Emma’s Fantabulous Blog

Purring kitten vs. toilet paper.

This makes me crack up in hysterics everytime I watch it. See Devon? We totally need a kitty. How much trouble can one be?

Fifi and Devon like to snuggle indoors. Hello super cute-ness!

I just got home from my 3rd shift at the wildlife center. Boy, am I exhausted.

Today I:

• Cleaned out “Raccoon City”. (the smaller cages for baby raccoons once they don’t need to be hand-fed anymore)
• Cleaned the “Raccoon Room”. (the room for baby raccoons after they weigh 100 grams/move out of Raccoon City, but before they are old/big enough to go into the outdoor “Runs”.) They are just old enough to be super curious and climbing up your leg, but not old enough to be scared when you stomp and yell to make them get off of you.
• Cleaned Mallard chick cages, and got to pick them up to move them. Squirmy little feather balls.
• Defrosted some feeder quails and mice. Yummy.
• Washed more dishes, of course.
• Mixed baby Deer formula.
• Mixed baby Raccoon formula.
• Went to Albertson’s (a grocery store) to pick-up old produce that they donate to us.
• Picked tons and tons of seeded grass for the Geese… Talk about tedious!

Today wasn’t insanely dirty like last week. Which was nice. I got to handle a bunch of cute little fur and feather balls.

But there’s always something sad happening as well. We have a garter snake that was brought in last night. Apparently he had accidentally been run over by a bicycle and the top of his mouth is fractured and he can’t use his tongue. He’ll probably be euthanized in the next day or two. I did help collect some mini-slugs for him to eat, so maybe he’ll be able to enjoy those beforehand.

But yeah. An interesting shift to say the least.

This evening I was really homesick. Missing family and my girls and friends and generally just the hopping social life that I had in Boston. I want to go home and visit, but plane tickets on JetBlue are running over $500 round-trip this summer. I feel bad about spending that kind of money on a “social call” when we’re trying to save money to move back and buy a home. However moving eastward seems like it is at the very least 6 months out, although who knows if it could be 2 years. (I hope to the lemur that it won’t be that long, i might go mad.)

Anyways. I have an art journal, that I used to write in/draw stuff/tape in photos. I hadn’t touched it in 3 years. I pulled it out tonight and just started writing down what I was thinking… Not nearly as poetic as most of the stuff I’d written in there, but it certainly felt good to get stuff down on paper. I think i get stuff stuck in my head and dwell on it and it kills me. I forgot how good it felt to write stuff down… I really want to keep contributing stuff to the journal.. So I can also have happy/positive entries.

And I need to start writing back chick poetry again… Its pretty bad/sappy/weird, but was a lot of fun to go back and read what I wrote back in high school.

Ok… Now to share some of my old school journal entries. (p.s. the drawings were both done with ballpoint pen.)

(more…)

Poor Fifi! Devon and I came home from his “leaving work” party and going to see the new Fantastic 4 movie to find our very sad looking iguana in her Christmas tree. She her body stuck between one of the light cords and the pole center of the tree. Her back legs were too big to go through the loop, and her scales make it hard to go backward.

I feel so terrible! She could have been in that position for an hour or 7 hours! Luckily her dad, Devon came to the rescue with a pair of wire cutters.

But yeah. Fifi is all stressed out. Her head is white and her eyes are red. Some of her back spikes are banged up and she has some discoloration on some of her back scales.

Ok. Time for some cuddle time with Fifi.

This question was raised on one of the forums I frequent:

“Here is the scenario:

4 guys go on a golfing trip, but they can only get 1 hotel room. The hotel room has 2 queen sized beds. Do the guys suck it up and sleep in beds together, or are 2 of them sleeping on the floor?”

I asked Devon the question and he had a very definite answer that he seemed to feel very strongly about, which I’ll let him explain…

As for myself I have no problem sharing a bed with a girl or a guy on an overnight trip… Who cares if I end up drooling in my sleep or whatever? When my girls and i have overnight get-togethers in cramped quarters, one of us always ends up getting spooned by accident. It’s no biggie. It’s cost effective and I gain body heat that I’m totally lacking in….

