INTRODUCTIONS, PART 2

So, now you've met the ferrets, cats & dog, but there's more, and they haven't shown their furry/feathery faces yet. Let me continue the conversation from my first post, and introduce you to more of the critters on our little oasis...

PAISLEY & babies of '08

Paisley is just a mutt of a little duck...someone rescued her & her sister from a culvert as small ducklings & I ended up with them. Ping (her beloved sister) died for no apparent reason last spring, and Paisley flew away... Several weeks later she returned with 8 little fluff balls...was she EVER a proud mama! First time any of my ducks have provided ducklings! That was fun.

This is RAT.

She is gentle, smart & loves attention (and food). She has dispelled all inhibitions that I have formerly had against [pet] rats. They're pretty cool!

TUCKER
Tucker was my sidekick and main pal for 3 years. She was an East Indian Runner duck, and characteristic of that breed & the chocolate variety, she turned a white-with-brown-splashes as she grew older. Tucker died at the teeth of oppossum last spring. It was a very sad day at our house, but she had lived a long and happy life. I'll post more on her later.

CLYDE

Clyde is a Buff Orpington duck, and so named because as a duckling he was very small, and was thought to be a runner duck like Tucker. And then he began eating, and eating, and eating, and eating...which resulted in ALOT of growing. I think we had another name for him when he was a duckling, but as he grew & grew my husband began questioning if he was really a duck or not, and started calling him "The Clydesdale Duck". Which is where he got his name. I have actually heard people walking by exclaim over the fine goose we have, he is so huge! Clyde adores Paisley, and they are inseperable. Those rare occassions when Paisley gets a wild feather & flys away for a few days, Clyde goes into deep mourning. And that's about the extent of Clyde's brains... But he makes us laugh, and he makes Paisley happy, so he sticks around.

GOLDIE

A Buff Orpington hen who believes that it is NOT her duty in life to supply us with eggs. She's not very bright, even for a chicken, but I keep hoping that this spring she'll wake up to her true calling & begin providing us with eggs... And she is gorgeous, and pretty nice, even for a chicken, and lets people pet her...which I guess is her redemption.

MUFFY

An Americana or "Easter Egg Chicken". She lays green eggs, and is (for a chicken) brilliant. Actually, I should say she did lay green eggs, but then she apparently realized that we're thieves and she hasn't layed eggs since. I hope it was a coincidence and she begins again when the weather is nicer!
RED

A Rhode Island Red, and an exceptional layer! She has layed an egg every single day since sometime last July or August...even in the nasty cold, dark weather we've been having. I think we'll stick w/ Rhode Islands in the future!

And that's all for now...I have to figure out what I did with the rest of the pictures!

BOO-BOO

And finally, the last bit of big news from this weekend, our other rascal- Bongo- somehow managed to slice his hind leg wide open (fence? piece of glass? bit by the other dog?) on Saturday night...only I didn't notice him limping & the blood everywhere (how on earth did I miss it!??) until Sunday morning so of course I felt terrible & neglectful and all that... We've had twice-daily bandaging session w/ him pinned down under my knee on the bathroom floor so I can clean & rebandage the wound. I'm very glad that though it's deep, it's clean & it stopped short of the muscle (which means that having to run in to the vets is probably not necessary).

(Oh, if any of you medically-type people who "do nursing" are reading this- email me with suggestions on what I should do/do differently... I'm not exactly in my field of profession here, but I can give you more of the gorey details and you can tell me what to do. :o)

DOUBLE TROUBLE

Baxter has been renamed "Rascal"- it seems to fit much better, and helps in not hopelessly mixing up the two "B" names. And then last night someone mentioned that we should have named one "Double" and one "Trouble". They never cease to make us laugh with their antics, and torment of the cats (who pretty much hate the ferrets across the board).

RASCAL

BANDIT

FASCINATION

This is Bandit. He is best friend of Baxter. Baxter & Bandit are young ferrets who became part of our family on Tuesday. We got them from a wonderful lady who has a ferret shelter (such things exist?) one town over. Her barn was flooded in the recent disaster, and she is surviving with about 40 ferrets (in cages) in her living room, and about 100 more in foster homes across the state. Bandit & Baxter were among the ones chilling out in her living room, and though they were well taken care of, were more cramped than the accomodations that she generally provided allowed for. They were SO happy to come home with us and get to run around the house. We have about died laughing watching the ferrets interact with our cats, especially Baxter, who absolutely delights in cornering a cat & chasing throughout the house! The cats are entirely NOT sure what to make of these long, slinky creatures.
And here's an interesting note- I always thought that ferrets were #1) stinky & #2) vicious. Well some might be, but these two have dispelled that notion. They smell wonderful (in other words, they were given a bath, and no longer have the musky ferret smell about them) and they are super sweet, follow us around and want to be petted & played with.

