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The crabapple is blooming, the lilacs are about to, the mallards are paired off, and everywhere birds are gathering nesting materials: crows, wrens, and robins alike. This morning I spotted a little brown wren in the big apple tree, and it turns out she's nesting in the bird house that Hal re-located into the side yard after the willow was taken ( Read more... )

Craigslist subject line says: "Free Pet Rooster, To Approved Home Only." Yeah, I don't even have to click through. This is some softhearted idiot who decided to raise laying chickens and found they or their neighbors can't cope with the noise of a rooster around. And they're We Must Not Hurt The Cute An' Fluffy Animals vegetarians who can't bear ( Read more... )

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Tonight Shoobie was going completely bonkers at the pile of miscellanea in the back corner of my office closet. Scratching, digging, barking, snorking and chuckling to himself in that agitated way he has when he's really enjoying himself, and absolutely determinedly frantic to get at the kipple-blocked far back ( Read more... )

I have to be grateful that the pets are all pretty sanguine about loud noises, since our beloved city of Kent sounds rather a lot like a war zone tonight. The dogs periodically react to Ray's dog, across the street, who is barking almost incessantly, but even that doesn't stay interesting very long. They've never reacted particularly to the sound ( Read more... )

Summer in our house is a bit of a trial -- once things get warm, we tend to leave the windows open a lot. We have awning-style windows all over the house -- hinged at the top, and closing with a latch against the frame at the bottom. Perhaps there were screens for this type of window made when the windows were new, 60-odd years ago -- maybe there ( Read more... )

Yer dreamin ( Read more... )

Moles have such lovely fur. Very dense-looking, velvetty stuff. And their digger claws are fascinatingly translucent -- they're really almost pretty. And when you have a dead mole on your back porch, you can observe in in very fine detail, as you delicately pick it up with an inverted plastic bag to dispose of it. (Is there an optimum ( Read more... )

Yesterday was a big day for Spike. In the morning, in the usual pre-tuna truce, she managed to get fully nose-to-nose with Tinka and hold for several beats before freaking out and hissing and squalling. Then all was chaos, of course, but before that, there was a full heart-beat, maybe two, when they were a whisker apart and simply regarding each ( Read more... )