Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Category Archives: Critter foo
Animals love us
Specifically, they love to die in our attic.
We fell for this house because of the deck and the view. Took one step into the living room and failed to notice the shag brown carpet, or the kitchen done up with a Brady Bunch palette; headed straight out to the deck and breathed a collective sigh. Even the not-quite-up-to-code narrow stairs bothered us — shag baby blue carpet leading up to a master bedroom with more of the same, a monster bed too large even for king-sized sheets, baby blue tile around the fireplace, livid maroon carpeting in the giant upstairs roomlet that had functioned as clothes- and shoes-repository for the Imelda Marcos of Brookings. The view, man, the view! We’d always wanted an ocean view. Now we would have one.
Something happened between that first viewing and our move-in date. Something very large and very ill moved into the attic and died, right above our front entry way. We thought perhaps a mountain lion had expired up there. Or a skunk. Or both. And the flies! I must have vacuumed up a thousand flies. The only thing missing was the deep, raspy voiceover: Get oooouut of the hoooooouuse.
New frog species discovered
From Time South Pacific, Croak Addiction:
After an hour’s searching, Richards and his companion, a local hunter, found the source: a “warty brown blob” squatting on moss in a patch of nettles. When he reached over and gently took hold of the blob, it twisted viciously in a very unfroglike manner and bit him on the hand. “I was shocked,” he says. “Frogs don’t normally bite you. There’s only one other frog in P.N.G. that does that.” The animal’s bite, coupled with its unique cry and strange appearance, told Richards he had snared a place in the zoological textbooks with the discovery of a new species.
They have a picture of the warty brown blog as well as two other handsome devils: one they’ve named after Sauron, and a beautiful, pebbly, blue bugger.
As for the rarity of biting frogs: hmm. All I can say is, this guy hasn’t kept many pet frogs. The Argentinian Horned frog, aka “Pac Man frog” since its mouth extends posteriorly much farther than a mouth should ever extend, will gobble up anything that wiggles in front of its face.
My big toe, for example.
Don’t ask.
D.
Rat tale, part deux
When last we spoke, the rat had taken refuge beneath our baby blue bidet.
A word of explanation: why do we even have a bidet? It’s not really our bidet; for the love of God, no. Sure, we own it, inasmuch as we own our house (or the bank does), but — like the baby blue tile, baby blue carpeting, baby blue jacuzzi (which we use only to bathe our ferret), and gaudy gold bathroom fixtures — we would really rather not claim ownership of these things. No, they belong to the previous owner of our house, The Imelda Marcos of Brookings.
She married into the local royalty (a family wealthy from dairy ranches and lumber), breaking up a marriage in the process, and thus earning considerable animosity from the masses. All of the more heinous style choices in our house were hers, like the Brady Bunch kitchen, the magenta shag carpet in her shoe room, and the baby blue tilework around the fireplace. And have I mentioned her paranoia? The master bedroom has an escape hatch. The stairs in back have a built-in drawbridge.
No, no, no. The bidet is hers.
Back to the rat hiding under the bidet . . .
Say moo
When I took out the trash a moment ago, I had a true City Boy moment. (What can I say — that’s what I am.)
There — there are cows! Across the street! And calves.
And they smell.
Of course, I had to take a picture.
One of the mama cows impressed Jake with her projectile diarrhea. What do they feed these beasts, anyway?
If you click on the photo, you can see the big version with the mama cows, too.
In other news, certain people at the hospital (you know who you are, you evil lurker you) insist I should be the Chief of Staff next year. As if being Vice Chief of Staff qualifies me for that role!
Vice Chief of Staff is easy. I’m all over Vice. Vice is in my blood. Aside from breaking up that cockfighting game in ICU and the racketeering operation over in Med-Surg, I’ve had little to do all year. But Chief of Staff — that’s a whole ‘nother animal.
I need PEOPLE SKILLS for that job. I can’t blurt out whatever’s on my mind just because I know I’ll get a laugh.
On the other hand, the prospect of absolute power is appealing.
D.
Kitties (redux)!
As you may recall, we had Ash and Mist for all of about three days before we had to bring them into the vet for an herpetic eye infection. Since they wouldn’t let us medicate them (well, they would, but they each required a blood sacrifice from us prior to each dosage), we boarded them at our animal hospital and let the vet techs take the brunt of Kitty Wrath.
They’re back, thank heavens, and settling in nicely. Here’s a photo of Mist.
In other news: I’ve had a decent writing weekend so far and I may even finish the NiP. Much depends on what my muse decides tonight while I’m sleeping. Cutesy rom-com wrapup, or something approaching realism? Don’t know. Guess I’ll find out.
