how long I didn’t get awaked by dogs barking at something in the ceiling, so hopefully this was the only squatter.

table war

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This day is off to a bang. First a little dog got caught in my underwear while I was trying to get dressed. So I decided to go let dogs out and THEN get dressed, except I discovered there are linemen up the pole out back, and so I had to backtrack and get dressed anyway so I could make sure the linemen didn’t leave the gate open. Then Artemis the Ckatten decided she wanted some of Oliver’s special gooshy fudz which conflict at least brought Cobie in from trying to eat the treed lineman. Separate dishes interrupted the War of the Gooshy Fudz.

I took a pic of the two cats eating in proximity, but my kitchen table is the only open horizontal surface out of dog range that Oliver can leap to, and it’s currently a shameful disaster area. I mean, expect FEMA at any minute.

Any day that is going to involve running the dishwasher twice is also going to involve a second cup of coffee.

what the ckatten did, also starring Whee Kelly Doll and Hurricane Cobie McFluffybutt

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My morning routine goes pretty much like this: Wake up. Go, OUCH. Whimper. Flex shoulder until the pain subsides enough to sit up. Run, with my thighs pressed together to the bathroom, praying as I step over each dog. (It’s a small bedroom.) Pee for an hour, flexing shoulder some more. Eventually finish peeing. Let Artemis the ckatten out of Zor’s room. Let animals outside. Empty dishwasher. Make (instant) coffee. Give Oliver two drops of milk. Let animals inside. Make sure a kitchen chair is out so Oliver, who is about 13 and no longer a graceful leaper, can get to his milk bowl, which is on the kitchen table so dogs don’t harrass him (or steal his milk). Fill dishwasher with dishes that have accumulated while I slept. Take first round of pills. Insert sublinguals between upper lip and gums. Go to The Keep (office). Feed Tyrion Hammister and make sure his water bottle hasn’t either (a) leaked, or (b) stopped dispensing, or (c) stopped dispensing because all the contents have leaked out. Sit down. Give Artemis the Ckatten special Keep food in her special Keep bowl. Give Cobie and Kelly special Keep treats so Cobie’s jealous ass doesn’t eat the Ckatten. When the throng dissipates, drink cold coffee that tastes like half-dissolved sublingual vitamins.

Ah, but I LOVE cold coffee. I love everything cold these days, and I have no idea why. Since it doesn’t affect anyone but me, who cares? Cold instant generic coffee. I’m having some now. SLURP.

Anyway, today when I arrived at The Keep, Tyrion was awake, so I decided to bite the bullet (and possibly get myself bitten in the process) and clean the little varmint’s cage. Which I accomplished with surprisingly little Hammister screeching–he still hates being picked up, but he doesn’t usually mind being stroked–and no biting.

Mom often speaks of my special needs menagerie. She wonders aloud how I manage to reliably select such neurotic pets. I wonder silently if I make them that way. But I digress.

So today the morning routine was interrupted by the opportunity to clean the ham-cage. I had to usher out Artemis the Ckatten, Cobie, and Kelly, in case of an escape during the transfer process. I still wear a glove for that, because when Tyrion bites, he bites hard, and I figure the less he hurts me the less likely I am to accidentally drop him. He didn’t bite this time, but I didn’t know that was going to happen, right?

So the Big Three were disgruntled by the time I let them in for Keep treats, but yummy noms soon had them back to their usual selves. I gave the Ckatten her usual, I dunno, a quarter handful? A big pinch? Served on the Mac desk in one of the tiny stainless petfood dishes I bought for an art project, the same dishes I use for Oliver’s two drops of milk. And gave Cobie and Kelly kibble one at a time until the Ckatten was done.

But ah, another deviation from the routine–the Ckatten suddenly decided she wanted dog kibble. Except she doesn’t like this kind. And Cobie really really doesn’t want her to have his treats. But I gave her one anyway, just to prove to her she doesn’t like it, because otherwise she’ll be ripping my calendar off the wall, and my homework out of the printer, and the other fun things she does to vent her spleen when she is hissed off at me.

And she tapped it with her paw and knocked it on the floor, where Kelly snarfed it up before you could say “snarf.”

