April 25

Things are warming up here in the desert. That means everything is blooming. That also means that all of our allergy symptoms are out of control. Amylynn’s sinus infection is no big deal so long as she doesn’t move her head, or her eyes, or think too much. Ava on the other hand has a terrible pollen induced cough that’s keeping her up at nights and is making plans to turn into pneumonia.  I’m sure you can imagine, this means there is whining. Normally we don’t whine much. We’re very reasonable, centered people. That’s what everyone says. We’re pretty sure no irony was intended. Here are other silly things this week.

1. Bomb-sniffing cat? There was a letter to the editor in the Picayune were an outraged citizen takes another contributor to task over a letter published earlier in the week. Apparently, Person #1 makes the statement that cats are the best pets. The assertion goes that dogs are “goofy and dopey and surprisingly gullible” compared to cats. Well, Person #2 insists that draws the line in the sand. She asks, “When is the last time you saw a bomb-sniffing cat, a service cat, or a police cat?” We suspect things will get nastier from here. The dog gang and the cat gang are meeting with pistols at dawn to hammer this out. We personally love dogs AND cats so we–for the first time in the history of EVER–have no opinion.

2. Excellent obits. There was the best obit in the Picayune this week. Ken was described as going “to the great big tennis court in the sky.” The picture included with the text is with his dog. A mighty cute dog. With one black ear. We’ve decided that we’re totally doing this for our obits. We’re going to have pictures taken with our tiger

CARL!

(as soon as we get it). It’s a two-fold plan really. Certainly having a picture taken with a tiger will be the reason that we’re dead in the first place.

3. Jaguar country. There’s a very elusive bachelor in our area. Every time they snap a new picture of him we all squeal down here. He’s just gorgeous. We name him each time, but we can never remember what we named him last time. This time we’re liking Carl. We’re waiting for our new shipment of Purina Animal Chow to arrive from Amazon. Then we’re heading into the mountains to do some luring of Carl.  Here kitty, kitty.

4. Fermented fruit. Two of our favorite topics collided today. Diets and animals. Getting drunk is a distant third and you’ll see how we got there in a minute. Ava and The World’s Greatest Receptionist found a new diet that was heavy on eating fermented fruit. Amylynn was in until she discovered that fermented fruit wasn’t referring to wine but to sauerkraut. Amy’s not eating that. Nope. So in the course of Googling fermented fruit we discovered the elephants in Singita Kruger National Park in Africa are all drunk on the fermented fruit that falls from the trees. Then we saw the similarity between drunk elephants and the fact that we can’t find a diet that works and now we want to be drunk too. On the REAL fermented fruit.

5. And now we need a Zonky. Look at this little dude. A cross between a dwarf albino donkey and a lovely lady zebra. Look at how adorable he is.  We hope no one’s mean to him in school because he’s different. If he does, he can come live with us. We’re different over here, too. We tease a lot, but we do it with love. And we love striped legs. And cute little manes. And big donkey ears. We’re naming him Saul. We hope he eats Purina Animal Chow.