English? Who needs that? I'm never going to England! - Homer Simpson

I have the feeling this will be a topic I cover in more than one blog. There's just so much to discuss!

When contemplating my move to England a lot of friends were 'helpful' (we'll call it that anyway) and said things like 'Well in England at least you'll already know the language.'  Oh how wrong they were!

Accents come and go, and mine is slowly going, but words and phrases tend to stick. When I moved to England I had to learn words/meanings all over again. No joke. And I had to be careful what I said!  If you mention a fanny pack clipped around someone's pants you've offended WAY more people than you ever would have thought possible with such an innocent sentence!

Speaking of English words-when you think of things English people say what's the first word that comes to mind?
Go on-take a minute and think.
If you are thinking 'Bloody' then you should wash your filthy gob out right now! Lets put that one over on the 'Things you never say in front of your English Mother-in-Law' list.
Actually while we're discussing the list lets add 'bugger'. Dictionary.com defines bugger pretty well so if you wanna know what it means look it up, or just take my word for it-it's definately on the 'T Y N S I F O Y E M I L' list.

Say something like 'You can bloody well bugger off to hell.' and you can expect to be struck by lighting almost immediately!

Now, fellow Americans, did your mother or grandmother ever say something to the effect of  'Get your fanny over here.'?  If she did I can promise you she's not from England. Not directly anyway. 
Here it means something to the effect of 'buns, booty, bottom' etc.  In England, however, only women have fanny's.  Now I'll give you a minute to figure out what I mean.

Take your time. Then apply your new knowledge to the phrase 'fanny pack' and you'll understand why, in England, they choose to call it a 'bum bag'.  Everyone has bums... pretty much.

Lets take another perfectly innocent phrase and see how it can land you in hot water.
''You've got a little something on your pants.'
Not risque enough for you? How about 'You've got a little something on your pants, come here I'll get that for you.'
Nope nope nope!
Pants=undies folks! The word you're looking for is TROUSERS! If you can see someone's pants then that means they're at least half naked!
I've gotta wrap this up, but lets apply what you've learned so far.  Here's a sentence or two that's sure to get you kicked out of all family parties!
'Oi you little bugger! Get your bloody fanny over here! You've got something on your pants. I'll get it for you.'
Translation:
Oi you little £$^^%£ Get your ££%     £"£$%%^ over here! You've got something on your underwear. I'm a perv.'




I've gotta go to sleep now folks. But next time we'll discuss phrases that involve such things as 'donkey's years' and 'swinging a cat'.  Don't worry-no animals will be harmed, and no mother in laws will be offended!
g'night ya little buggers!

Is it just me or is EVERYTHING funny when I'm drinking?!

I don't drink. I don't. But my alter-ego does.

She's the woman you'll meet after I've had a good 2-3 drinks and I'm no longer scared of the world.  *I* am very shy, she isn't.  But she IS funny. Or she thinks she is, and people tend to laugh a lot when my drunk alter-ego's around so I assume she is in fact funny once in a while at least.

When Scott & I lived in England neither of us drank really. Holidays & Birthdays and special occasions only. We moved to Wisconsin and, surprise surprise! that changed.  It's taken me 2 years of living here but I now have increased my alcohol tolerance to that of a high school girl. Which is to say I can drink 2 drinks before I start giggling and after 3, if they're good strong ones, I sometimes forget my name.  Not always, but sometimes.
It seems there are sooo many drinking opportunities in this small town! There's a lot to celebrate! Weddings, Births, Graduations, Fridays-all seem to require consumption of yummy drinks! Now you all can keep your beer, and the associated burps and belly that normally follows, and I'll stick to the sweet girly drinks thank you very much!  What can I say, I have a sweet tooth-I like sweet drinks! If that makes me a sissy girl, well, so be it.  I'll still have fun and get my sweet fix at the same time. =D WIN WIN!
So we had a Wedding this past Friday. This requires double the celebration-both a Wedding AND a Friday! Wa HOO! And guess who's turn it was to drink!

