Tag Archives: animals

Dec19

Angus is on a timer.

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Angus is on a timer.

Angus went peepee in the house three times yesterday.  HOLY COW DID WE GET THE DUMBEST DOG EVER?!?!  No.  We didn’t.  (I don’t think?)  But we did get a shih-tzu, and they are notoriously hard to housebreak, especially in the winter.  If you didn’t know, shih-tzus are actually half cat so they have that imperious I Will Do Whatever I Want thing, in addition to a super short attention span and can’t remember anything.

That’s why Angus is now on a timer.

Every hour it beeps and every hour Angus goes outside.  This is to remind me not to forget to take him outside, which is the predominant reason he keeps having accidents.

Maybe I am half cat too.

(I actually don’t want to think about that for too long. Cats make me sneeze.)

We’re going to keep with the one hour timer for 2 weeks, then I’ll back him up to two hours, if he’s doing well.

We’ll get there.  Someday.

I keep reminding myself that Henry was so easy to housebreak because a.) we lived in a 750 square foot apartment, and we could block off the back 400 square feet, so it was really easy to keep track of him, and b.) IT WAS JULY.

 

Aug17

Fair Day!

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Fair Day!

It’s finally the day we get to go to the Indiana State Fair.  I have printed off discount tickets which will get us $2.00 admission apiece.  I have discovered where we can park for free.  And today is even $2.00 sample day for the concessions.  This means that we could feasibly be in and out of the fair for less than $15.00, including trying 4 of the ridiculous fried things they concoct.  We’ve NEVER tried four of anything at any state fair we’ve ever been to.

I have looked all over the state fair material, and I don’t believe the Indiana fair has a Big Bull like Iowa does.  This disappoints me.  I love the Big Bull because he’s so ridiculously massive and looks like he ought to be in a cartoon.  They do, however, have a Big Pig, and I will be seeing him at least once today.

When we lived in Texas the Big Pig at the fair was more often than not an Iowa pig they trucked in for the occasion.  There was usually a discreet sign posted somewhere near the back of his pen that said he was from New Hampton, IA or someplace like that.  I hope the Indiana Big Pig is an actual Indiana pig.

Hopefully there is a petting zoo at which I can get my hands very dirty by petting farm animals.  Especially piglets.  Actually, especially all of them.  I have no preference at this point.

We have birthing class tonight, so we can’t stay super late at the fair.  That’s probably just as well, because it’s unlikely I will have the stamina for hauling myself around the fair for longer than 4 hours anyway.  (The good news is that I don’t think it’s supposed to be very hot today.)

So…I need to get to work.  The house needs tidied, I need to prepare some kind of snack for us to eat for dinner (probably vegetables to clean us out after eating the fried stuff at the fair), the laundry needs to be folded, and I need to go up and see Henry and make him sit outside with me for awhile.  He hates sitting outside because then his paws touch the grass, and he’d really rather not.  I’m trying to break him in to this whole nature thing.

Anyway, FAIR DAY!

Jun16

Two weeks, babeh

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Two weeks, babeh

Two weeks from NOW, I will be in Mexico.  With Joey.  Rocking it out.  Actually we may still be stuffed on a third class bus, potentially standing up in the aisles trying not to throw up while the bus whizzes around corners, but it’ll be worth it to save $50, I tell you.

We’re staying in the same accommodations as last year, so I am gearing up and planning for all the iguanas I plan to make pets out of for the week.  Joey was previously unaware of my intent to tame an iguana, and I guess he knows now.  OH WELL.

I know they prefer kiwi skins and don’t really care for grapes, so I’m probably going to buy about 5 kiwis from the market in town.  No sense wasting on grapes this year.  I have to get my iguana bait station established early so they know to make friends with me.

Poor Joey.

This guy better be there again this year.  He was huge, y’all.  HUGE.

TWO WEEKS.  It’s going to be fantastical.

Jun1

Three (semi) Important Things

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Three (semi) Important Things

Today, I have learned Three Important Things.

  1. Nobody makes maternity slips.  Nobody at all.  So if you’re expecting and you’re trying to find out, just quit now because they do not exist.  I learned this the hard way after going to three stores this afternoon and then scouring the interwebs.
  2. Rather along those lines, finding a moderately attractive maternity bathing suit is like finding a four leaf clover in a field in Ireland: not an easy thing.  The last time I wore my regular bathing suit, both brothers laughed at me.  There was little to no chance I was going to be wearing it again any time soon, so today I went searching.  Everything contained either copious amounts of flowers (which Joey hates), looks like a tent, or is a pukey shade of green.  We wound up with a floral option, and Joey said he could tolerate it for the next few months.  He’s a champ.
  3. Skunks are legal to keep as pets in the state of Indiana.  I know this because this evening, I met someone who has a skunk for a pet.  This is fantastic.  Now I can revive my campaign to get a pet skunk!!!  Joey is dismayed.  I figure he’ll get over it in a year or two.

