Otherwise known as a timberdoodle

This . . . is a woodcock in its natural habitat:

THIS . . . is a woodcock in a most un-natural habitat.  Said habitat being the sidewalk outside my office, after having crashed into the glass.

I stood by the poor thing for a good forty-five minutes waiting for animal control to show up.  It didn’t move at all until right before the guy got there.  When it did move, it suddenly flapped its wings and darted across the sidewalk . . . to smash into the glass, this time at floor-level.

*sigh*

Yes, I considered whacking it on the head or (as someone recommended) wringing its neck.  I didn’t because

A) I wasn’t sure it was internally damaged; if it were only stunned, it could be healed.  (The fact that woodcocks have a moveable beak makes me hope it was bleeding from the beak, not internally.)

B) I was too scared that I’d just hurt it, instead of mercy-killing it.

Anyway, the Animal Control guy popped it in a cardboard box and carried it off.  I asked him if they’d just euthanize it, or try to fix it; he said he’d leave it at the vet and thought it would probably be okay.

By the way . . . you’d be AMAZED how many people walk without looking where their frickin’ feet are going.  I stood there for forty-five minutes because otherwise that poor thing would have been punted like a soccer ball twenty times over.

(No, I was not tempted to take it home for Rajah to play with.  Wild birds often have lice, you know!)

Happy Caturday: Deer-watching edition

Lissa:  “That’s funny, Mike.  I looked out the window and for a second I thought I saw a deer.  See that patch of brush, looks like a head attached to a body?”

Mike (looking out window):  “Um, Lissa, there’s a real deer out there!”

No, it wasn’t the patch I was looking at.  That was definitely inanimate plant life.  But Bambi was out there, invisible from my view from the couch, nomming on some greenery.

His apartment is in Charlotte, by the way.  It really is.  It’s just that his (tiny little) balcony is at the tail-end of the complex and overlooks a big ol’ forest.  (That, y’know, is the real sound of a Southerner.  It’s not the y’all’s, it’s the big ol’s.  Mike is already making fun of me; as soon as I cross the Mason-Dixon my drawl comes back.)

Rajah says:

Happy Caturday!

UPDATE:  Rajah would make this sound while nomming his Bambi Stew:

Thanks Mike!

IT’S COMIN’ RIGHT FOR US!!!

Since everyone else is doing it . . .

Chickens and squirrels get along just fine!

Food chain – ur doin it wrong

Stupid leopard.  Cute though!

Reminds me of this:

(h/t Best of the Web)

The devil we knew . . . (BONUS: Kitty video!)

. . . was better than the one we didn’t.

Until recently, the Kitty Den was run by Pretty Good Management, Inc., and its main face was the woman who worked the office.  Petite, blond and perky, we quickly christened her Rental Barbie for her spunky personality, her gushing friendliness, and her absolute inability to do any math problem more complicated than 2 + 2 = 4.  (I can’t tell you how many times we had to rework the fee schedule for the apartment, but I could probably count the fist-marks in the wall behind our desk to figure it out.)  We didn’t dislike her, but we were occasionally quite frustrated with her penchant for arriving late and leaving early; if she left before we got home we couldn’t get our packages.  WANT PACKAGES!      

Anyway, Pretty Good Management, Inc. was let go rather abruptly – at least as far as they notified us – and they’ve now hired Other Management Company, LLC.  We were quite hopeful that the new office guru would, y’know, actually show up on time and stay till six.  

Verily, how bitter is the dashing of hopes.

Rental Ice Queen (Rental IQ, for short) is not Rental Barbie.  That is, she is not spunky, she is not friendly, and she most certainly does not gush.  Her modus operandi is instead to act as if she is constantly doing us favors by answering the bloody phone.  Oh, and staying until six?  Forget it – they’ve cut back office hours till five PM.  Seeing as how neither Mike nor I get home till 5:45, we politely inquired how to get our grubby little paws on our packages. 

Oh, we’ll have them delivered to your apartment just inside the door, no problem.

Uh-huh. 

Version 2: Oh, we’ll have them delivered to your apartment just inside the door,  no problem.  Unless there are a lot or they’re heavy, in which case we’ll tell the maintenance guy to call you for assistance after the office closes.  He won’t call you, of course, and then we’ll act like you’re being ridiculously demanding and unreasonable when you call us the next day and ask for your sh*t.