There she is. We'll call her 'Other Beth'. As you can see this was well into the night.  It looks like she's standing up here but chances are she was actually falling backwards and someone just happened to catch this shot right before.  Don't worry, even if she did fall she didn't feel a thing, promise.
She didn't feel much pain at all that night. While dancing on the dance floor ((which even 'Other Beth' has to be drunk to do cause she's very inhibited)) there were tiny bits of glass on the floor. Now I don't know who made the rule but there's the 'kick your heals off and boogy' rule that seems to apply at weddings (Or at the Hitching Post-right Amy? =D ) Anyway drink was spilled everywhere and 'Other Beth' kept stepping on bits of glass. She never did, however, bleed! At first she thought maybe drinking gave her an incredible healing super power. After all-she has other super powers that are not noticed on a day to day basis but are intensely magnified by drink.
She can, for example, pee 1000 times a night while drinking. She can avoid walking in a straight line despite all efforts. She can successfully forget at least 2 letters of the American English Alphabet. She becomes a FANTASTIC dancer, regardless of what videos may show. But alas, it turns out incredible healing was not one of her super powers. The glass was actually little beads that had fallen off the Bride's wedding dress and were quite harmless. Painful to step on in bare feet, but no blood was drawn and no stitches were required. 
Now, as I've said, everything is funny when 'Other Beth' drinks.  Thing is-'Every-Day-Beth' likes to take photos.  Occasionally 'Other Beth', while performing one of the 1000 trips to the loo, will find the camera and decide that the bathroom is a good place to take photos of random things. Somewhere on my facebook page I have a photo of the soap(with a clown fish on the bottle) from the Helm Bar in La Crosse.  This past Friday was no different. When will folks learn to not let 'Other Beth' take cameras to the bathroom! Sheesh. Fortunately they're never inappropriate, just odd. For example...

Now. This must have seemed like a good time to take a photo of my new shoes! I love these shoes. They're super soft and comfy. Also the anklet-I made that! It has aventurine and fluorite and silver on it.  Still...perhaps not the best setting for a 'new shoes' photo?
Other odd photos turn up the morning after the night before too!  I didn't take these, nor can I be held accountable for my actions IN these.  'Other-Beth' has a mind of her own...

Chris, the groom is behind me here and some other guy that I talked to but forgot his name-another super power perhaps-ability to immediately forget a name?! perhaps not. Anyway I'm sure that, once again, this seemed like an ideal time for a photo but looking back I can't help but wonder what was the context!

I love how this photo is blurry-it really captures how I was feeling by this point! Ran into a friend at the wedding and we were having a good old laugh!



See!

If you know my friend here you'll know why this photo is fantastic. If you don't know her, just know it was a good, say your prayers & count your blessings, kind of photo.

Here's an example of why you (Kurt) should not park your truck next to my car!

Your windshield wipers WILL be pulled up and all of the crap that is in the back of your truck will be put on display for everyone to see. I'm not saying I did this... I'm just saying this happens to people named Kurt who park next to me at Weddings on Friday nights.

On the way out of the reception we passed the other part of the bar where a few folks were playing a game called 'Bulls Eye'. This game, which is VERY cosmopolitan, requires sophisticated equipment consisting of:
A) 1 Ring
B) 1 piece of string tied to part A and hung from the ceiling
and
C) a hook screwed into the wall.
The object of the game is to swing Part A so that it hooks onto part C.
So I see these folks trying to play this game and I suddenly remember that I am FANTASTIC at it! So, after 3 attempts at finding the door to get in, I made it out to the balcony where they were playing so that I could show them how it's done. 
I mentioned something about how they may have seen me on the US Olympic Bulls-Eye team and they thought I was joking! We had a few good laughs and then I had to go.  I was HUNGRY!

Special thanks goes out to my designated driver, and hubby of 13 years, Scott.  He took me to McDonalds.  Now I was still pretty out of my face so everything was still funny.