In any case, nearly 4K words later, I’m written out.
D.
Things that go kathunk in the night
Kate’s post on why she’s too good for most men is just too funny. The comment thread is priceless, especially my comments, which speak volumes towards why I am too good for most women. Kate, I thought about writing my version of this post, but it kept coming out serious. Being too good . . . well, let’s just say it’s my curse.
And here’s proof.
***
Late last night, we watched the end of Wait Until Dark, a movie which proves Hollywood has been and forever will be* silly. I’m talking Snakes on a Plane silly. If they remade Wait Until Dark today, Samuel L. Jackson would be the cop who storms in at the end, ranting about motherfucking drugs in a motherfucking doll. My favorite part: baddy Alan Arkin (looking incredibly young) douses Audrey Hepburn’s apartment with gasoline to, um, terrorize her. And then for the next fifteen minutes Arkin and Hepburn take turns lighting matches to scare each other.
People. I’ve worked in a burn ward. DO NOT MIX GASOLINE AND MATCHES, ‘kay?
And then there’s the darkness. Audrey Hepburn is blind, so to help the viewers empathize with her horror, much of the climax is shot in the dark. Oy.
Afterwards, we turned out the lights to go to sleep and heard a massive kathunk from the roof.
No good deed . . .
After hearing the diagnosis, I had a sit-down with Mist, our new black cat. I would have asked Ash, but I couldn’t get anything out of her but the F-bomb.
“You don’t know what it was like in that hell-hole,” Mist said, referring to the Humane Society shelter. “Ash and I were the smallest ones there. We had to give up more than a bit of tail just to stay fed.”
I sighed and decided to try one more time. “That still doesn’t explain how you got a sexually transmitted disease IN YOUR EYE.”
Ash chose this moment to saunter by, farting as she passed. “Fuck you, Meester Doctor know-eet-all.”
Hot-blooded? Check it and see.
I’m a little tardy, but here’s my Flickr Follies for the week. IMG_5929 hails from rbowden’s flickr stream. Raised among humans, Don Guillermo has identity issues. I’ll let him speak for himself.
Closer, my succubus, and with my claw I will take the strap of your bikini top and tease it from your succulent frame. Then I shall lap at your breasts as if they were the finest imported mangos, teasing the nipples to raisin-like firmness. I’ll teach you the meaning of savage lizard love.
Oooh, slimy? No, not really. If you stroke my flesh — yes, there, lower still, aaaah. Do you feel? I’m rough as a cat’s tongue and three times as fast. With a strike of my tail I can kill flies midair or, if you prefer discipline to displays of agility, I might lash your soft thighs until they are banded pink and you beg for mercy.
Watch me shake my head. Watch! I daresay you have never seen such an impressive head-shake, no? It means I respect you, my love, and crave your attention. Come closer. Put your lips near mine so that I may sneeze salt upon them, that we might share our essences.
What? You doubt that I can satisfy you? I have but few words for you: two penises. When one tires, the other takes over. I can last all night. Can your human lovers say as much?
And when at last we have pampered one another into a state of bliss and beyond; when, afterwards, you smoke your Virginia Slim and I scratch your back where you crave it most; when we promise everything to one another, and nothing; then, at long last, you will agree: once green, never back.
No, it does not rhyme. But with our perfect love, what will it matter?
D.
Meet Ash and Mist
They’re sisters, supposedly, but not in temperament. Here’s Mist, a cool cat who likes to hide in black plastic garbage bags:
Ash, on the other hand, hasn’t quite come to terms with being a kept kitty.
Jake calls her Vashj (a World of Warcraft character), but we’re calling her Ash, short for Ashtaroth, and also the name of Bruce Campbell’s character in the Evil Dead/Army of Darkness movies. Ashtaroth is essentially Ishtar, without the connotation of “movie that bombed.” Look at the claws on this cat:
She has clawed Jake once. I picked her up and she extended her stilettos, drawing blood. An impressive show of force, I must admit.
I know, I know: how dare we rename Le Ogress’s precioussssses. Tough.
D.
Sign this blood oath, and the kitty is yours
We went to the local humane society on the assumptions (A) they would have lots of cats in need of a good home, and (B) they would be willing to adopt them out to us. (A) was true beyond a doubt. I saw few cats I wouldn’t want as pets — the long-hairs, since I’m not willing to put my allergy to that stringent a test. As for (B), therein lies a tale.
“We’d like to adopt three cats,” I said upon arrival. “Ours went feral.”
You would think a volunteer would be delighted to adopt out three cats, wouldn’t you? But I had made a cardinal error: I’d said too much. “Ours went feral” seemed to push all her hostility buttons.