Peanut

Our rat, Peanut, passed away this weekend.  She was a good rat, and we are sad to have lost her.  We buried her across the street in the open space.

Crickets

Our house is chirping with Ned's food.  A bunch of little crickets make a lot of noise.  But Ned sure loves to eat them.

Good News

I let Garbanzo out on Sunday night, and a while later we smelled some skunkiness.  I went outside and found the cat and he hadn't been re-sprayed. Yay!

Also, I got a call from Yosemite, and they had my wedding ring.  They FedEx'd it and it got here today, and is now back safely on my finger.  Double yay!

Skunked

Last night, Garbanzo ran outside around our bedtime. We didn't worry about it too much, as he'll come meowing to the door in a few minutes to be let back in. This time, he didn't.

Around midnight, I woke up and saw him at the door, so I let him in. I vaguely noticed a smell, but I let him in. Then the smell hit me, and I realized we had a skunk problem on our hands. I corralled Garbanzo to the laundry room, to minimize contamination and come up with a plan. I noticed he was wet when I pet him, so I grabbed some paper towels to squeegee him off.

Then the smell kept getting worse. I moved him out to the garage. Very quickly, the garage became foul. R suggested that he needed to get outside ASAP, but he was hiding under the van. I opened the side door, and open the garage opener to scare him out and to get some fresh air in there. He ran for it.

I did some other tidying up, left the garage door open, and went back to bed soon enough. Clearly, this was not a problem I could deal well with in the middle of the night.

For the rest of the night, he sat outside our bedroom and howled. And stank.

We spent this morning trying to eradicate the smell from the house. Amazing stuff, skunk spray. A little goes a long way. We are making good progress, but it still persists around the house. From his short time in the garage, both of our sealed cars became rank.

R found the Mythbusters' approved anti-stink solution, and Garbanzo was freaked out enough to let her clean him without much complaint. He smells much better, but I think he got hit in the face, and it was hard to wash there.

Ned

Ed is the last surviving tadpole. Ned didn't survive the shock of moving to the new tank, I think.

PS. It turns out that Ned survived, and Fred and Ed didn't. Title updated.

Fred, Ed, and Ned

Today is EJP's birthday. He's 5 now.

Aunt E sent him a unique birthday gift that is prefect for his creature loving mind. Bull frog tadpoles. They arrived in the mail last night. E named them Fred, Ed, and Ned.

Unfortunately, Fred didn't survive the night.

RCP has now bought supplies, such as a tank and food, and is putting together their environment now, in hopes of saving Ed and Ned. If all goes well, we'll have a couple bull frogs for a couple years.

Year of the Rat

We got a rat. She's cute.

We're looking for a name; your suggestions are welcome.

Roomba (Try #3)

Recently, iRobot came out with a new version of the Roomba, the vacuuming robot. We had an older version last year, and loved it until the cat hair killed it (and its replacement).

It appears that this new version is easier to clean; you can open the cover and get to the inner guts where the old one appeared to get gummed up. I hope that this one survives. However, since we got it at Costco, the risk is low.

We haven't named it yet.

Cat Exchange

Since we finished landscaping the back yard, we've been letting the cats out.

Garbanzo meows constantly in the morning to be let out. If it is a work day, we don't let him out. He can be really loud and obnoxious. Pinto just sulks.

When we do let them out, sometimes only one wants to go out. So we let that one out. A while later, the first one wants back in and the other wants to go out. They pass each other passing through the door, until the next time.

Ant Farm

The ants for the ant farm finally arrived on Thursday. On Friday, the kids got back from spring break in La Canada. So that night, we opened the tube of ants and dumped them into the life sustaining gel that is the heart of the ant farm.

A pile of rolled up bugs plopped out into the colony. I quickly put the lid on, so none would escape. After a few minutes, several of the ants were crawling around confusedly. At the center of the space was a pile of carcases. I remained hopeful that they were in some sort of ant suspended animation. One of them twitched.

A day later, only 5 ants were moving. The twitching one twitched occasionally, but no real motion. Today, I removed the "sleeping" ants, since they slumbered very deeply.

Five lousy ants! I thinkI sent a check for $6 for shipping, back in January. And I get 5 lousy ants in April.

These ants don't seem to want to dig the fabulous ant tunnels that the box promises, either. They just congregate at the end and try to climb out.

They better get organized and do some tunneling, or they might get to meet some local ants and see which are the better fighters.

Our Tiny New Friends

For the past couple days, SKGP has been itchy. Because a friend had a bout of head lice last week, we were suspicious. This morning, I was sent to the store to pick up some special shampoo. As we combed her hair with the special brush, our fears were confirmed. Infestation.

We think we killed them.

Now my head itches. And the other areas of my body that are covered with hair. I've got a lot of hair.

DMP is going to read this and freak out. We may not get a lot of work done together this week.

Mouse is to mice as louse is to lice. So, what does that say about spouses?

Swab the Decks!

It was at Costco. So, of course we had to get it. (I wanted the Kirkland Vodka, but some people just don't believe in the miracle of Costco and its brands like I do.)

We now have an electronic slave scrubbing our floors for us. That's right, we're the proud owners of a Roomba. And it is awesome. It is picking up tons of cat hair (a truly frightening amount of cat hair) and other detritus that is filling our house. One might think the Roomba was just a toy, but it really does clean up, and leave the nice vacuum lines on the carpet (in a completely random order).

It is driving the cats nuts. Especially Garbanzo -- He tries stalking it, but flees at the slightest provocation. I hope he adapts to our new friend.

Mighty Hunter

It's Garbanzo versus the Wild Turkeys. (He chickened out.)

Wild Kingdom

We had a nice visit in southern California.

On Saturday, we went to the La Brea Tar Pits, and the (world famous) Farmer's Market. It has been a long time since I've done the tourist thing in LA (other than Disneyland), and there really is some cool stuff. The tar pits are impressive. We got to see some volunteers actually digging out a pit, which was very cool. Someone tell me why we shouldn't clone some of those long gone mammals.

On Sunday, we went to Orange County to be part of Baby Eva's dedication (sort of a baptism / christening thing without water). Eva was a great performer and it was a nice ceremony, with a mighty fine lunch afterwards.

We drove home. It wasn't fun, but we made it back by 9 PM. SKGP survived the last stretch even though she really had to go.

Which brings us to the wild kingdom.

A cricket was lounging in the foyer; over the kids objections, we put it outside.

In SKGP's bedroom, we discovered that a cat had exploded. There was vomit in three separate piles on the floor. In one of the piles was a swarm of ants. Why had the ants decided to avoid the kitchen and go upstairs to feast on cat puke? It just doesn't make sense. I hate ants.

There was another cricket in our bathroom downstairs.

(Are we living in the next Coalinga?)