Sand, Sticks, and Kittens

Kisses, Tina, and a Blue Rag

Tina and the Nopal

Compostin' Rat Killin' Party Time Vacation

Over the break we did some garden prep, including a much need revamping of the compost pile. It was a productive day. Between the two of us Tien and I killed three rats. He killed and ate one, with his bare teeth, I killed and did not eat two, with a shovel and the flat of a machete.

Kittens

About the middle of December we acquired two new family members. Since Rhus was born we'd felt that Tien had been a little neglected. He's pretty social for a cat, he even used to go on play dates to visit his buddy Stewart Rosenberg (a handsome cat with the stiff, athletic swagger of a retired football player) until poor Tien had to move away. One of my dad's coworkers has a Manx cat that gave birth back in October, so we went over to bring home the stumpy, and ended up with two. We call the stumpy-tabby Tina, and the black-and-white longy is called Lobs (we thought about calling him Andrew Zimmerman, in honor of Stewart's owner, but he just isn't an Andrew. Perhaps Andrew can take some comfort from the fact that a kitten with the ridiculous name of Lobs, and a personality befitting the name, just wasn't good enough to be his namesake). Since they're brother and sister they kind of take care of each other, and, as you can see from the photo, Tien likes them just fine.

Buddies

The Lake

In all likelihood it's been ten years since I last went to Lake Texhoma. My former boss took me out on her boat a few weeks ago, while everyone else was in Utah. I spent most of my time looking for arrowheads, and of course found none. I did however catch two tiny striped bass, and got to watch Hercules-the-Dog try and scratch his many itches. Also, you can see below how high the water was during the floods last year from the mark in the junipers.

Baby Bear

In lieu of potty training, we've opted to have him raised by bears. Jens will leave him in Yellowstone next week, this is just an initial period of acclimatization.

Playing Megafauna

For the past few months since moving back from Chiang Mai I have been working on a 27 acre estate in north Dallas. Usually I take care of the greenhouse and several perennial and rose gardens, but occasionally I get called upon to do a bit of turf maintenance, either using the line trimmer, or mowing with one of the big mowers. The mower, as you might imagine, is a big noisy machine, and when we mow el pasto grande (the big lawn, with the helicopter landing pad, where Bush or McCain might land if they were to visit, not that I'm saying they have), I spend several hours on the machine, driving back and forth, listening to podcasts. It's rather meditative (unless of course I'm listening to You Look Nice Today, in which case I'm probably laughing so hard I can barely drive straight), and since it's such a big property, with a pond, and screens of trees and understory growth on the margins, I have a good opportunity to observe the wildlife. Granted, there is significantly less wildlife on 27 acres of manicured parkland than one might find on 27 acres of undisturbed blackland prairie, but it is 27 acres. In addition to the birds, squirrels, bunnies, rats and 'possums, there is also a bobcat. But this isn't about the bobcat. This is about the wee creatures that populate the lawn that I drive across atop of four steel blades, spinning away, giving it their whole 29 horses worth. What's interesting is how things like squirrels and birds behave around the mower. If I walk up to a squirrel, it runs up the nearest tree, of course. But when I'm on the mower, it just sort of scoots out of the way. It doesn't run, it just moves over and goes about its business. The birds love the thing. Mockingbirds, bluejays, starlings and grackles will hop around places that have just been mowed, eating the insects that have been flushed out, while the swallows will swoop right in front of the mower, catching up the insects that flee as it approaches. Yesterday it was too windy for the birds, with gusts up 40 mph, so as I drove up the drive I noticed three swallows and a juvenile grackle sitting on the blacktop. They eyed the mower, and hopped out of the way as I passed. They looked disappointed. It has occurred to me that they seem remarkably well suited to taking advantage of the chaos generated in the wake of a large object as it moves through a grassland. This makes sense, since all of the native birds evolved in tandem with Cenozoic megafauna, like bison, camels, horses, and mastadons, and probably followed the herds around, nipping up any insects that were flushed from cover as they traveled through the landscape. So every week or two, I steer my Anthropocene mount over an artificial savanna of live oaks and African grasses, running on fuels first laid down during the Carboniferous, in a weird conjunction of age and place.

100 Thai Dogs 77-80

100 Thai Dogs 73-76

Giant Crickets

Elinor likes giant crickets just as much as lizards.

100 Thai Dogs 69-72

Circle of Life

(If you're squeamish you might want to stop this page before the photos load all the way.)

The circle of life in our house veers in strange ways. Tien, like all cats, love to catch things that are moving fast, like birds, cockroaches, or lizards. I liberate the birds if I can get to them in time, I praise him for the cockroaches, and the lizards, well that used to be problematic, because he never eats them, or at least not all the way. I don't know if I've mentioned our hedgehog Elinor on this blog yet (J has a post on Biciclette about when we took her to school), but she has helped close the loop where lizards are concerned. The other day Tien caught a finger sized skink, Elinor happened to be awake at the time since we'd just fished her out from under the fridge, and I thought, 'Good I'll feed it to her.' By the time I stepped out of the kitchen to help her find it, she was already munching away. I think she could smell the blood.

100 Thai Dogs 65-68

100 Thai Dogs 61-64

100 Thai Dogs 57-60

100 Thai Dogs 53-56

100 Thai Dogs 49-52

Balloon Animals

We made these in class today with the 3 &4 year olds. I think they turned out cute!

mouse

dog

rabbit

hedgehog

boxer

dragon

cat

water buffalo

bird

pig