After we spent all that time in last Friday’s comments talking about squirrels, Katherine sent me a childhood picture of her, her two brothers, and the squirrel they were raising!
Katherine said: Here is a pic of my brothers and me on Easter Sunday. Bert, the brother on the left, has our squirrel, Friskie, on his shoulder. A hunter shot the mother and then discovered the babies. Knew my mother would take one and she raised him on a bottle. We loved him. He did get crazy wild running around the house, though. Mom said he’d be jumping from the curtains on top of the cabinets, running up her body as she cooked. He finally decided one day that he’d go see about living with some other squirrels. Probably wanted to get married, etc.
Since then, my parents raised two more bottle babies. If I can find a picture of them, I’ll send it. They got the biggest kick out of those two especially. Had a huge cage built to have them out back once they were big enough. Then the next step was setting them free. I guess two running around the house would have been chaos!
Is that the most adorable picture, or what? Look at those kids in their Easter finery, and Bert all casual and “Yep. Just a man and his squirrel!” I love it!
(Thanks, Katherine! I am dying from the cute!)
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Pardon the over-exposedness and blurriness of this picture, but as soon as he saw the camera in my hands, Jake stomped off in a huff. Sometimes he doesn’t mind having his picture taken, and sometimes he’s SO OVER my nonsense. Before I got the camera out, he was vigorously licking Silvio’s head, and Silvio was purring his little head off.
Jake and Paulie Walnuts, snuggled up for a nap.
Silvio and Stefan.
Silvio is such a smug little monkey.
And then Stefan was like “Let me rip your throat out!” and Silvio was all “I’ve made a terrible mistake!”
Silvio getting some Tommy love. That Silvio, he gets around.
He lubs the Toms.
“We bonding, lady. You go ‘way.”
Sitting right there on the floor (next to my desk) is a handheld vacuum. I’m sure it would work well to vacuum litter and other detritus off the stairs, but that’s not what I use it for. What I use it for is to capture wasps that get into the house. In the fall, when it gets cold and then warms back up for a couple of days, it really brings the wasps into the house. I cannot for the life of me figure out how they get into the house, but my theory is (1) around the fireplace (WHICH I HATE) in the dining room, and (2) under the windows, because we have cheap and horrible windows and I’m surprised the entire state’s wasp population isn’t currently residing in our house. Last week, we had three very warm days – it even hit 80 on Wednesday. The wasps reacted as they always do, saying (buzzing?) “It’s warm out here! We should go inside!”
So that handheld vacuum sitting right there had around 15 angry wasps buzzing around in the canister part. (See the baggie on the end of the tube? That’s because wasps CERTAINLY CAN crawl right back out of that little vacuum, and the baggie stops them. I mean, they don’t ALL figure out how to get out, but it happens often enough.)(Hey, what’s more fun than having a handheld vacuum full of angry buzzing wasps? That’s right, a BAGGIE with ONE angry buzzing wasp!)
Meadow’s attention was caught by the sound of all those angry trapped wasps.
“Stand back, lady! I’ll take care of this!”
::WHAP::
Because I know you want to know, once there are a large number of wasps in there, I put the whole vacuum in the freezer (or outside, if it’s cold enough) and empty it outside the next morning. Don’t even start with me about how I should set them free after I’ve trapped them. Did I mention that they’re angry stinging insects who want to sting me, preferably in my face? I hate those evil things, and they need to die.
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“I’m sorry, I’m not dressed for visitors. You go ‘way.”
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Previously
2012: “It just keeps going AROUND!”
2011: Meet the new guys!
2010: “No, dear, your toes don’t ‘look funny.’ That’s what chicken toes are supposed to look like!”
2009: The many faces of Mike Teevee.
2008: Delmar always looks so SMUG.
2007: And to you I say, because I really like Elle (NO we’re not adopting her!) and I have started calling her Ellie Belly and I want to have her around for a little while longer, so shaddup.
2006: No entry.
2005: No entry.