Party!

 Remember these two?

Well, today is their birthday.

Sydney and Mackey are nine years old today. 

 We're celebrating with frozen yogurt cups. Yum!

Doesn't seem possible, does it?

Old Friends And New

We know that friends can take many forms. Friends don't have to be other people as our dogs and cats have all proven. But, can a plant be a friend?

Forty five years ago (yes I am that old) I had surgery. While I was recovering a friend brought me a spindly little Christmas cactus in a 4inch pot. It didn't have a flower and didn't look like it ever would amount to much, but I replanted it in a pretty pot and found it a bright window. I remembered to water it weekly and it started to grow. It outgrew several pots and continued to grow. It pushed out flowers starting in October and continuing thru May and at times was completely covered in bright red flowers. 

 It moved with me from Central New York to Pennsylvania and to Maryland. When we moved to Missouri it shared the back of the Trooper with six birds and three dogs. That was quite a trip thru snowstorms and ice storms, but we all made it and the cactus found a cool bright place to live in the dining room beside the birds.That cactus went thru lots of life events with me. It witnessed good times and bad times. If it could talk it would have plenty to say. It just sat there in it's spot and when the right time came it flowered. It was something I could depend on. Does that qualify it as a friend?

Last year I commented to Rob that the cactus wasn't putting out as many flowers as it had in the past. It only had about six flowers all season and they were small. Also it's branches were getting thick and woody. Over the summer the heavy branches began breaking. It was starting to look really sad and that made me feel sad. A couple times I thought about ending it's life but I kept putting it off. Finally I told Rob that I thought my cactus was finished but that I couldn't bring myself to get rid of it. He agreed that it didn't look healthy. One morning last month I got up and the cactus was gone. Rob had taken care of it. I didn't ask what he had done or where he had put it. I didn't want the details.

I felt like I had lost an old friend. I felt depressed for a couple weeks and felt close to tears a few times. Is that silly? I don't know. I considered that cactus an old friend that was dependable. Why wouldn't I feel sad?

So what did I do? I looked around at local garden shops but there were no Christmas cactus yet. Then I discovered that Amazon delivers live plants and they had Christmas cactus. I ordered two and waited anxiously for them to arrive. They came in perfect condition and have taken up residence in the same window that the big old girl lived in. I had no idea what color blooms they would have, but I do now. Over the past month one of the new little plants got two buds.  

Over the last week they have been opening.

 

 

                              

Today I woke up to two perfect pink flowers.

So now I have a couple new friends to share my days with. Don't you love a happy ending?

The Three Little Piggies Plus Two

A year ago besides having a baby raccoon hanging around we had nightly visits from three opossums. We called them  Hoover, Shark and Dustbuster because they cleaned up everything in sight. Then suddenly they all disappeared and we missed them. Not only were they fun to watch but opossums are great guests to have around. While they were here we had no mice trying to get into the house and the tick population was way lower than other years.  An opossum can eat around 5000 ticks and that means fewer ticks to feast on the dogs. I looked it up and found that opossums are nomadic and the little group that we saw had probably moved on.

This summer I found no ticks on the dogs and only used the flea and tick treatment once all summer, so I believed that there were opossums in the area. One night last month Rob put out the kibble for the raccoons. When I looked out the window about an hour later there was a tiny little opossum baby sitting on the platter eating kibble. I was so happy to see him.

Then a few night later there were two medium sized opossums eating together. One has a light gray and white splotchy coat and the other was very dark gray. While they were eating a big pink piggy nose poked out of the hedge and they were joined by a very large, quite heavy blonde colored opossum. She was a much different color than any of the others that we'd seen. I checked online and there were no pictures of blonde opossums, but there she was. So I started calling her Marilyn. The others ate from the bowls for awhile, then climbed the rail to check out the feeder, but Marilyn doesn't climb. I think she's a little too heavy to feel comfortable climbing.

The baby comes early every evening, before the raccoons can bother her, and eats from the bird feeder. Splotchy and the darker one come most evenings. Marilyn only shows up now and then but stays for quite awhile when she's here. Last week a new opossum showed up. She's a light gray but instead of the usual stark white face, she has a soft gray face. She's actually pretty, for an opossum who tend to look like a cross between a rat and a pig.