Ri-ight.

Version 3: Oh, we’ll have them delivered to your apartment just inside the door, no problem, assuming that you call us in the office and specifically ask us to deliver them to your apartment.  Never mind that we know you never get home before five, or that we previously promised a standard operating procedure of apartment delivery.  And you can’t leave instructions in advance.  Nope, we’ll just stick a package key in your mailbox so when you get home you’ll know that a package was delivered.  And that you can’t have it till tomorrow.  If you’re lucky.  Bite me, suckas!  Nyah-nyah!!

That b*tch Rental IQ!

Sigh.  Version 4:  And by the way, we don’t like to answer our phone.  So good luck with that.

I swear, if I didn’t have an adorable kitten with which to distract myself, I’d be pissed or something.

done

P.S.  The experienced kitten-baiter will always clip the subject’s claws before attempting a stunt like this.  Also, she will wear pants of some thick material such as denim.  And red toe nails are ALWAYS a good idea.

O What a Beautiful Morning

Ahhhh.  There’s nothing like snuggling in a warm bed, made with freshly-washed sheets and blankets, in the quiet, peaceful dark, a warm husband by your side.

Especially at 4:30 AM.

At which hour you have been woken, in that peaceful dark, by the unmistakable “HACK — HAAAAAAUCK — COUGH — HAAAAAAACK – CHLAAAAAAAAAAA- splat” of your cat horking up a hairball.

He looked quite proud of himself, afterwards.

Little stinker.

A LOLcatz Love Story

Of course I’m posting this.  OF.  COURSE.

Swiped from Educated & Poor!

Kitten-drunk

Meet Buster:

 

At least, we think his name is Buster.  He seems like a Buster.

No, he’s not ours; Rajah is an only cat and likes it that way. It was a friend of ours, L, who picked up a cute fuzzy darling little kitten-companion.

I helped L pick him up from the shelter this past weekend.  Please note that I helped him pick UP the kitten but did not help him pick OUT the kitten – that was all L and I made sure to keep any preferences to myself!

Anyway, we hadn’t thought we could pick out a kitten and take him home in the same day, so we weren’t prepared.  We had to leave the adorable bundle of fur at the shelter and run to the pet store to pick up food and a cat carrier. 

So we’re bombing up and down the aisles picking out two different kinds of wet food and two different kinds of dry food (one type being what he was fed at the shelter, and the other being the kitten chow Jenny and I have always used to raise our furballs) and I’m bouncing up and down at the register impatient to pay and get to L’s house to kitten-proof it and back to the shelter to gobble down – er, adopt – Buster and Mike realizes we forgot to buy a nail clipper.  So I go dashing up the aisle to snag two nail clippers (ours are pretty rusty and need to go play in the garbage chute) and run back to the front of the store and the menfolk point out that I forgot to get a carrier.  Dammit!  So I go flying back up a different aisle, stub the bottom of my Croc Malindis and do a full-on layout in the aisle.

I’m talking serious spillage here, folks.  I bruised my hand and my hip and my sunglasses went flying off my head and landed about six feet away; I basically pretended I was on a slip-and-slide, without the slipping part; I sort of skidded.  Ouch. 

And the worst part?  Mike had his back turned so he didn’t see it!

Oh well, nothing broken, no harm done; I popped up like the Energizer bunny and kept running – more carefully, mind you.  We set up food and water and litter and brought the kitten home and taunted him with mice and laser pointers and sneaker shoelaces and cuddled him and generally went Awwww!  But after an hour it became obvious that Mike and I had a lot to do and needed to go home and do it.  Also, I hadn’t yet eaten that day and my stomach was threatening to chew a hole through my abdomen and go secure comestibles by itself.

Of course, by the time we got home I was so starving that I nuked a hot dog and bit into it and burnt the CRAP out of my mouth.  That’ll teach me to eat junk food!

Happy kitten-ing, L!

National security fail

Sure, that’s a wicked misleading title, since I don’t intend this post to be serious, but so what?  Work with me here . . .

Check out the following video.  Now imagine that you’re tired and you didn’t have a Diet Coke with lunch and your cat woke you up at five in the morning making muffins on your chest (and thereby making it hard to breathe) and headbumping your chin (because mommy thinks fur tastes yummy or something).  Doesn’t this suggest an awesome national security parallel?