Here's Scott. I ordered a cheeseburger and he said they weren't serving cheese burgers as it was so late at night(This is true! Idiots) so I said I'd have a fish sandwich. He explained that they also weren't serving fish sandwiches. So I asked if I could have a cheeseburger.

Then he made this face!








Fortunately 'Other Beth' still had the camera so thought it'd be a good idea to capture the entire McDonalds Drive Through Experience!

I even managed to get a photo of the lady at the window!


Scott didn't find it funny, which of course made it even funnier!  Needless to say, she was very nice but had no cheeseburgers or fish sandwiches. I ended up with large fries and a soda. Neither of which were all that funny, but were yummy just the same.

Here are a couple other photos from the night, just for fun!

There's Kurt.... If he only knew what was about to happen to his truck! hee hee.

Then there's this photo Kurt took of Scott and I but it's almost like he wasn't looking at faces when he took it....

Then there are a couple of  'I don't even want to know what was going on...' photos. :)

And finally...

Good night!

Feel free to comment or share a 'Remember that time you were drinking((which I probably won't remember)) and you said/did/thought/felt/smelled/tasted/looked at something that was funny?' stories! =D

Do you even know what an Alpaca is?!

I blame craigslist.

You see they have a whole section devoted to 'farm & garden' where you can find a wide variety of animals for sale at very reasonable prices! My morning routine consists of a bucket of coffee, facebook check to see what folks in England were up to while I was sleeping and then craigslist searching for animals I NEED!  So there I was one morning sipping away and I saw, for sale, Alpacas for $100.  Now, don't tell scott, but I wasn't 100% sure what an alpaca was but $100 for 1 sounded like a good deal so I knew I needed one.  I'd even dare to call it an educational investment since, if we did purchase one, I'd finally know what an alpaca was. There you go-has to be done. 

Once I opened the ad and realized they were little llamas I was sold! How cool! Bit of research on good ol' google told me they were very easy to care for and you could sell their fleece for $$$. Excellent-when trying to convince Scott I need another animal I find it helpful to be able to say ''We can make money off of it!'   Obviously he knows I don't mean we can sell it for meat, no way!  Believe it or not I get a little bit attached to the critters around here. I spend a lot of time looking after them and they are so much fun! When they die no one is eaten.  Normally we bury them, have a little service and then back inside for a luncheon. Note-if the funeral was for a chicken we try to avoid eating chicken at the luncheon but sometimes chicken is on sale and that happens to be what we were having for lunch that day anyway. Regardless-we do not eat our PET chickens.

Anyway! After pulling a few strings and a small but dignified amout of begging, we went alpaca shopping!  YAY! The thing about Scott is, he pretends he doesn't want all these critters around but when I go to get one for myself he always ends up getting one for himself too! So it was no surprise when he chose an alpaca for himself.
So we ended up with 2 alpacas. Our first dilemma was how to get them home.  Unlike the goats these fellas wouldn't fit in a laundry basket.  The owner of the alpaca farm said just put them in the back of the truck. No kidding! He told us that one guy purchased a few alpacas and took them home in his mini-van. NO JOKE! I didn't dare ask if they fought over who would ride shot gun or what radio station would be appropriate to play in the car when you have alpaca passengers.

So we loaded them up into the truck.  It wasn't all that difficult and they actually enjoyed the ride! Looking out the windows and making their little humming sounds whenever they saw something they approved of. ((Fyi-if you didn't know-an Alpaca makes a humming sound EXACTLY like Chewi from Star Wars. It's pretty cool actually.))

Apologies for anyone who had THIS view on that particular day:




So we were the proud owners of 2 Alpacas.  Mine, the chocolate coloured one, was already named ChaChi and seemed to know his name.  Scott's(the blonde one) was named Tempo but either didn't know his name or didn't care for it because he never really responded to it.  Now Scott tried to convince me at this point that 'Alpaca' sounded like 'El Packers' as in Green Bay.  He said we should change their names to Rogers and Raji.  Um...no. ChaChi was going to stay ChaChi but I told Scott he was free to call his 'El Packer' whatever he liked. And he did. Tempo's name was promptly changed to Raji(Since Raji is the biggest Packer and Tempo was the biggest Alpaca).
So just a recap. At this point our outside animals were 'Billy, Benny, ChaChi and Raji.' A trend had started. ((If you don't see it-read the names out loud and then feel free to say 'ah-ha' to yourself after.))
Scott had Raji                                                           and I had the lovely ChaChi
 

Though Raji had a secret crush on me!