This is all I have learned.  I need to go to bed now before my exploding headache gets any worse.  So far I give the second trimester a B on not feeing like I’m going to throw up all the time, and an F on constant headaches.

I thought of something really funny but now I can’t remember it because of the headache (happens all the time, I’ll have something I want to post and then I forget it because my head hurts so bad; lame-o) so now I think I’ll just go to bed.

Goodnight and good luck.

May28

Bruce

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Bruce

Since we’re in Iowa for Joey’s brother’s wedding and I haven’t been home in nearly a year, I took the opportunity to head to Cedar Rapids just to go HOME.  Turns out I was a little homesick.

We met most of the clan for lunch at HuHot and ate way too much, then afterwards we just went home and sat on the back porch for awhile. A few hours later Pops said, “Let’s go look at the cows,” so I put on the girl boots (incidentally, those are actually The Kid’s boots?  I thought they were the girl boots) and tromped out in the field with Pops.

“Watch out for that wire, it’s live,” he said.  And he jumped over the fence.

Pregnant lady doesn’t jump over the fence as easily as she used to.  I almost nailed the hot wire.  Twice.

As we were walking around in the field (I slid on a cow pie and almost went down for the count, it was great) Pops got a call from one of his clients and wound up needing to go down to the office.  So Joey and I tagged along.  I sent some emails for Pops and Joey raided the candy stash.  About an hour later we were  heading back up 380 towards home again.

Mom was home making delicious taco salads, and when we pulled in she just about had dinner ready.  So we set the table and sat down at the table on the back porch and started eating.

That’s when we heard the cat.

There was a stray kitty, a gray stripidy one sitting on the steps to the porch sitting there meowing at us.  No one had ever seen it before.  His name was Bruce.

Bruce sat there meowing the entire meal, and every now and then one of the dogs would run over to try to get a good look at it.  Bruce would freak out and run down the stairs, but a few moments later he’d be back again for more.  (More of what…who can say.)

The Kid deposited some taco meat on the steps mostly when Mom wasn’t looking (as if she didn’t know, though, he wasn’t very quiet about it) and Bruce was so stupid and/or stray that he never even tried to eat it.  He just sat there, lower fangs out, panting and meowing at us.

I thought he looked dangerous because of the fangs.

After eating my dinner, I sat down next to the screen door, which was a few feet away from Bruce.  Ernie came over to look at him with me.  Bruce came up pretty close, but every time Ernie would sneeze, it would freak him out and he’d run back down the stairs.  One of the times he did so, he kept his tail in the air.

“Uh, Bruce is a girl,” I said.

“No, it can’t be.  His name is Bruce,” said Joey.

“First of all, I can tell he’s not a boy because I just saw. And how could you even know its name?  We’ve never seen it before,” I said.

“It looks like a Bruce,” Joey and The Kid said.  ”That’s his name.”

Henceforth, Bruce was a boy even though he/she was a girl.

Sometime after dinner he disappeared.  Probably never to be seen again.

May3

The Squirrel That Scared Me

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The Squirrel That Scared Me

Yesterday afternoon, I was laying on the couch and watching The King and I, and also crying.  Oh, no reason for the crying.  I just like The King and I so I figured I might as well cry about it.

Joey had been studying feverishly for his Ordination Exam at the kitchen table, and when he came into the study and found me sniffling over the beginning of an old Rogers & Hammerstein musical he decided that I probably shouldn’t be left home alone while he went to Kinkos to print off his ordination paper.

I think he thought I was losing my ever-loving mind.  I probably was.

So we got into The Fort Worth and putzed over to Kinkos.  I hopped out of the car and kind of trailed along behind Joey distractedly (I do this sometimes) because I noticed a pile of seeds near the bushes on edge of the sidewalk.

Then I saw the squirrel.  He was one foot away from me, his hands up to his mouth in mid-chew of a seed, staring at me like I was Evil.

I stopped.

I really like squirrels.  I’ve often asked Joey to buy me a baby one so I can tame it and domesticate it, but he always says no.  Go figure.  (He did say I could get a rabbit and a cat someday though, so I’ll take what I can get.)  I’d never been so close to a squirrel before, so I stared right back at that thing until we both started making each other really nervous.

Joey was way far ahead of me by this point, about to open the door and go in.  He glanced back to find me and discovered I wasn’t behind him anymore at all, I was frozen mid-step on the sidewalk staring at the bush.

“What are you DOING?” He asked me.

“It’s a squirrel,” I said.  And the squirrel and I had been staring at each other for long enough that it had started to freak me out.  My voice quivered.

“Um, are you afraid of it or something?” Joey asked, taking a few steps my direction.

“I think so,” I said.  “I’m really not sure why.  Do you think it could have rabies?”

“I’m sure it doesn’t have rabies,” Joey assured me.  And I moved my left foot in preparation to take a step.  The squirrel twitched its tail and disappeared into the bushes.

“I thought it might kill me or attack me or something,” I said once we were inside.