So to keep it even, I gave Cobie one.

Then the Ckatten reached out and ever so gently patted me. So I gave her another one. She knocked it on the floor. Kelly snarfed. I gave Cobie one. Ckatten patted me. I gave her another one…

So apparently the Ckatten didn’t want a dog kibble. She wanted to hand out dog kibble. Maybe she grasps that she who controls the kibble gets to lead the pack.

Maybe I should be worried.

friday five

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One:  I went to the eye surgeon yesterday and got dilated, which I abhor.  He found a “thickening” at the back of my right eye.  It’s not something he can zap, so now I have to take drops.  The instructions on the bottle don’t match the instructions he told me, so now I have to call and find out which are the correct instructions.  Also I need to ask, “A thickening of what?” because I have no idea.

Two:  I get to take Cobie back to the vet today.  T-Moth took him on Tuesday and Cobie had such a conniption he had to be muzzled, and even then they couldn’t get blood for his heartworm test because of all the thrashing, during the course of which he fattened T-Moth’s lip.  The vet thought Cobie tried to bite, but I think it’s unlikely he was he meant business.  He does this warning air-snap when crowded, and I’m betting that’s what they observed.  A guest at a party once pursued him until he hid under a lawn chair, reached in after him, and inflicted unwanted petting upon him.  His eyes rolled and his flanks heaved with stress, but he didn’t bite, or even warn.

It probably helped that she was young and female.

I once had a big goofy dog that never previously offered to bite anyone, yet who bit a pizza driver, so I would never say a given dog would never bite. I’ve been on both sides as the dog owner and the pizza driver, which is the source of my belief that any dog will bite, given the right circumstances.  So the muzzle is probably a good idea just to keep everyone safe, especially since Cobie’s teeth are enormous, rather like the rest of him.  People who feel safe probably give off calmer vibes than ones that are worried about having their face removed.

Anyway, his mommy will take him.  Kelly will go too.  And he has pills to make him happy.  I hope not too happy though, because no one wants to carry a hundred pound dog.

Three:  Someone is coming later to install one new properly grounded outlet so I can plug in the broken-ass stove Sears sold me and they will then deign to come fix the damn thing.  We discovered that only the outlet the stove is plugged into reads as reversed polarity, and then only when the stove is plugged in.  So the lack of grounding is on us, but that reverse polarity is on the stove itself.  The brand new $600 stove.

They better fix or replace that sumbitch, that’s all I’m saying.

Four:  I’m not doing NaNo.  This should not come as news.

Five:  Oliver has emerged from the wall.  He hurt his passenger side rear paw, and when I got out the cat carrier he vanished.  We had to put food near his hidey hole, the wall where he went to ground after we moved here.  It took three adults and a teenager to stuff him into the carrier to bring him here.  People bled.  I knew I would never be able to get him to a vet unless he was at death’s door.

Mind you, I don’t want Oliver dying at all, but especially not deep inside a load-bearing wall.  I put the cat carrier away.  He still wouldn’t come out except occasionally at  night.  It’s like he knew I wouldn’t take him to the vet at night.

Previously I kept Oliver’s feeding station and litter box in the utility room, and kept dogs out of there with a baby gate.  Now Oliver can’t jump the gate.  It has been a huge unending pain keeping dogs out of the cat food and litter box, especially Kelly, who is smaller than Oliver and so can get into any space he can.  She can climb gates too, but chooses not to, I think because Cobie disapproves of gate-climbing.

Aggravatingly, Oliver has resumed jumping onto the kitchen table and my desk, where he clears space for himself by flinging anything in his way onto the floor where dogs can get it, but he still won’t jump the gate.  He will walk on anyone who sits on the sofa though.  Endlessly.  Back and forth and back and forth.  Limpy, but seemingly content.  I missed his vicious butt while he was living in the wall.  I guess I’ll have to go back to clearing off the table though.  And maybe change his name to Chester.

another day

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This may be one of those ever rare two-cuppa mornings. Not so for hamsters. Zandy and Rocky are both up and zooming on their wheels, full of energy and creating quite a racket. It’s funny how they each pick and choose different things from their seed mix. Z likes the little seeds. Algernon likes the big seeds. Rocky likes everything but corn and the gray mystery pellets. (None of them eat those.) So I give Zandy’s rejects to Algernon, Algernon’s rejects to Zandy, Rocky’s corn to Algernon, and the pellet rejects to the dogs. Well, some of them. Cobie and Kelly think hamster pellets are the most exciting treats ever.