Note! I do not advise kissing barn yard animals. To give the illusion of kissing hold the animals' favourite treat beside your cheek on the opposite side of the camera to give the illusion of kissing without spreading mysterious & most likely unpleasant germs.

Now the boys soon made themselves at home.  They became good friends with the goats eventually. Alpacas, like goats, are herd animals and like to be in groups.  We knew this but we had no idea just HOW attached they could get to their herd! One night this past summer we had gotten wind of another bad storm headed our way.  We huddled all of the animals up and put them in the 'Ark' also known as the little barn.  Alpacas and goats were all eventually stowed away safe and then, of course, no storm manifested. SO we went back to get the critters and release them from the ark out into the freedom of the front yard.  Starting with the biggest, we walked the Alpacas down. Or I should say we walked them PART of the way down.  The 'ark' is about 500 feet up the road from the house. The alpacas walked about half that distance and then would go no further.  We wondered if perhaps they knew something we didn't and the storm was going to occur after all. We tried all of the tricks we know to get them home. ((Two. We know two tricks-1. offer treats and 2. beg )) Neither trick worked.  Eventually I had a hunch-they missed the goats! So, after 30 or so minutes of trying to convince the alpacas to go home I was left standing in the road holding both of their lead ropes while Scott went back to the ark to get the goats. OMG! It was like the alpacas had been reuinited with their long lost friends! The goats ran up to the alpacas and then we led the goats into the front yard pen & the alpacas followed the goats in-easy as pie! Then, once secured in the pens, ChaChi sort of grunted at me in a 'It took you long enough to figure that out!' sort of way & then walked off to have a bite to eat.
Now we know-don't separate the goats and alpacas. They are odd, but a herd none the less.
The alpacas even came around
to tolerating the chickens eventually.


I'm sad to say we lost Raji Alpaca. He was traded to the Minnesota Vikings. No, not really. He died. It was a water skiing accident gone wrong.   Also joking. It's my coping mechanism, get over it! He's gone but not forgotten. One day I'll take the truck and go buy another one and put it in the front yard and just hope that Scott doesn't even notice! =D

Still ChaChi is as loving as ever! He's like a big teddy bear who loves neck cuddles and will happily use you as a scratching post if you let him. Though I have to warn you-if you come over for a visit and you are wearing open toed shoes with painted toe nails ChaChi often mistakes red painted toes for berries! He'll nibble! But he only has bottom teeth, so you don't have to worry too much. =D

Having a cuddle. =)

Checking for red painted toes to nibble! hee hee.












And just so you know-he doesn't spit, not at people anyway. He and Raji spat at each other a couple times but they don't spit at people. Even when we first got them and they were scared to death of us they never spat.  They look big but in the above photo for example ChaChi's fleece is about 4-5 inches long so if you imagine all of that cut off you'd see how tiny he really is. But man, all that fleece sure makes for good teddy bear cuddles! =D

Sorry folks, gotta cut this one a little short. The kitten has been playing with her toy mouse for a while now which would be cute had I not just realized it's not a toy mouse and is in fact an actual mouse! eek!

'do it like they do on the discovery channel.' aka backyard food chains.

Ok so here's the thing. I'm a vegetarian who likes to eat meat.  If I DO eat meat it can NOT in any way resemble an actual animal. If it has eyes on it and can look back at me-forget it!  If it has legs on it or IS a leg-nope. Anything that looks like it can run off my plate is welcome to leave.  Steaks make me ill. I always have visions of cows walking around with 'steak shaped sections' cut out of them! Yuk.  Even a large hamburger can make my stomach roll.