Joey just shook his head and handed the flash drive to the Kinkos lady, who was wearing a wig that was sitting so far back on her scalp that it looked precariously like it was about to fall off.  I tried very hard not to stare.

Ten minutes and $6.00 later, Joey had a packet full of ordination papers that he had paid for, and we walked out the door as Joey scanned the receipt.  “They charged me 2 cents per staple!  Ripoff…”

The squirrel was back in its pile of seeds along the sidewalk.  “It’s that squirrel,” I whispered to Joey.  “I don’t like it.  I think it hates me.”

“Just don’t look at it,” he advised me.

Um, like that’s even possible.

We walked past it and the squirrel darted back into its bush and we made it home without getting bitten by any other of its squirrel friends.  Then I finished watching The King and I for the rest of the afternoon, and I sang along to all the songs.

Loudly.

It’s probably a good thing our next door neighbors moved out.

Sep20

Some Iowa Hogs For You To Look At

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Some Iowa Hogs For You To Look At

Pops was over at Randy’s this afternoon, havin’ a look at Randy’s hogs.  Knowing how I feel about livestock, Pops was kind enough to send on some, quite frankly, AMAZING pictures of these guys.

I hope we get to eat them someday. (Pops, are we eating any of these guys?)

IMG00006-20090920-1655This guy is my favorite.  You can’t really see his eyes, but seriously…with a super dirty snout like that, who even needs eyes.  If I’d have been there, I’d have tried to touch it.

IMG00008-20090920-1656This guy’s OK.  He looks kind of scraggly, but don’t pigs have cool ears?  Wait, isn’t there a proverb about a silk purse and a sow’s ear?  (I’m sure there is, and I’m also sure Gramps will enlighten me about it.  He knows everything about stuff like that.)

IMG00009-20090920-1656Pretty sure these two are named Bacon and Pork Chop.  (Bacon’s on the left.  And I just made that up.)

Now you have seen four Iowa hogs.  Your life is, surely, enriched by this experience.  Maybe next year we can all take a field trip to the Iowa State Fair, because, srsly, if I don’t get to see the Super Bull and the Big Boar, I may have some kind of breakdown.

I just spoke to Pops and he informed me that these piggies are organic, and they’re extremely fat.  Like probably 350 lbs fat (which, Pops told me, is about 100 lbs fatter than they’d usually be when they go to the killers).  Pops also told me these guys are so friendly, due to the whole being organic business, that they swarm you if you go into their pen and can almost knock you over, due to their massive size.  Too bad we have no trips to The Iowa planned between now and when these guys go to the killers, because I would like to test that out.

Joey said someday he’d let me have a pig.  And a sheep.  And a goat. And free-range chickens so I can have fresh eggs.  I’m not sure if he realizes the consequences of this statement…because I WILL TAKE HIM UP ON THAT.

Also he said I could have a cow.

Aug21

Boar-ing

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Boar-ing

So Kelli, perhaps my oldest friend (25 years – DOES THAT CREEP YOU OUT OR WHAT KELLI?!?!) just proved once again why we are friends.  Because:

a.) she knows me well

b.) she’s a rockstar.

When Kelli visited the Iowa State Fair recently, she took some pictures of the sweet livestock and I probably would have been freaking out over had I been there.

But first, to clear up a small matter about the Big Boar from the Iowa State Fair vs. the “World’s Largest Boar” from, of all places, MASSACHUSETTS (???)…it appears that Iowa has lost.

Iowa’s Big Boar weighed in at 1, 118 lbs.

The World’s Largest Boar was 1,175 lbs.

(But, to be fair, last year’s Big Boar in Iowa was way huger than this year’s World’s Largest Boar.  We’re talking 1,259 lbs, which is a lot of bacon if you ask me.)

Here’s the Iowa’s prize boar, courtesy of Kelli.

0817091247LOVE the tooth.

Aug21

Hog Wild

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Hog Wild

I just received a few emails from Grandfather Laird (I’ve actually never called him that before, so I’m just testing it out to see how I like it.)  He sent me a picture of the “World’s Largest Boar” from the Indiana State Fair, or so I am postulating based upon the fact that Gramps rarely rubs shoulders with hogs these days and he sent me a picture of the sign posted that said “World’s Largest Boar”.

The alleged “World’s Largest Boar” appears to be from a farm in Massachusetts, which I think is highly irregular.

Anyways, because my blog is all about pictures of oversize livestock around state fair season, here is the monstrosity for your viewing pleasure or disgust, whichever you prefer.

photoCHECK THIS GUY OUT.  He’s enormous and I like him.

Props to Gramps for such an excellent picture to start off my Friday morning.

And Iowa?  STEP IT UP.  For a state that has more hogs than people, I’m kind of surprised that it was a hog from Massachusettes that claimed the “World’s Larget Boar” title at the Indiana State Fair.  I will be doing some research to get to the bottom of this.  Maybe the Iowa State Fair boar really is bigger than this dude.  You can be certain I will find out.