So. I have survived the first week of the new college quarter. I am taking Technical Report Writing, Art History, Drawing III, Digital Imagery, and Digital Typography II. That one’s probably going to be my favorite. It’ll be a tie between Technical Report Writing and Art History for which one numbs my brain the most. At least there are no business classes this go ’round. Which seems like a good segue into a Thankful Thursday on Saturday segment.

thankful thursday on saturday

1.) No business/management classes this quarter

2.) I went to the eye doc yesterday. More on this in a bit. The thankful part is, I really like my eye doctors. I feel like they care about me.

3.) I bought a tricycle. Yeah, a granny bike. It’s a hoot. More on this, too.

4.) Wagging tails.

5.) Flower bulbs. You only have to plant them once! And maybe thin them out every few years. I’ll have to check on that. Anyhow, I bought a metric buttload of them.

On the tricycle: I thought I would be able to take Cobie for runs with this, but he pulls too hard. So that part of my exercise plan was a dismal failure. However, I used to ride my bike a lot. A tremendous lot. But now I’m either too short or my balance feels off to ride my old bike. I’m hoping to work up to it gradually, and if it turns out I’m too short, I can always pick up a shorter model at a yard sale or somewhere.

On the eye situation: Two doctors. Dr P, who makes my glasses, and Dr L, who did the cataract. Yesterday I saw Dr P, because. Last summer I got new glasses, bi-focals, made. I loved them. Two weeks later (-ish) I was diagnosed with diabetes. By September, shortly after I started school, everything was blurry, but Dr L said there was no diabetic nerve damage, so I assumed I had messed up my exam. Maybe when Dr P was flipping lenses around and saying, “Does this one look better? Or this one?” I had answered wrong. I stopped wearing them, thinking I would gut it out until the insurance kicked in for 2012. By the end of Winter Quarter my head hurt behind my eyeballs so badly. I was spending 60+ hours a week at the computer, and my right eye watered a lot. It seems I had temporarily forgotten what an eyestrain headache actually felt like. I tried ibuprofen. Acetaminophen. Excedrin (since recalled, and no refund for you). None of them more than barely touched this headache. I tried decongestant, which I’m not supposed to take because of my blood pressure. That didn’t help either. My sudafed had failed me!

Then it occurred to me. Maybe this is eyestrain. I put my bifocals on and it got worse. I wanted to cry. Then I remembered my old pair, which I don’t like because…

Well. I didn’t like them because I saw this show about inmates at the Ohio Reformatory for Women. Every inmate I saw wearing glasses had frames either just like, or only subtly different, than mine. I guess I’m a bit snobby about not looking too much like a convict. But.

I put on my old glasses and within…ninety seconds? Slightly less? the headache was almost gone. Shortly thereafter, it was gone. Completely gone. Joy! Happy dance!

It’s always good to know your headache is caused by something fixable and not like, a brain tumor or something.

I called and made an appointment and got in to see Dr P. I don’t qualify for new frames until next year, but I do qualify for new lenses, and lets face it, I barely wore those frames for two or three months. Also, I really like them a bunch. So I’m ok with new lenses!

I asked Dr P if it was possible that my vision got better as my blood sugar came down. It really did seem like they were perfect when I got them and then, lickety split, they were horrible. And he said he practically guaranteed that was the case. However, on examination, he was unable to get my right eye to correct as clearly as it should, so he peered inside for a long time and said that my…well.

When they do cataract surgery they open a capsule of tissue that contains the cataracted lens and remove the lens. They put in an after-market lens, and kaboom. You can see! I’ll never forget the color I could see after that damned thing was gone. And I could see at night! Even if cars with headlights were coming toward me! It was a glorious thing to be sure. Cataracts can’t come back because the lens is gone; there’s nothing for a cataract to grow on. But sometimes after the surgery the capsule turns opaque. I forget what Dr P called this “posterior capsule opacity,” but a quick google search tells me it can also be called an after-cataract. This is apparently easily fixed with a laser during a painless five-minute office procedure. I’m all about seeing better and five-minute painless procedures. So that would be excellent if I could see well enough to read with both eyes again.

