Back to Nature


It's time, back to nature and back to nature photography.


This is an Anhinga. He will dive under the water and hunt fish for up to 5 minutes.


Projects: Cement and Bone

Here are a few projects that we've done over the last few months. What inspires us? Well, we had picked up several bags of cement and stucco on a trip to the home improvement store. These were busted up bags that they were giving away for free. Gotta put that to use. And I have this dremel tool that has been sitting around for ages and I figured it was about time to put it to use, too. 

Mike and I did 2 separate cement projects and I've been using the dremel tool to carve jewelry from bones.

We have a New Kitten!


We have a new kitten!

They say cats have 9 lives and I figure this one has already used up about 7.5 of them.





Mike was on his way to work, doing about 65-70 mph when he saw something come out from underneath the car in front of him. He swerved to miss it and looked in his rearview mirror to see this little fur ball rolling down the highway. He locked up his brakes, shoved it in reverse and watched as 8-10 cars went right over her. He jumped out of the car and threw his hands up, stopped the traffic, to pick up this little girl.

  
He brought her home to me. Amazingly, this cat has very few injuries and is in really good shape. I found a bit of road rash on 2 of her feet, her eye is swollen and red, a rough spot on her nose, and it looks like she bit the inside of her mouth. I called Chris, who is my go to guy for anything animal, especially injured and lost. I think we are getting her back into shape. Feeding her regularly, worming and so on.

I think this girl is in excellent shape for what happened. Mike calls her Road Rash.


She was also feral and quite feisty, spitting and hissing at me. Chris assured me that would only last a short time being so young. He judged her age from the pictures at about 4 to 5 weeks. She's eating ravenously, she's playing like a ferocious lion, and she purrs really loud. 


So we worry how Dusty is going to get along with her. The main fear is because of this. We were out for a walk and Dusty hit on this huge field rat, grabbed it, and with one flip over her head, it was dead. Please note, this rat is bigger than the kitten.


So I've been working with Dusty to make sure she is careful. She grrs at the kitten if she comes too close and twice now Dusty has nipped the kitten hard when the silly cat tried to share Dusty's food bowl. I worry but the dog listens to me very well, and it's getting better. They "almost" played together the other night. 


The kitten will hide underneath one of the couch's and when Dusty isn't looking she'll run out, make a feint at her and boogie back under cover of the next couch. The kitten also tries so hard to play with Dusty, she thinks that fluffy wagging tail is fascinating!


And I think you'll notice I've been calling her kitten throughout because we really have yet to stick to a name for her. I cannot call her kitty because it confuses the dog (my fault for calling the dog kitty in the first place). Mike wants to call her Road Rash which makes sense. We have a tradition of naming our animals from whence they came: Freeway, the cat that Mike bottle fed after finding his mother dead on the freeway and Birch the dog, of course, found on Birch street. We did the same with Dusty. We got her from a shelter on a road called Industrial, so I suggested in-DUST-rial would be Dusty which fits because she has a big dusty mop of a tail. 


I have been calling her Elby! That's short for Elby Kay or LBK or Little Baby Kitten. It doesn't vary that much from family tradition in that the last cat we had was named via acronym: Pita, who really was a pain in the ass when we first got her.


She is about 6 weeks old now and she has come a long way. She is very funny and playful and I can't wait to get a picture of her and Dusty playing or cuddling together.


Whatever we end up calling her I'm glad she decided to roll out from underneath a car and come live with us.