We, the United States, are the dog.  (The United States or the Western world or whatever.)  Bad Guys will sometimes bat at us, because they’re bored.  Or to piss us off.  Or because Rachel Lucas is right and cats are *ssh*les.  If we just sit there and take it while they playfully test us and smack us around, sooner or later, the claws come out and we get b*tchsm*ck*d.  And then the stoopid hooman pulls us back before we can appropriately respond.  The best time to start barking is BEFORE we get thumped, not after.  And perhaps a loud, ferocious bark would have scared him off so we didn’t have to attack him later.

Incredibly asinine?  Or BRILLIANT?  Or both??

. . . . or neither.  Cute dog, cute cat, all right?

(swiped from the Lolcatz)

In which I confuse myself, a police officer, two women, and a dog or two.

Everyone told me I would lose my mind in the run-up to the wedding.  Apparently it’s true.

***

“Sweetie, I won’t be home for dinner tonight, I’ve got that meeting.”

“Oh, the one for the Lissaville Animal Shelter?”

“Right, the one at the police department.  Must run, bye love!”

Cursing a bit, I hustled off to the Lissaville Police Department.  The meeting was at six and the clock already read 5:57; I *hate* being late to meetings, but while Lissa proposes, the T line disposes.

I made it to the building just after six and practically sprinted inside.

And found . . . nothing.

No sign.  No obvious conference room.  No gathering of people.

Oh, sh*t.  I *knew* I should have taken the time to review the email today.  Dammit, why do I always forget things like that??

As I glanced around with increasing confusion and consternation, a friendly-yet-authoritative voice called, “Can I help you?”

Shamefacedly, I turned to the courteous police officer speaking through the window.  “Um, hi,” I said with a resigned smile.  “I was looking for the meeting of the Lissaville Animal Shelter, and for some reason I thought it was here.  I must have REALLY read the sign wrong.”

He was nice enough not to laugh at me outright, but I could tell he kind of wanted to.  “Noooooo,” he drawled, “the only animals we got here are a DIFFERENT kind.”

“Right.  Right.  Sorry!” I mumbled, and fled.

Back in the car, I dug up my phone and called up email, thankful that I could access the meeting reminder without going all the way back to the Kitty Den.

202 Communication error, please try again

“Oh, c’mon, NOT NOW, phone.  Behave, dammit!  Give me my email!”

202 Communication error, please try again

202 Communication error, please try again

My mother would be displeased, but unsurprised, if she’d heard the language coming out of my mouth.

What else could I do?  I drove over to the Animal Shelter in the hopes of finding someone who — UNlike me — knew what the hell was going on.

***

“Excuse me!  You’ll need a shelter volunteer to escort you!”

(Apparently my suit and high-heeled boots were a dead giveaway that I wasn’t there to help with the dogs.)

“No, no,” I explained, “I *do* volunteer here, on Sunday mornings.  It’s just that –” (I waited for a few seconds in hopes that the barking would die down a bit) “– there’s an annual meeting and I don’t know where I’m supposed to be.”

 The woman paused for a moment to calm the bellowing boxer, before throwing me a glance of absolute bewilderment.  “Ummmmm, you mean Orientation?  I don’t know of any other meeting tonight.  Helen, do you know of any other meetings?”

BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK!!!

“Oh, THAT meeting,” said the volunteer apparently named Helen.  “That’s NEXT week.  Not tonight.”

Dammit!  Dammit, dammit, dammit!

“Oh,” I stammered.  “Thank you.  I’m sorry.  That makes sense.”  I shook my head.  “Ladies, in my defense, I will tell you — my wedding is in TWENTY DAYS.”

Immediate comprehension flashed across their faces.  “Ohhhhhhhh.  Yeah that makes sense.”

Sigh.  As a consolation prize, I gingerly entered the wormhole bakery and emerged relatively unscathed — a slice of Tiramisu for Mike and a few mini cream-puffs for me.

Thank you, Ted.  You were right — the wedding really DOES work as an excuse for everything!

P.S. The Lissaville Animal Shelter currently boasts the FATTEST Basset hound I’ve ever seen in my entire life.  Her name is Twinkletoes.  Yes, really.