Especially that damn Art History book with its glossy pages and tiny print. I may keep that book after class ends, though…as a third line of home defense. Yanno, after Cobie and my old Royal typewriter.

my lucky olphinaunt

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I saw this little critter at Save-a-Lot:

Oh look, I thought, What a cute little olphinaunt.

Olphinaunt is what the twins called elephants when they were like, two.

He was as soft as a hamster but more amenable to pocket-travel. I bet you’re a lucky writing olphinaunt, I thought. I had to have him, even though no one in the store knew how much he was. Eventually we settled on 2.99, and Peanut (it says his name is) came home in the pocket of my hoodie, and I forgot to take him out. So when Zor (the youngest) and I went to the store yesterday, Peanut was still in there, although I didn’t realize it.

As I zoomed down the road that little voice whispered in my mind, “Go to Goodwill.”

It’s a build-it-and-they-will-come kind of voice, not to be ignored, so I asked Zor if she minded if we stopped. She said no, so we stopped…for two hours. We found clothes, a couple of books, and a picture frame for a project. And I found one of those wheeled bookbags, like I scoured the city for at the beginning of fall quarter. The cheapest I found then was $40. This one was $7. So, even though I’m really pretty in love with the leather backpack I found for $3 at a yard sale, the wheeled book bag came home with me. Not sure how it’s going to fit into all the things I need to carry to live at school three days a week, but if I need it, it will be here.

On to the grocery…

Hams for $10. Kapow! Almost made up for the $40 I spent at Goodwill.

Came home, carried things in, and when I reached into my pocket for my keys to open the van’s tailgate, I felt something fuzzy.

Well you really are a lucky lil olphinaunt! Maybe not a writing one (we’ll see about that shortly) but definitely a shopping olphinaunt.

Welcome home, Peanut.

rodent central

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So now I have eight hamsters and seven exercise wheels. Only Lita (the momma) and Algernon (the pup I suspected of having developemental disabilities) still share. Mostly they get along, probably because Algernon is so passive. I may or may not have mentioned that when she was a week old, I thought Algernon was dead, and actually removed her from the nest. A last minute blink saved her life.

Giving evil Lita credit where it’s due, she not only succeeded in raising six of eight pups in her first litter, she never rejected the oddball even after I handled it.

So, now I have Mom Lita and Algernon in one bin. Speedy and Jadis, both winter whites, live in the next bin. Then there’s one of the crittertrail cages I got used on craigslist, with nameless opal #1, and the other used crittertrail with nameless opal #2, who was the bully. She’s bigger than all the rest, including her father/uncle Zandy, and I don’t think she likes her new digs much. After Nameless #2 comes Rocky, so-named because Jadis gave her a bloody nose and I relocated her to Dmitri’s old cage. And then Zandy, the sweetest hamster ever, even more gentle-natured than Dmitri. His new white trim makes him look kinda grizzled and mussed, but he’s still adorable.

I’ve listed them on Craigslist and Petfinder, but I won’t give them away for free (unless it’s to someone I know) because I don’t want them to end up as snakefood. Intellectually I get that snakes have to eat, but my heart says, “Let ’em eat strangers.”

Some of these guys have personality. Jadis isn’t much one to fight, but the one time she did, she drew blood. I really hope she and Speedy continue to get along, because I am out of cages and room to put them. My husband named Speedy, who was a runt, but who zipped so fast on the wheel it was kind of hard to believe if you didn’t see it.

Unnamed Opal #2 picks (picked) at the others kind of relentlessly, but never did any actual damage. I gave her a wad of toilet paper to build a nest in her new cage and she immediately tried to drag it “upstairs” to the “petting area,” but she couldn’t fit it all in the tube. I opened the cage and moved it for her. Now she’s busily trying to drag it back down, and of course it still won’t fit through the tube.

