Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Monthly Archives: March 2009
Predators
Here’s a quizlet for you: guess Will Smith’s total lifetime box office — the gross for all of his movies put together. See if you can nail the right order of magnitude.
Ferrets are cute, don’t you think?
And degus are cute, too:
We’ve had degus and ferrets for years now. The degus are getting old, and gradually our team of four became a team of three, which became a team of two. One of the remaining two had been losing weight and hair recently, a clear sign of the end. Two nights ago, the end came.
The ferrets were out and about when I noticed my dead degu. The ferrets had never shown much interest in the degus; their cage sits atop the degu cage, so it’s not like they haven’t smelled or seen them before. So I really didn’t think about it when I set the dead degu aside while cleaning up the ferret cage.
Bueller (that dork above) grabbed the degu by the neck and ran off with her. It took quite an effort to prise the corpse away from my ferret, but I eventually managed it. After that, Bueller ran around like the cock of the walk.
End of story, right? I’m afraid not. Last night soon after Jake let the ferrets out for their evening run, I heard squealing. I assumed the ferrets were playing rough so I went downstairs to have a look. Bueller had broken into the degu cage and had killed the last degu. I had to hold his head under the water faucet before he would release her. (Yes, yes, I shouldn’t waterboard my pets. But at the time, I had a faint hope she might be alive.)
After that, Bueller broke into the degu cage again, apparently seeing it as some sort of rodent vending machine. And he did the same thing again today. He worked his way in and waited. And waited. Eventually he got bored, but it took him the better part of half an hour.
In retrospect, I shouldn’t have been surprised. According to Wikipedia, there are places where ferrets are still used to hunt rabbits. The amazing thing is that our ferrets never tried this before.
Did Bueller do her a favor? She was old for a degu, but in good shape. Still, degus are gregarious creatures, and lone degus (I’m told) don’t do well. Maybe I’m just trying to find some sort of silver lining to what was essentially a very violent act.
This from the guy who used to keep boa constrictors. But those were feeder rats, not pets. And Babe isn’t bacon, he’s a sheep-pig.
Maybe I’ll just eat tofu. It’s hard to have sympathy for soy beans.
Quizlet answer: $2,520,925,686
That’s a lot of box office.
D.
An Interview with Paul Meloy
My interview with Paul is posted at The Fix. And a damn fine interview it is, too. Here’s one of my favorite bits — we got into it on the way dreams figure into his work:
I don’t believe dreams are there just to do us a favour. As if the unconscious is some benign sorting office. There’s no reason to believe that the unconscious isn’t as polluted and pathological as our conscious mind. I think you have to apply a bit of discernment with dreams. Sometimes it’s easy to recognise a symbol and interpret it, or attribute aspects to your anima or animus, or your sexuality. Sometimes it’s a bit of wish fulfilment, a bit of fantasy or frustrated desire being played out. Sometimes dreams are plagued by a sense of nostalgia or longing that remains in your psyche and dogs you all the next day. And maybe there’s a receiving apparatus for visions built in there, too.
Enjoy.
D.