So how do they do with the raccoons? Well, Shorty raccoon usually shows up early. One evening she was eating from the bird feeder when Baby opossum showed up. She also prefers the feeder. She walked up to the feeder but Shorty ignored her, so she came up behind and bit Shorty's tail. Shorty took off and now if she sees one of the opossums she runs away. Big Red is so big that the opossums all avoid  her, but Gabby and the opossums seem to get along together and will even share a bowl of kibble without hissing or fighting.

It's nice to know that we're still under the protection of a hungry group of piggy faced opossums. They more than pay for their feed, unlike the rowdy raccoons who just like to get into trouble.

The Three Stooges

 You may remember that all last year we kept track of a little raccoon that we called Rocket J. We put out food each evening and she came every single night to eat and to watch us watching her. Earlier this summer she brought her three babies to the feeder. There was one big baby that was really into eating and the other two usually stood in the feeder watching us thru the kitchen window.

Well, several months have passed since our introduction and things have changed. Rocket rarely comes around anymore, but her three little bundles of joy come by every evening to see what's on the menu. They are no longer tiny little creatures that resemble kittens. They are now grown raccoons and each looks different and has an unique personality. Let me introduce you.

First is Shorty. She was the smallest of the babies and is still the smallest. As you might guess from her name, she's short. She also has a short tail, like her mother. Shorty is usually the first visitor each evening. She's afraid of almost everything and will run into the hedge at the first sound or movement. She will occasionally stick around to eat when one of her siblings shows up, but if both the others appear, Shorty usually calls it an evening. 

We set out a blue dog bowl and a clay platter with kibble. We also put kibble in the open bird feeder. Shorty loves the blue dog bowl and will sit with it between her legs and scoop kibble into her mouth with her front feet. When she finishes, she'll often check out the feeder. She's becoming more relaxed with the idea of us watching her and if not threatened by another animal, will spend quite a bit of time with us. She also likes to climb onto a chair and sit there observing the street. Twice she's stretched out for a nap on the lower shelf of the porch table. 

The middle sized baby is now known as Gabby. She is a very different looking raccoon. She has what I can only describe as white mutton chop whiskers which make her face about twice the size of the others.

 She has white fluffy fur on her chest and four white feet. When I first saw her I thought of Gabby Hayes, so Gabby she is. Gabby shows up most nights with one of her siblings. She is our neatest raccoon as she goes all around the porch picking up any spilled kibble or bird seed. She sticks her long fingers between the slats of the porch floor to recover any pieces that are stuck. There's never a mess when Gabby gets finished eating.

The third member of the group is Big Red. Big Red, as you've probably guessed, is the biggest. She is also unique in that the second stripe on her tail is double width and is a bright reddish gold color. She also has a short streak of reddish gold on top of her head. Red is the only raccoon that doesn't eat with her hands. Instead she sticks her head into the bowl and eats like a dog.

Gabby and Red are both good eaters. Unfortunately, they are both fat. They've gotten so fat that they can no longer run between the posts in the deck railing. There is one area where they can get through if they turn sideways and squeeze. It's funny to watch, but I sure hope they don't get stuck.

We've had a lot of fun watching these babes grow up but I really do hope they don't all decide to bring their babies to visit us next year.

To Blog Or Not To Blog

 I've been away from the blog for a couple of months. Without my Porties to offer up adventures and cute pictures, I didn't know if I should continue blogging or to sign off. I've been giving it a lot of thought and have decided to continue blogging. 

When I first started this blog many years ago I used it mainly as a journal to document my days and remind myself of events that had special meaning to me. For the first several months I had no readers and that didn't bother me, at least not too much. Finally I joined Dogs On Thursday and met loads of other bloggers with similar interests. 

DOT is long gone and many, maybe most, of the other bloggers have dropped out of Blogville, but I made some special internet friends and I treasure them. 

So, my blog has changed. There isn't as much dog content as I would like, but there are other things going on that deserve to be written about. 

 Get ready ........  I'M BACK !!

The Beauty Of Nature?

 We have lots of wild visitors at our house. You've met Roxy (formerly known as Rocket J) and her three babies. You've met the possum family. You've seen some of the deer that wander thru. Did you know we also have a pair of armadillos that cross the yard to get to the farm field. I call them the living roombas because they seem to hover as they glide across the yard.