Unnamed Opal #1 is a dedicated hoarder and comes to the petting area to be picked up.

Rocky does this wild thing where she leaps off the shelf in her cage onto the top of her wheel and rides it half way around, leaps to the top of her igloo, and then leaps again into the wheel. After a brief zoom, she gets off the wheel and climbs up the bars to the shelf and repeats the whole thing.

Zandy is a pudgy little guy who can’t be bothered to make a hoard. He usually ignores his igloo and sleeps in his wheel, or under it, although he’s in it now, and has turned the door opening so it faces away and I can’t see in. I’ve been trying to get a picture of him with his changing coat, but he’s not out and about much when the light is good.

Algernon is less passive than the little thing I almost discarded for dead. Living with her must agree with Lita, who is much calmer and more agreeable now than at any time since I brought her home. I wish they weren’t both opals; sometimes the only way I can tell them apart is to flip them over and see which one looks like she’s given birth, and who knows how long I’ll be able to tell that way? At least Jadis and Speedy are different sized. If I see them both at once, I can tell them apart.

And that concludes this episode of the “Overrun by Rodents Show,” ha. All I can say is, it’s a good thing they’re cute!

best dog toy ever?

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I bought Cobie and Kelly this Kong Ballistic:

(I didn’t get mine from Amazon, I got it from Jack’s. I was in there buying the equipment to set up a new bin for the hamster males, which product has stalled due to my inability to tell the boys from the girls. Unless they’re all girls… But anyway.)

I’m so excited!

Ok, this boomerang-type toy made of cloth, and it’s big enough for the big dog to play with no risk of choking, and small enough for the small dog to manipulate it easily. It’s soft enough to play fetch in the house without destroying things or hurting a dog who gets in the way of it. It’s heavy enough to fly the entire length of the hall (and into the office.) There’s room for two dogs to hold on at once for tug purposes, or to carry it back to me, at which time there’s a third “handle” for me to take hold of with minimal risk of having my hand accidentally CHOMPED.

There’s a squeaker inside each pod. It also allegedly floats and is washable; I’m not sure how that combination works out, but I bet if I throw it in with a load of towels it’ll get clean. It does come in other patterns/colors, but I just like purple.

Now here’s the part I consider SERIOUSLY COOL: It’s made in three layers. Two of them are ballistic nylon, meaning it’s made with the same technology they use to make bulletproof vests.

Bulletproof or no, I’m not letting them chew on it, because I paid a good bit for it (about $15, as I recall) and I want it to last…and it seems like it will. Kelly tried a couple of times to pack it off and rip its squeakers out, and to no avail. I have high hopes, and I had a blast playing with them. They haven’t had any indoor toys in a while because of their tendency to destroy everything in two days max.

The only downside I’ve discovered so far is that after a few rounds of fetch/chase/CHOMP, it gets wet and kind of icky feeling, but hey. It’s a dog toy. When you have dogs, the occasional wet and icky is part of the package.

thankful thursday

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I dreamed last night that Lita had more babies, and they escaped. I am thankful neither of those things is true, although I did come right in and wake them all up for a head count.

Still six.

I am thankful for Goodreads, because although I don’t use the social networking aspect of it, I’ve been keeping lists of books I’ve read since I was ten or so, and I love being able to keep track them in a place where I won’t lose the paper. I also love how simple it is to add the books I’d like to read. And if I get busy and ignore Goodreads for awhile, it’s still there waiting for me when I catch my breath.

Big Blue Berta, who just keeps zooming along.

T-Moth.

The opportunity to get a (mostly) free education. We normally don’t qualify for things, because we aren’t living at poverty level. But there’s no way I could afford to go back to school if not for help from the government, and neither could Zor.

Still on that same subject, today is Tolesday–Mr Toles being the instructor of my favorite class.

Fall. O, how I adore Fall, and we seem to actually be having one. The heat is over and the snow isn’t here yet. Yay!

And lastly, I’m thankful for an auxiliary character that popped into my head during Contemporary American Business. This guy suits Seldom’s story so much better than the cardboard guy I had planned for that job; he serves multiple functions. The Maasster would be proud.