Cat Parables

When they had all gathered together, the cat was completely silent, and some speculated that perhaps he had fallen asleep. The cat slowly opened wide his eyes, and winked. Several of his disciples tried to interpret what this meant, though of course none of them were correct.

Early snow

Nothing like a little snow, to bring one out of a blog slump.



Every channel forecast snow, but I didn't pay much attention to their percentage predictions. My belief that it would actually snow, in Alabama, in early December, was exactly 0%.



But it did snow, a little.



Jasmine romped. She adores cold weather.



The chickens were wary. It might have been some evil plot, after all.



I don't remember the trees ever looking so nice, after such a light snow.



I hope the rosemary didn't get too frizzen.

Acoustic Cafe

Yellow Bearded Iris

My wildflower buddies and I made another visit to the Acoustic Cafe Amphitheater.


Steve Masterson

Steve very graciously took us on another guided tour. Most of my flower photos didn't turn out well (it was too sunny) - the ones from last year are here.


Mabel and the formerly perfectly fine soaker hose.

Mabel's the new pup on the block, and she's very friendly. She's still at the chewing stage though, and will probably be on vacation during the upcoming festival, so as to save tent ropes and such.

Sadly, the lovable Buster passed away since last year. Lucy is as aloof as ever.


Tadpole

Tadpole walked with us. Her sister (Sarah) joined us briefly, but was skittish of the camera. Katy the calico slept through the whole thing.


Fiery Searcher

On our walk, we spotted a Fiery Searcher, Calosoma scrutator. They're also known as Caterpillar Hunters.


Another view

So brilliant in the sun! If not the most beautiful beetle, he's at least in the top ten. He was large, as beetles go, and very fast.


Take off your shoes

Also new since last year, this exquisite hardwood floor (Ash).

There are some wonderfully worked details. I didn't forget to photograph them, but I did forget to remove the lens hood. (The lens hood is great for reducing flare when you're taking pictures in the sun. When using the flash, it causes horrible shadows. Duh.)


Skull tree

The skull tree. Still wishing I'd thought of that. Now that we have Jasmine the bone-stealing dog, we don't find the number of skulls that we once did. But I'll remember Steve's advice for cleaning such things: stick them in an ant bed. Reeeeally wish I'd known that before the antler incident.



The Acoustic Cafe is all about String music, and this is its museum. (Click for a larger version.)

It includes:
John Hartford's bowler hat,
Sam Bush's whiskey bottle,
Vassar Clements' pipe, and
Duke Bardwell's photos of playing with Elvis.

Now, Steve knows that while my friends and I do enjoy string music, we are pretty much totally ignorant about it. "You may not know his name," he said, speaking of John Hartford, "but you know his song, Gentle on My Mind."

I didn't realize though, til just now when looking up his links, that I did know John Hartford. He was on the PBS special Songs of the Civil War, that I had taped years ago, and watched dozens of times.

Here he is singing my favorite version of my favorite Civil-War-era song, Lorena:


link

Just lovely.

I looked for another song I remembered from the show, Sweet Honey in the Rock's rendition of Climbing Jacob's Ladder. Couldn't find the video, but I believe this contains the audio:


link

OK, one more. Another favorite from that show was Hard Times Come Again No More, sung by Kate and Anna McGarrigle and their families. I found this somewhat later version by them that I actually like better, and it has the added bonus of Emmylou Harris:


link

Rufus Wainwright is in both versions. Here's a link to the original, with a much younger Rufus and Martha.


Waiting to greet you at the Acoustic Cafe Amphitheater...

With parakeet accompaniment

It was more spectacular before I thought to grab the camera, of course.



I grew up hearing this called sheet lightning or heat lightning, but to be correct I think it's actually called intra-cloud lightning.

I didn't realize, until playing it back, how loudly the frogs out in the pond were singing. And inside, you can hear Beaker (our parakeet, aka budgie) squawking, whistling, and talking. At around 11-12 seconds he says, "crazy bird". You'll have to have your ears pricked and the sound turned up to hear it.

How to mesmerize a cat

I'm not sure if it's the groovy screensaver, the Grateful Dead, or the combo.

Comfortable sleeping positions

Cats have funny ideas about comfortable sleeping positions. Trouble is, I always wake them up, trying to take pictures.

I haven't managed to photograph my favorite yet. Sometimes I'll glance over towards the chair, and just see a paw (or two, or four) sticking straight up in the air.

Then I usually wake them up by laughing too loudly, before I can even get the camera.

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Submitted to the Friday Ark.

Should have known better

"Look! Something caught a rabbit!"



While I was bent trying to focus on the fur (proud of myself for spotting something so well-camouflaged and so small), my husband got the bigger picture.

"The rest of him's over here."



OK, ew.

"Did he escape, but get mortally wounded? Did he just crawl over there to die?" (Latent detective tendencies in high gear!)