 You know that we have tons of squirrels and lots of bunnies and a big flock of wild turkeys.

We also have lots and lots of birds, from the tiny hummingbirds that chase each other around the porch to a huge Barred Owl that likes to scare us when we're out after dark. He sits in the tree above my head and lets out a loud screech. We all run for the door. Last year the pair of owls nested in a tree across the street and the little ones made such a racket that we couldn't wait for them to grow up and leave.

We have lots of robins, finches, chickadees, sparrows, blue jays, woodpeckers and others. But mostly we have Cardinals. When we first moved here we were both amazed at how many Cardinals hung around the yard. In Maryland we had a pair but here we counted at least eight pair at one time. 

But now we have something we'd never seen before. We have a pair of bald Cardinals. They look like half cardinal and half vulture. They are quite ugly and we even started calling the male"Uggo". 

I looked them up on the google and the condition can be caused by either mites or an unnatural molt. In either case the feathers are supposed to grow back in a couple weeks Wrong! Uggo and his ugly female friend have been like this for at least a month and show no signs of growing feathers on their bald heads. They don't appear to be sick. They hang around the feeder most of the day and seem to act as normal as the other birds.

Let's just hope these two don't decide to have a family of bald birds. I don't think the world is ready for flocks of blue  naked headed cardinals.

Rocket Powered

 It began in June of last year. A big hungry mama raccoon raided our bird feeders one night. The next night she returned with her six babies and they finished off the seeds the birds had left behind. Not much of a meal but easy for the family to access. We began bringing the hanging feeders in at night because the hungry creatures were stealing them and leaving the empties under the porch. Still, there were a few seeds remaining in the flat feeder attached to the deck and they disappeared overnight.

Then the family moved on but they left behind the runt of the litter. He was tiny and they probably felt he couldn't keep up, so they dumped him. He curled up and slept in the feeder for several nights. When I took the dogs out he'd lift his head and look at us, then go back to sleep. He ate the few seeds leftover from the day. After the first few nights he started sleeping in the hedge during the day, then would turn up when it got dark. I felt bad for him and put out some grapes and hard boiled egg. Then Rob admitted that he'd been cutting up hot dogs and leaving them in the feeder for the little guy. 

I started calling him Rocket J and we started putting out dog kibble every evening along with any leftovers we had available. He turned up every night around 10 PM and watched us watching him eat. If a car came down the street or something moved he scrambled into the hedge to wait till it was safe again. If we went outside he climbed onto the roof and watched us. Rocket came every single night for his dinner. It could be 90 degrees or zero. It could be raining or sleeting. He showed up.

This spring he started getting more comfortable. He started showing up about 7PM while it was still light outside. He began sitting down to eat and sometimes would even lie down with his legs hanging over the rail to take a quick catnap. After finishing his dinner, he'd climb into the fountain for a drink, then would play in the water for awhile. We would stand at the window and watch his antics. Then when he was finished Rob would take out a second helping of kibble. Rob would no sooner be back in the house before Rocket would reappear and finish off his second course.

We got creative at times. A couple times I made peanut butter sandwiches and cut them into little pieces. He loved them. He liked all fruit but wasn't fond of green veggies. They were the only thing he ever left behind. His absolute favorite was when we'd coat his kibble in bacon grease. Those nights he'd eat everything, then lick the feeder clean. He didn't want to waste a bit of that bacon flavor.

Then two weeks ago Rocket showed up early, around 6:30,and he had a surprise for us. It seems that Rocket J was not a boy. Rocket is a girl and she brought her three babies with her that night. They were adorable! They looked like fluffy gray kittens with white ears, black masks and striped tails. One baby was a bit bigger than the others and started eating kibble along with Mom. The other two smaller ones stood in the box watching us. At some point the three climbed onto the roof to wait for Rocket to finish eating. Then they all disappeared into the hedge.

We didn't see the babies again for about a week. They had really grown in that time. They come along with Rocket almost every night now and they're about as big as she is. Rocket is still a pretty small raccoon. We expect that they'll soon be going off on their own but I think Rocket will probably be sticking around. She's addicted to bacon grease.