Juxtapo-chicken

 Yesterday while this refined, elegant table was being set and readied, and subsequently enjoyed by my Shelter girls, the below scenario was playing out in wild shrieks, boisterous pronouncements and urgent, terrified chirps.  "WEET! WEET! WEET!!!!"  Quite the juxtaposition of events!

What happened was, Coco.  I was going to finish that sentence, but I think just the word Coco explains it all.  I sauntered into her kitchen at 9:10 yesterday morning to retrieve Ptolemy, who had woken up concerned that somebody was going to eat his baby turkeys.  He had to go see them!  Coco said, "Doesn't Tolly have preschool right now?"  Why yes, he did.  I honestly don't know how I keep forgetting preschool.  It's been happening every Tuesday and Thursday since September.  This time, I had a pretty good excuse, which I explained to Miss Sharla upon showing up 15 minutes late:  "Sorry, I forgot because of the baby turkeys.  Also, he doesn't have his backpack, and that's just lipstick all over his legs.  So he doesn't have a rash."

Pretty sure my explanation prompted more questions than it answered, such as, "Baby turkeys?"  and, "Lipstick?"  Yeah.  Remember on the way home from the zoo when I turned around and Tizzy was sitting calmly in her seat looking like Robert Smith, lead singer of The Cure?  For some reason, the kids thought wiping all that lipstick on their legs would be a good way to clean it up, and it stained.  Why did they think legs were good substitutes for wipes?  Same reason Ptolemy said to me the other day, "I went in the laundry room because I had to get a sock to wipe my nose..."

One time!  ONE time, he sneezed in the car and there were no tissues, so I gave him a stray sock to contain the damage.  So now I have a kid that's going to grow up and one day say to a runny-nosed friend, "Oh, your family uses tissues to wipe their noses?  Huh.  We use socks.  We keep them in the laundry room with the chickens.

Ptolemy named the chicks Eight, Eight, Olaf and Sven.  

Not sure why two of them are named Eight.  

We're not allowed to question that.

Ptolemy is in love with his birds.  He croons, "They have sunflower eyes!"  And then he sighs.  Now that I look, they do have little brown eyes that are shaped like sunflower seeds.  Aaaaww!

Gobbling It Up

 My family has a long history of transient pets.  Everything from bats to snakes(click).  It was a veritable menagerie. (Click).  Coco blames it on me, but I blame it on her.  She is the instigator.  I am the enabler.  Josh is the animal lover.  Felshaw is the supportive bystander, and as much an animal lover as the rest of us.  So I guess it's everyone's fault, except Trajan.  He hates animals, but he managed to somehow survive the King menagerie, probably by tuning out everything around him and focusing on drawing buildings with millions of tiny, perfect bricks in the walls.  He may have issues, but that's another post.

 Let's talk about Turkey Day!  Sunday night, Coco said to Emily, "It would be stupid to get chicks, right?  They poop and the novelty wears off and then I have these chicks."  The next morning, Emily got a text from Coco:  "Want to meet Circe and me at the farm store?!"  Coco is weak.  But she recognizes her weaknesses and doesn't waste time fighting them.  Instead of asking, "Should we get some baby chicks," she skips that whole useless part of the discussion and goes striaght to, "Which ones are the cutest?"

 Tizzy, Rolayne and Ptolemy are abviously the cutest things in the farm store, but aside from them, the baby turkeys won the cute contest.  They were sleepy and soft, fluffy and small.  And they purr!

Ptolemy is obsessed.  Every 30 minutes, if he's not already knocking down Coco's door, he is asking if he can go see Turks and Caicos, his new best friends.  Aren't Coco's names for the turkeys clever!?  The plan for them, if they aren't mauled to death first, is to keep them inside until they are big enough to roam the yard with the cats.  According to farm lore, cats and turkeys can coexist without too many bloodbaths.  