"Well, probably not. His head is missing."

Had we blundered up and scared a predator away in mid-snack? Hubby moved the carcass a little, and it was stiff. So, no.

Jasmine discovered some strewn rabbit guts, and happily gobbled up several bits before we noticed and tugged her away. Yuck, Jasmine.

On down the path, I had an idea. "Hey, let's get the game cam and put it there, to see if any critter comes back later to finish his dinner." (Latent detective tendencies on fire!)

I'd been moaning about moving the camera for some time now. We were not getting anything interesting where it had been stationed for the past several months.

While hubby was setting up the camera, I found more evidence.



"Maybe if I put this on the blog, a bird expert could tell me what type of bird this feather came from..."

OK, so a raptor (owl? buteo? accipiter?) was probably not going to come back to finish off the rabbit, but surely we'd get some cool wildlife shot of hungry scavengers.

But I really should have known better.

The only one who came back to finish anything was Jasmine.



Bad dog!

Oh, well.

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If you want to see the Cottontail in full headless gory glory, you can click here. He's missing a portion of his side too. It's bloody. It's not for everybody.

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On the feather, I was thinking "owl" but I really have no idea. (So if you do, please post a comment.) It seems similar to the photo on this page titled "Great Horned Owl feather". That would be cool, since we've never seen one here before.

Cat puzzle

A purrfect fit? (Sorry, can't seem to stop myself when it comes to bad puns.) In a change from the normal procedure, George has crawled on top of Ginger in this picture.

Seven things

While I was gone, Twinks asked me to do a meme. I'm supposed to list seven random things, but since I'm contrary, I'm going to list seven things that happened during my lost four months. It's longer than my normal posts, but since I'll be out of town for a few days, feel free to read in shifts!

1. I joined The Gym.
Really, that's what the gym in Oneonta is called: The Gym. I joined with a friend, and wheedled my way into a good deal via a long-term, prepaid, early-hours contract. I can't say I've lost any weight, but I feel in better shape. I'm getting to know my friend a lot better too, since we gab for about four hours a week more than we used to.

2. I thought I'd found a diamond.
People with a five-carat diamonds don't shop at Wal-Mart, I suppose, but I was momentarily dazed by the karmic thrill of it all. My mother lost her engagement ring stone over 40 years ago, and I imagined it had returned, with interest! Turned out to be only a cubic zirconia though, drat. Here is how you tell the difference. I couldn't read a newspaper through the CZ, and was already dreamily wondering how long the police would have to hold it before it was deemed unclaimed. The dot test worked like a charm, though. Like a big, balloon-bursting charm.



3. The garden refused to bend to my will. Again.
I had fun with the Zinnia experiment though. I got a late start, and Powdery Mildew crept in when we left town for a week. The grass got way out of control, as usual. Somehow I still managed to grow a few flowers to donate to Hospice. Maybe next year I will finally have my act together enough to get them there throughout the blooming season.

4. I won a major award.
Because I could remember the Alabama state bird, mammal, fossil, etc., when an emergency preparedness expert spoke to our wildflower group. OK, the award wasn't really all that major, but I basked in the egghead trivia glow anyway. Then a guy even more pointy-headed than me whined that my answer of "some kind of whale" to "What is the state dinosaur?" wasn't up to par. "The Basilosaurus cetoides is the state fossil, not dinosaur!" he moaned. I hugged my MRE and ran out of the meeting room.

5. We let Anatoli go. He'd developed a lump that we decided may have been from improper nutrition or insufficient sunlight. Since he was wild-born, we figured he'd fare better on his own. We saw an unusually high number of anoles this fall, but I was never sure if any of them were Anatoli.

6. I had to wait in line to vote!
There were all of four people in front of us when we arrived at our polling place. An elderly couple let us cut in front of them though, since the man was still searching his wallet for ID. There were a few local issues on the ballot so turnout was very high. The tallies from my precinct, not exactly what you'd call a democratic stronghold, included:
Obama 45, McCain 450
Figures 52, Sessions 442 (US Senate race)
Tag fee increase: Yes 59, No 392
Wet/Dry referendum: Yes (Wet): 226, No: 270
The ratios for the whole county were similar. I still haven't figured out how Vivian Figures, a State Senator from Mobile, received more votes than Obama. Most people in north Alabama weren't even familiar with her. I read that her budget was $22,000; the incumbent Sessions spent multi-millions. (I have loved her ever since I read that she was able to get the outdated, misogynistic Alabama State Senate dress code changed... the one that said women couldn't wear pant suits or slacks on the Senate floor!)
We needed the tag fee increase ($15), which would have gone strictly towards road maintenance. I had a feeling it wouldn't pass, but I was surprised at the resounding defeat.
I'm glad we stayed a dry county. I wouldn't mind alcohol sales in stores or restaurants, but didn't want a bar across the street from us. Rural counties don't have a lot of regulations, so it could have been a real possibility.