Now I will eat it if it in no way resembles an animal. Chicken nuggets-fine. Batter fried fish-no problem. Shrimp-if they are de-veined((cause that's just disgusting!)) can be counted as acceptable provided they are battered so I can't see their flesh! Double yuk.
As such, when people ask if I am a vegetarian I answer that ''I'm half-vegetarian.''.  Surprisingly most people don't question this contradiction. Fine by me!

Anyway my 'non-animal-shaped' food diet has allowed me to forget where meat comes from. Again-fine by me! I hate thinking about the whole process.
For example I live 10 or so miles from a 'cow factory' as we call it.  The phrase implies that it's a place where cows are put together, when in fact the opposite is true. The cows are 'processed'. ((yuk))
Now occasionally I'll be driving behind a trailer full of cows and the whole time I'm hoping and praying that the driver won't turn into the 'cow factory'.  There's always one sweet little pink nose sticking out of the back of the trailer as if to say 'See how cute I am! Don't let them chop me up!'  Occasionally, when the driver does turn into the meat factory, two things happen.
A) I suddenly hate the driver
and
B) I start to cry.
Now don't be fooled! I'm the first to admit my hypocrisy here. You see often times I'm driving on this road back from Sparta, having finished an hour long work out/weights class that has me fatigued and starving.  So I'll be driving back from this place, see said cows, cry & then go home to eat Tacos (Tuesdays are, of course, Taco Tuesday at my house).  Oh the humanity!
Now nothing in my taco resembles the cow, so it's easy to forget. But still... sometimes I wanna just smack myself. I WOULD smack myself actually but it'd probably hurt so I usually talk myself out of it before it's too late.

Ok so where am I going with this ridiculous ramble that so far has only further exposed my craziness to the world?
Raccoons.
Do you ever watch the discovery channel? You know those shows where they show the big whales looking all gorgeous and magnificent. Then they show the whale eating a sea lion and you are left sitting there thinking 'bastard whale!' and then the cute little sea lions, with their long whiskered faces and big brown eyes go and kill a penguin! OMG! 'Bastard sea lions!!!'. Usually by the time they go to show what the penguins eat I have to shut the program off and try to pretend that penguins will just eat seaweed sandwiches and cups of tea. I heard an horrible rumour once that penguins eat fish, but I'm just gonna hope that IF this is true, those sweet looking penguins ONLY eat ugly fish who are evil! Obviously all nice, sweet and cute fish are left alone. Right? Right.

How does this relate to life in Wisconsin? I'm getting there.
You see earlier this year we had 8 sweet ducks! Then we had 7. 6. 5. 4. 3! 3 Ducks! OMG. You see something was eating them, or I should say part of them. Often when Scott got up for work in the morning he'd find part of a duck outside. Process of elimination tells us that raccoons were the culprit! A fox, for example, will eat the whole stinkin duck! And while I am not happy about this, I have to give the fox some credit for not wasting at least! But coons aren't so considerate.
Scott had wanted to get a gun since, well, since he was probably 4 years old actually. Ok what I mean is when we moved here Scott tried to convince me that we needed a gun. For protection. I told him a dog would do the same thing but apparently dogs can hurt people, so guns would be safer.(MAJOR SARCASM.)) Also he had other reasons for not wanting a dog. I'm assuming the main one is that, no matter how hard you squeeze a dog, it'll never shoot bullets out of either end.  Even if he COULD get a dog to shoot a bullet out, I imagine it'd be difficult to aim.
Anyway by the time duck 4 had gone missing I knew something had to be done.  So Scott stayed up one night and sure enough here came mama & baby coons to choose from the 'Piggott-All-You-Can-Eat-Buffet' known as the yard.  Scott managed to shoot the mama and we haven't seen her since.  I have, however seen the babies.  One night, after being horribly stung by vicious wasps, I was awake in the night being sick.  While hanging out in the loo, between bouts of calm and, well, puking I could hear chatter outside.  It kind of sounded like an old lady snickering! So I looked outside, hoping my neighbour hadn't lost her mind and decided to hang out by my bathroom in the middle of the night laughing to herself-only to find coons looking back at me!
THEY WERE SOOO CUTE! I'm telling you! But the bitter memory of my slain ducks still lingered so I went and woke Scott up.  He got a flash light, confirmed the coons were there and then went to get his gun...but came back with a camera instead! That's how adorable these little babies were!  Needless to say, no coons were injured that night.
Now the other day Scott woke me up during one of my rare naps (this is sarcasm-I nap as a hobby) to tell me to come outside.  Upon going outside I was informed that there was a coon in the burn barrel! OMG. So I went to look at this evil duck killing animal.  What I saw was the sweetest brown eyes looking back at me. This little raccoon was shaking in fear.  He was no bigger than a football and was petrified! Scott and I talked about whether or not he should shoot it but we're both really big softy's at heart.  Recently we'd fenced off the fresh water spring so that the ducks were kept close to the alpaca at night and it was working-he protects the little animals from predators. With this in mind we decided to spare this little fella, only after making him promise to ONLY eat vegetables from now on. 
He agreed, so we let him go. 
Here he is:

So Scott kindly dragged the burn barrel over across the road into the tall grass to let him go.

Tipped the barrel over ever so gently... Using the 'kick it over as hard as you can' technique. (just kidding!)







And then, perhaps thinking this may be one big scheme concocted by the baby coons who are seeking revenge for their mothers untimely death...
Scott suddenly disappeared!

So I'm happy to say no Raccoons were harmed in the process, and all ducks are still alive and well so apparently the Raccoon has stuck to our deal.  Whew. For a second there we thought we were gonna have to make a hat out of him! =D

Looking back I have decided that the moral of this story is to not watch the discovery channel... bastard sea lions!

Oh that really gets my goat!

Next we got goats. Scott is, to this day, dead set against getting a dog. I'd been reading somewhere that a goat is a lot LIKE a dog, behaviour wise, so I talked him into taking me to get 1 goat. Of course I took enough money to get 2 goats, but he didn't need to know that.  As it turns out we got there and he loved those little babies just as much as I did so talking him into getting 2 was no problem.

Now I'd asked the people that we were getting said goats from what to bring to take them home.   Answer-anything the size of a laundry basket will be fine.  Now I took a rubbermaid box (and shower curtain on the car seat just in case!) but then suddenly thought-what if the goats are too big to get both in the rubbermaid? Not a problem.

There they both are, snuggled up together on the way home with plenty of room for a third little goat, but we just got the two... for now. (wink)


One of the first things you learn about baby goats is: they suck!
EVERYTHING. I'm talking noses, ears, fingers, zippers, hair, shirts you name it!

But they're so darn cute that you can't be mad at them for it. They were, after all, just babies!   Awwww....






Now winters in Wisconsin can be pretty cold. I'm talking some days were -30C this past winter. Although my babies were inside an old barn/shed I still worried about them.  I don't knit and can only crochet in straight lines(i.e. scarves) so that was out.  BUT! Brainstorm! I knew just what they needed!

Awesome looking sweaters! I'm telling you these were THE coolest looking(and warmest) baby goats in a 5 mile radius! Of course we had a few issues at first. Benny kept worrying that his sweater made his bum look big.

Billy and I kept assuring him that he looked fine. Eventually he believed us. Or maybe he just figured that even if his bum did look a little big-Billy's bum looked HUGE so it was ok. =D  Who knows with goats, right? Still it didn't stop either one of them from gulping 3 or 4 bottles of milk down every day for weeks and weeks!   Apart from that it was lovely.  Even Scott was enjoying having pet goats!

((Except for that one day that we're not allowed to talk about, when Benny jumped up on Scott and gave him a little injury.))

Say it with me...

OWWWCCCHHHHH!

But he lived, and he let the goat live, so all was good.

Now the goats are great fun! They're about the size of a medium/large dog. They love to run and play and jump on things(including alpacas!) 