But yeah, I’m just wondering about everyone else.

Today was my 2nd volunteer shift at P.A.W.S’s Wildlife Center. I’m exhausted and all I want to do right now is settle down with a nice chilled glass of wine and veg in front of the TV. I spent the greater part of the day hauling tree branches, buckets of water and food, hoses and animal waste up and down a big hill.

Some crazy things that I’ve done:

• Touched a dead eagle’s foot. (The skin on their feet is as soft as a baby’s.)
• Cut mice in half with scissors. (The mice were dead and were lunch for some baby barn owls. Still, the experience almost made me lose my lunch.)
• Washed dishes for a total of 4.5 hours out of the 12 hours I’ve been there.
• Held a pigeon being medicated.
• Watched an ornery goose, with a broken wing in a cast, being wrangled and tube medicated as it honked. I felt so bad for the stressed goose, but also knew that he was being helped.
• Cleaned cages/hung out with: baby mallards, baby/juvi raccoons, song birds, crows, juvi squirrels and juvi opossums.

Some things that I’ve learned:

• I’m totally anal retentive when it comes to doing dishes. (I’m truly scared to see how some people do their dishes at home…)
• Baby raccoons are insanely adorable and equally dirty little buggers.
• Birds might poop on your head when you clean their out door cages.
• Wild animals eat some really gross stuff.
• The smell of coyote poo makes me dry heave.
• There is no way to look stylish wearing mud boots.
• Containers labeled “Ground Kitten” and “Ground Puppy” aren’t actually ground-up companion animals from next door.
• I really, really, really love what I’m doing.

The Iguana Song

This is great.. It’s like the lizard version of Raffi.

The lady who does my nails is moving and isn’t allowed to keep her pitbull in the new place she lives, so she’s trying to find someone or a no-kill shelter to take her. Unfortunately its hard to find someone willing to, based on the dog’s breed. I like puppies and I’m not scared of any breeds in particular, as long as they’ve been raised and trained well.

So I asked Devon what he thought. With him doing some work travel in the future, it would be really nice to have a big dog around to scare off any possible intruders. Plus Fifi is always recruiting powerful beasts for her army. Devon wasn’t too keen on the idea, mainly based on the problems with the breed. Some counties have bans on owning pitbulls (although some have the same for iguanas…..). Also, I think insurance would go up for a household that included such a powerful dog….

So I ask Devon: “What type of dog would you be open to adopting?”. His reply? “Rottweilers.”

(begin snark) Yeah, because Rottweilers are sooo less capable of chewing off someone’s face. (end snark)

ok… So Pitbull vs. Rottweiler:

vs.

Devon had a Rottweiler when he was growing up in Vermont, and the stories he tells certainly makes them sound more appealing. Anya sounds like she was really great and sweet… Rotweilers were bred to pull carts and protect children… And they look pretty cute. And the more I look at Pit Bulls, the larger and scarier their mouths look.. although they still look pretty cute as well.

But yeah. I like daags.

Sorry that i haven’t posted in forEVER. I’ve been a sleepy, uninspired monkey.

For those who haven’t been following Devon’s personal blog, you may interested to know that Devon has accepted a new job and has given his 2 weeks notice at AT&T. He’s going to be doing a consulting gig for a company based out of Columbus, OH and basically will be heading the website re-design for the People’s Choice Awards. He starts July 2nd, for the first couple of weeks he’ll have to do a little bit of traveling to Ohio. I’m going to be super lonely.

But overall it’s good. D will get a raise and he’ll get to work from home. Although him working from home could cut into my Oprah-watching time…. We’ll see how it goes with him invading the home front. It’s great in the long run, because this job will allow us to live anywhere, setting our plan to move eastward into play.

So hopefully Devon likes the new job! And wonderfulness ensues.