And speaking of bloodbaths, there isn't anyone in the family who has the guts (ha ha) to slaughter a turkey, let alone eat it on Thanksgiving.  Only one or two generations removed from the family farm and we're all too squeamish to entertain the thought.  Food is what stores are for.  Except the farm store.  That's where you buy pets.  Maybe Turks and Caicos will end up on someone else's table, but not ours.  It just depends on how entertaining they are, and whether the stories about cats and turkeys are true.

 We couldn't get enough of animals yesterday.  I had to run Golda to Salt Lake for a Federation rehearsal with her pianist, who lives behind the zoo.  (During seminary was the only time during the week we could figure out to do it.  Don't tell the prophet.)  These babies and I whisked briskly around the exhibits, or as briskly as you can when you're stopping to stomp on manhole covers and follow butterflies.  I think they may have even notices some of the zoo animals when they happened to look up from the exciting world of The Ground.  The zoo had nothing on Coco's house, and as soon as we were home, Ptolemy started his questioning:  "Can I go to Coco's to see the baby turkeys?"

 As if we needed additional animals.  Would you look at this wild thing?  The little turkey!

Escargot, Anyone?

It was unseasonably warm here yesterday, and sunny in the window where the snails live.  And, well, it's easy to forget about pets that mostly don't move.  They don't even have faces!  I didn't exactly saute Ptolemy's snails in butter and garlic, but I did find out that they don't like their water hot.  It makes them, um, die.

Good-bye, Snailie and Davis.  We will miss you!  Or at the very least, the kids will eventually notice that your trifle bowl is gone.  Not yet, however.  Ptolemy is busy with his new pet, a millipede who likes to watch Arthur.  (Not the giant pet store kind.  The kind you find in the garage.)  I think he'll make a good distraction, although he has already broken in half.  Ptolemy put him in a cup and said, "Don't touch him!  He'll come to life!"  You know, maybe Ptolemy isn't a pet person.  He might be traumatized by the time he carried an earwig into the house and said enthusiastically, "Look at this scary bug!"  I screamed and then he screamed, "Get it off me!  Get it off me!"

So he's ruined for a career in entomology, and now he's not a good candidate as a French chef either.  Is this kid going to have any career options left when I'm finished with him?  The only position petulant Ptolemy will be qualified for is Emperor, and for that, he'll have to move to 19th century Japan.  Maybe by then someone will have invented time travel.  Otherwise, Tolly will be doomed.  Just like his snails.

Remembering Star

Do you see that Schnauzer in the middle of my neighbor's lawn?  So did I.  It was early in the morning one day after our neighbors, whom we really like, had already complained about our dog coming over to their yard.  I went outside and saw Star, getting ready to you-know-what on the neighbors' lawn!!  I called her and she wouldn't come.  That made me mad, so I shouted urgently, trying not to draw attention to myself or the dog.  I was so mad that Star wouldn't respond to me, I started tearing across the street screaming at her.  So much for not drawing attention to myself.  I got halfway across the gravelly road in my socks and realized that "Star" was a granite boulder.  I turned around and went home with my tail between my legs.  Inside, Star was obediently, patiently waiting for me.  I petted her and she was happy.  She didn't know I was dumber than a rock.

I miss Star sometimes, even though it's nice not having a dog.  Whenever I look across the street and see that boulder, I smile.  I remember what a good dog Star was, and I'm glad the neighbors have that rock to remind me of our faithful, furry friend...just without the feeding and walking.

Snips 'n' Snails

Snailie is the tiny thing, not the giant shell.  The shell, we found on the beach.

I didn't put Ptolemy is pre-school this year, so we have lots of time to explore the world without the mid-day deadline.  The world is our oyster and we can do whatever we want, my babies and I.  One morning we went to visit Nana.  On the way out of her house, Ptolemy spied a snail that was just out of reach in Nana's ivy pit.  I didn't want to give Nana Ruby a heart attack leaning out over the precipice to grab the snail, so I told Ptolemy we could go to the pet store and look at snails there.

He agreed and didn't waste any time throwing out his demands, with waterproof arguments to back them up.  First, he clearly stated, "I want to go to the pet store and BUY a snail and bring it home with us."  He repeated his statement for clarity numerous times.  Then he carefully stated his reasoning:  "Yesterday we went to Hobby Lobby and I picked out a green bag and you said I couldn't buy it and bring it home with us.  I want to BUY a snail and bring it home with us."