As it's summer they do run around the yard naked now but all in all they're pretty cool pets.


See:

 In the 2nd photo he's even smiling! =D

And then there was Mama Carlos.

Normally I like to have a little laugh with my blogs but on a scale of 1-10   ((10 being Jim Carrey funny and 0 being a funeral)) this is probably a 3. Still, it's necessary to introduce you to the whole mob so that later you understand who I'm referring to so just bear with me...


We never had any intentions of getting a second cat. This is the honest truth. (Stop laughing!)
Then I heard about Carlos.
Carlos is a 4 year old Himalayan cat who was kept in the cat equivalent of a puppy mill. For his 3 years of life in this horrible place he was kept in a basement filled with cats-all in pet carriers. For THREE YEARS! (sorry, blood starts to boil when I think about it!)
When he was found he was in bad bad shape. His fur was so matted that his tail was actually stuck to his back legs and he couldn't walk properly. He sort of walked like his bum was stuck to the ground. A lady had gone to rescue another cat at this place and wanted to save all of them but Carlos was in the worst shape so she had to get him out of there.  She is an angel.
But she couldn't keep him, so she listed him on craigslist where I read his story.  She'd already taken him straight to the vet for help and had him fixed so that he was never put in the same situation again.  I called her and told her we could offer him a loving home and so we did.
This is how he looked when we first got him.

Poor little guy! Looking at it now I can still see how his posture isn't right and he can't even straighten his legs! What horrible people! I sure hope they get their comeuppance.

Carlos is the sweetest guy! When I first brought him home he would start purring the minute anyone just walked in the room by him! He purrs loud but in the past year we've only EVER heard him meow twice. EVER.  And that includes the times he was accidentally stepped on when he got under our feet.

But the thing that makes Carlos so great is his mothering instinct.  That's right! I said it. He is a good mama.  Since we brought Carlos home we've introduced many many other creatures to the farm and Carlos always thinks he's their mama.We got more chickens and he adored them!

He'd sit and watch them for ages

but never harm them. 

Then when we put 

them away for the night 

he would sleep 

on top of their cage!

Then we got more ducks(I have a problem, I know!) and once again Mama Carlos stepped in to take care of them.  If we went over to the ducks to take them out of their cage and let them run free for a while Carlos ALWAYS came running to make sure his babies were looked after.  And you know what- neither the ducks or the chickens ever seemed to mind!


Then my cousin Jim ((waves at Jim)) had a little kitten that he was VERY allergic to and had to get rid of.  He mentioned something about the Humane Society and I stepped in! He could live here with the outside cats. We did NOT want any more inside cats! So I called cousin Jim and said he could consider his kitten adopted! Kitten's name was Cheech so when he moved here he was called 'Cousin Cheech'. Cheech was just a kitten so guess who stepped in to be his mama!


He's a sweet little(big) guy now. A bit nosey, but aren't they all? :) 

Now the smells aren't nearly as calming as they were at Cousin Jim's house. In fact they are stimulating and quite intriguing! Cheech likes to watch the outside animals from inside but when he goes out the door he bolts! He's our biggest chicken! And he's such a baby that he won't come up to the door to come back in either. He meows from a safe distance until one of us goes and picks him up and carries him past all the 'weirdo's' aka chickens and ducks.  Also he wasn't that impressed when we wouldn't let him drink coffee like his other daddy let him.  I think Nikki has convinced Cheech that he is ALSO a 'people' and thus should be entitled to such things as a cuppa joe and clothing. 

Here he is trying to wear Scott's work boots. When I asked him what he was doing (yeah yeah, it gets lonely here alone all day every day!) he just played it cool like he was supposed to be wearing boots and he did it all the time. He eventually came out of the boots and went and drank half my coffee while I put the boots in the cupboard. 
What a guy! :)

 

So there you have it. Mama Carlos and Cousin Cheech. We've covered me, Scott, Brandon, Ducks, Chickens, Steve the Squirrel, Nikki, Carlos and Cheech.  Next-Got Goat? =D Cause I do!