7. Alabama football, woohoo!
I had to say that before we play Auburn and Georgia Florida, just in case.

Funny Bunny Sunday

I dreamed that I took my favorite photo ever, and decided that the definitive title for it would be Funny Bunny Sunday. My husband pointed out (in the dream) that the picture was of our cat Ginger, and not a rabbit. "It'll still work," I said.

I sat with camera in hand for at least an hour, obsessed with recreating my dream. I waited for Ginger to do anything remotely funny-bunnyish. But mostly he was just interested in sleeping.


"You are not putting that on the internet."*


Kind of bunny.


Kind of funny.

Ginger loves to crawl up my husband's chest, arch his back high in the air, then settle very, very close to the face. I tease him. "That cat looooves you."

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*I was able to change his mind.

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P.S. I forgot to add a link to the Circus of the Spineless earlier. Sorry, Doug!

Beaker and TV

Beaker has become pretty excited about television lately. Particularly about trying to out-voice it. If the TV's on, you can throw that "parakeets aren't loud birds" business out the window. It's a new habit, and I'm not sure what brought it on. Maybe he thinks we should read more.

Anatoli the Anole

My husband rescued a baby Carolina Anole (Anolis carolinensis, a.k.a. Green Anole) from certain death. He recovered nicely, and is now living in Geckie's old cage.

He's much more swift and agile than Geckie, and unlike a leopard gecko, he can cling to the glass sides of the aquarium.

We named him Anatoli. Yes, that's Anatoli the Anole, in keeping with our ludicrously juvenile reptile-naming scheme.

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See FC's recent post on Mood Lizards for a great series of pictures of a Green Anole changing colors.

Interloper

Who invited him to this meeting?!

Things that howl in the night

The video is here if you can't see it. (Sound only.)



That's Jasmine barking in the background, trying to be scary.

Yesterday, when I opened the gate to drive out, a very worried look came over her and she ran out like a shot. I believe she has a psychic power that tells her when I'm on my way to a meeting (usually in a hurry and without the need for a lot of extra dog hair), because that's the only time she ever escapes. She hadn't done it in a long time though, and I couldn't figure out what had possessed her.

She rushed down the driveway to bark at the neighbor's big red cooler, that was sitting on our side of the ditch. She quickly had it cowering in submission, apparently, and zipped back inside the gate before I could even work up a good amount of curse words.

R.I.P. Geckie

She was a good gecko.

I think her poor vision contributed to her not eating very well, especially lately. Or possibly something else was wrong. Leopard geckos can live to 25 years in captivity, and she was only eight, if the guy we bought her from was telling the truth. (She was supposed to be two when we bought her.)

She always went through periods of not eating, but would always snap out of it and make a comeback. But not this time. She died yesterday.

In this picture she was shedding her skin. Look how fat her tail was! (They store excess fat there.)

I think we're going to have to move her cage. Out of habit, I keep glancing down every time I pass it, expecting to see her. I didn't cry when we first found her dead, but that dang empty cage gets me every time.

Geckers

Geckie loves her (very fancy) humid-hide. It's filled with moist sphagnum moss and helps her shed her skin.











Plus I think she just likes the getaway. She's still not eating much though.

Click the pictures for larger leopard gecko-ness.

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Did you see the Friday Ark?

Multi-purpose gifts

Dear in-laws, we thank you for the fruit!



And so do the cats.

George especially. She sits in the box and seems particularly content, at least until someone starts flashing a camera around.

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Submitted to the Friday Ark.

Oscar

The cat who's trying to adopt us.

I should say, the wild tomcat who's trying to adopt us.

The wary cat who won't let us near him, but who will handle all the food we might happen to leave lying around.

The wily cat who really needs to go to the vet but can't (so far) be caught.

Fresh from a recent Odd Couple viewing, Hubby named him Oscar.

80

Nothing much has been happening. Work, work, work. Hot, hot, hot. Dry, dry, dry. That's about it.



We went to Mom's over the weekend. While everyone else worked on birthday-present-oddjobs, I played with my nieces.



It was of course very borrrrring for children to be stuck in a house full of old people and no computers.



My old Johnny West horses.



Ye olde styrofoam watering hole.



Elvis thought it was all very childish.

Dusty

I'm still getting used to the new camera. There are a lot of buttons.



And the print in the owner's manual is very small.



Last night when I was trying to take a picture of the peppers Hubby had strung up, the camera refused to operate, and kept flashing an odd symbol at me.

About the time I started suspecting that the symbol meant, "You're an idiot," I realized that it was actually telling me, "You took the memory card out of the camera and forgot to put it back." Which I suppose amounts to the same thing, really.

So, which picture of Dusty looks best on your computer? Or can you tell a difference? Does it matter? The first one is straight out of the camera and the other two are lightened a bit.