I agreed, mostly because I didn't think the pet store would carry snails.  When we walked into the pet store, there were soft, cuddly baby animals everywhere.  Ptolemy, like most three-year-olds, has the attention span of a tin can.  He bounced around the store shrieking enthusiastically about whatever caught his eye.  If it had been one of my other kids, we for sure would have come home with the beautiful, bargain-priced ten-dollar adult rabbit.  I'm weak; it was silky.  But Tolly barely noticed the rabbit between pointing out the baby Schnauzer and almost getting his finger bitten off by a cranky parrot.

It didn't take long for us to make our way to...an aquarium full of snails.  Wow.  The pet store had snails.  On the upside, it was only $2.99 for a "Mystery Snail."  That's a good deal for the experience of carrying your own sloshing plastic bag out of the store, regardless of what's inside.  It surprised me how decisive Tolly was about which snail he wanted.  I didn't even care that there was no real way to tell if the snail was alive or dead.  The way Ptolemy was swinging and shaking the bag, it was going to be dead by the time we got home anyway, so the inanimate nature of the creature was probably a plus.

In the car, I asked Ptolemy what he was going to name the snail.  He was quiet, then apparently became panicked and screamed, "I don't know!!!!  I don't want to name the snail!!  It's a snail!!"  OK, no pressure, my little OCD boy.  An hour later, he announced the name.  Snailie.  It took an hour to come up with Snailie??

Snailie went to lunch with us and Daddy at Wendy's, then home to his new trifle bowl.  *sigh*  Oh well, I don't make trifle anyway.  Snailie, after awhile, extended a tentative tentacle.  I was pretty impressed that he survived Ptolemy's reenactment of the Finding Nemo bratty-girl-in-the-dentist-office scene.  Snailie is a survivor!  When the kids got home from school, Ptolemy proudly introduced them to Snailie.  Just for fun, we googled Mystery Snail and found out that it's a real thing; not just what the pet store says when they don't know what it is.  Who knew?  The website said Mystery Snails could be quite entertaining, and we have found that to be true.  Just this morning, Snailie made a journey up the side of the trifle bowl to inhale some oxygen.  He's going to be a delightful pet...until Ptolemy spills his water and he shrivels up and dies.  But that's a story for another blogpost.

Another Star in the Sky

Star hasn't been herself lately.  She never wants to inconvenience anyone, but she has been getting up in the night to go outside.  She politely taps the door with her paw, and once she goes out, she doesn't come back for awhile.  And she lost a bunch of weight.

While we were in New York, Coco and Bill were watching Star.  Star has always been such a good dog, but she has been wary of Coco and Bill since they took her to the vet to get some teeth pulled awhile back.  So when she went missing Sunday morning, they thought she was hiding, biding her time until the family got back.  But then she didn't come back Sunday night, and she never stays away that long.  They looked, but they couldn't find Star anywhere.

Monday morning, Coco called the pound and there was no sign of Star there either.  Tuesday, Tricia and Jim helped the kids hang up signs around the neighborhood before we took off for Zion's Wednesday.  Thursday, our next-door neighbor contacted Coco with the sad news that he had discovered Star's furry, grey body under a bush in his back yard.  He said she looked like she had been there resting in the shade when she died.  That makes me feel better, that she didn't wander around or suffer.  She probably waited until we were gone to die, just so she wouldn't bother anyone.  The dog I had as a kid, Reese, did the same thing.  My dad, bless his farm upbringing, took on the difficult task of burying Star in the patch of burrs she was so fond of getting into.

I'll miss Star, as pesky as she was.  Even though she followed me around relentlessly, she was the perfect dog.  She dutifully sat by Tziporah's crib when she napped, and slept in the hallway outside Ptolemy's door when he slept.  She took her job as our dog very seriously, and did it well.