THE RAINS CAME DOWN AND THE FLOODS CAME UP

Well, for those of you elsewhere in the country, you may have heard that Washington state experienced a very unusual, very, very white Christmas this year...and then the weather warmed up ALOT. And the rains came. And they kept coming and kept coming. And the snow that we had at Christmas, all melted off of the mountains and began it's trip to the ocean...creating avalanches, mud slides, rock slides and floods. All of the mountain passes out of Western Washington are closed, the major highway going north is down to only one lane due to a pick-up sized boulder in the road, and the major highway going south is closed because the river re-routed and went across the highway (with no possible detour, or so I hear).

Apparently we are the only people who are not under water, in spite of our very temperamental river-neighbor, the Skagit!

This is the Stillaguamish river, about 20min south of us, flowing through a large playing field, and in general, the outskirts of the town of Arlington.

This is what it looks like about 30min north of us, up in Bellingham...not really sure what river is causing the problems in Bellingham (Nooksak, Lumi?), but apparently that isn't hindering things from getting awfully wet!

And this is the Skagit river acting up in our town. It doesn't look all that good, but it's actually only affecting a couple of roads. They haven't even begun sandbagging, and, not to worry, our river probably won't do anything more than splash over the banks a little bit...which we're very grateful for as historically the Skagit enjoys spreading it's waters across the entire county.

Here you can see the current water level of the Skagit at our house (blue line, 27 ft at 7:15am, 01.08.09), and the level it is predicted to reach by early tomorrow morning (29.11 ft). Two years ago, when we had actually moved everything valuable to the upstairs and were pretty much prepared to load the truck & evacuate, the river had reached into the purple and crested at about 33 ft. As you can see, record level is 37.4 ft...so basically, we should be fine. (That is, as long as this rain will stop!

BREAKING NEWS

As you may see, my blog is experiencing a case of the winter flu... At least, all of the photos have died. I will be tapping every last bit of my computer knowledge to figure out what's up with that, and hopefully this is just a temporary outtage. (But you might want to hunker down for the long haul, because I don't know all that much about computers...)

RASPBERRY ICED TEA RECIPE

I would like to present you with a recipe of how NOT to make raspberry iced tea as a special treat for your dear & loving hubby.
#1) DON'T retrieve an antique 1/2 gallon canning jar from the bottom cupboard (because when the antique canning jar is in the bottom cupboard, and the back of the cupboard is on the outside wall of the house, and that outside wall of the house is not insulated, and the temperature outside is somewhere between 35-40*F-- the antique 1/2 gallon canning jar is cold).
#2) After retrieving the jar from the cupboard, DON'T think "Hmmm- is this jar too cold? Should I run it under warm or hot tap water first?" and "This jar feels really heavy for a 1/2 gallon canning jar, I wonder if it's too old and therefore not tempered and therefore not strong enough to actually use?"- and then dismiss the thought with "Oh, I've used this jar many, many times in the past 6 months to make my dear & loving hubby his favorite iced tea. Never had a problem before! Even all those times I pulled this antique 1/2 gallon canning jar out of the fridge & dumped boiling water into it. After all, it's a canning jar, and they're made for high temp- right?"
#3) DON'T put the jar on the counter, drop in 3 Red Rose tea bags, check the kettle to make sure that the water is boiling good and hard, and then leaning against the counter a little (the better to pour 1/2 gallon of water) proceed to hold the rim of the jar and pour the boiling good and hard water into the antique 1/2 gallon canning jar.
#4) When the antique 1/2 gallon canning jar explodes across the counter and the water doesn't just flow nicely across the counter creating a huge puddle across anything and everything that you didn't want to get wet (like bills, seed catalogs, your gelcap vitamins set out as a reminder...)- DO jump violently back from the counter.
#5) When you don't do step #4 quickly enough, DO start crying & yelling due to the excruciating pain of scalding water soaking through sock & adhereing scalding hot sock to the top of your foot, all the while jumping around on the unoffended foot while ripping all clothing affected by the scalding hot water off of your person in a self-defense mechanism.
#6) AND, when your dear & loving hubby walks through the kitchen doorway at the precise moment that you begin your dance, DO make a mental note of how wonderful he is when he does NOT say "WHAT ARE YOU DOING" followed by insane & insinsitive laughter (because that's what he wants to do, but he is showing in human restraint & remembers that you might not find it quite so funny at that moment).
#7) And finally, when you hop out of the kitchen half-clothed, whimpering, and collapse in the nearest chair, make another mental note of doing something wonderful for your dear & loving hubby because he brings you a cold clothe for your extremely offended, poor, scalded foot- and then cleans up the huge mess in the kitchen...and never yet has he said anything to the effect of...well, if you're married you'll know what I mean.
#8) Make a note to stop at the store tomorrow to purchase something that is NOT glass as an iced tea making recepticle.
#9) Give up on the day and, since it's already 9:30pm, just go to bed.