We got Star when Golda turned eight because she had come up with a plan to trade Scott in for a dad who liked dogs.  That was when Scott gave the green light for a dog.  Smart man.  It was an exciting day when Star and her friend Deuce came to live with us.  Deuce didn't last long because he was naughty, but Star turned out to be the perfect dog.  After she went missing, I had some sandwich crusts and went to find Star, thinking what a treat the crusts would be for her.  It was a surprisingly bereft and lonely feeling when she wasn't there to gratefully gobble up those crusts.

Thanks, Star, for carrying out your duties so well.  Good dog, Star.  Good dog.

Ugly Bunny

I really hope this toothbrush doesn't get mixed up with any of the toothbrushes that are designated for brushing human teeth.

I make foolish promises in exchange for practicing.  I admit it.  I promised Freestone a pet if he practiced 100 days in a row, and he did, darnit!  He got his hundred days back in April, but I had managed to put off the pet purchase by encouraging Freestone's indecision.  His favorite activity has become having me sit on the edge of his bed at bedtime and discuss the pros and cons of Yellow Tangs, parakeets, tortoises versus turtles and different breeds of rabbits.  He kept telling me stories about the class pet, Squirt, who is a Russian Tortoise, until I was finally struck with a brilliant idea.  I emailed the teacher and asked if Freestone could take care of Squirt for the summer.  She said yes!  Freestone was ecstatic.  He ran to tell Jake, and they had the funniest conversation, their eyes bugging out of their heads, their voices practically shouting.

"JAKE!  DO YOU WANT TO TAKE CARE OF A RUSSIAN TORTOISE FOR THE SUMMER!?!?"
"KINDA!!!!"
"WELL, WE GET TO!!!"
"DUDE!!!!!"

Ruby and I went to the classroom to pick up Squirt on the last day of school.  Freestone was smug as all his jealous classmates filed past the terrarium to say goodbye to Squirt.  I thought I had struck gold with a temporary pet who just sat under a rock and didn't cost a dime!  Then the teacher started explaining, "Squirt gets nervous and poops a lot when he's moved.  Here is a toothbrush you can scrub his shell with.  Don't worry if he doesn't eat for a few days.  He needs his UV light AND his heat lamp on at all times or he gets upset.  He really enjoys warm showers, long walks on the beach and romantic dinners."  Seriously.  The tortoise has a personality?  I didn't sign up for a sentient pet with preferences and fine tastes.  What happened to sitting under a rock all summer?  After much discussion and debate, the terrarium ended up in the mudroom, as opposed to the kitchen counter or on Freestone's bed.  He has had several warm showers and cool baths, he has been offered a variety of foods and activities, including bumping into walls and exploring the front yard with Coco's bunnies.

Yeah, Coco's bunnies.  Coco gets an idea in her head and there's no stopping her.  She took some of the kids to the farm store to look at animals recently and couldn't get the adorable, lion-faced bunnies out of her head.  I talked to her one afternoon and she said, "I guess I won't get a bunny.  I just had my eyes dilated and I don't have a car and I can't see, and they'd be too much trouble, anyway."
Two hours later, I got a text:  "Come see bunnies."  Plural?  For the past couple of days, the kids have been building condos and running back and forth from our house to Coco's to borrow animals.  So far, the cats and dogs haven't expressed much of an interest in eating the new pets, but really, it's only a matter of time before disaster strikes with the menagerie we have going.  I already accidentally turned off Squirt's UV light long enough for him to hiss his disapproval.  And I did get one text from Coco saying, "Ari and Free took a bunny to your house in a doll stroller.  Should I be worried?"   Not yet.  The bunnies love going for walks!

We were all happy as clams with Squirt, Cozy and Posy until Ruby mentioned that Coco had left one bunny at the farm store.  It had had pink-eye and its face was shaved.  It was hideous.  I said, "Let's see if we can get Coco to buy that other bunny."  I texted her, "Ruby said you left one poor, pathetic, lonely, ugly, shaved-faced bunny crying all alone at the pet store."  It worked.  The ugly bunny is coming to Coco's house Monday.