Let us make it clear we are not making a political statement here. What we’re making is a statement about how funny guinea pigs are. Especially talking ones. Their little mouths are just funny.

“Well, now that’s just an insult to food.”

Blahahahahahahaha!

Amylynn’s assistant quit yesterday. The first words everyone said when they found out was, “Oh my God. What did you do to her?” The truth was, nothing. We all got along just fine. The company has already found a replacement. They’re promoting another member of the team to work with Amylynn. She’d going to be great. We already think she’s a smarticle. Here’s the problem. She’s about 20-years-old, weighs about 100 pounds when carrying a twenty-pound weight, and she’s very quiet. If there’s three things the Sisters aren’t, it’s young, skinny, and quiet. She’s going to continue to age, and Amylynn will put her mind towards fattening her up, but there’s not much we can do about quiet. We’re sorta afraid she doesn’t think we’re funny and that’s going to go badly for everyone. In our bid for a coup, we’re still trying to manipulate a way to get Susanna-the-world’s-greatest-receptionist over to us. We’ll bide our time and work on the new assistant. Meanwhile, here’s some stuff that distracted us this week.

1. Nothing good ever happens here. A 90-year-old woman in Miami woke up to find an animal sleeping on her chest. She thought it was a cat at first. But then she looked more closely at the animal and the animal got a good look at her. They both screamed and ran away. It turns out the animal was a kinkajou. We don’t know what it sounded like when it screamed, but we’re imagining something squeaky. They’re part of the raccoon family and they’re from Central and South America. It looks very cuddly. It turns out it is a pet belonging to a neighbor. Somehow it got out of its house and wandered into the old lady’s. Then we guess it got tired and needed a nice snuggle. If this was our Kinkajou we’d name her Lola.

2. If we were to start burgling… We laughed when we read this story because it sounded like how things would go if we’d started a life of crime. This happened outside Fairbanks. Lots of good news stories come from Alaska. Those people are amusing. The plot of the story has a fellow accused of taking $6,000 from a laundry and a fitness business. We’re not sure if the laundry and fitness place are connected, but it’s a brilliant concept. Do a little weight lifting and Zumba while your clothes fluff and fold. Anyway, surveillance footage shows our guy maneuvering his car as close as possible for easier loading. That’s exactly what we would do, too. Carry things as little as possible. If we could park on the sidewalk we would. After that, things take a bad turn. It seems he managed to lock his keys in the car. Thus the inept burglar was apprehended. Note to self, get one of those magnetic key holders to keep under the fender as part of Life of Crime starter pack.

3. Panda Republic. If you have the chance to catch this show on Animal Planet you should do yourself a favor. Panda Republic is adorable and funny and will give you a whole new respect for panda sex. And Jack Black who narrates it is, of course, a brilliant choice. If there wasn’t empirical proof pandas are real, we’d swear they were an animatronic dreamed up by Disney. Few things are funnier than rambunctious pandas stealing shoes. Indulge yourself.

4. The “horsey” team. The Sisters don’t normally involve themselves in sports – have you seen us? We are not “sporty”. However, Ava used to live in Denver and was forced by the entire local population to be a Broncos’ Fan. Those Denver people take that very, very seriously. When they found out she didn’t have any “Bronco Wear”, sixteen people brought her t-shirts the next day. Her children are Bronco fans because they were born in Denver and that’s the law. It was also mandatory that you send John Elway a Christmas card every year and buy all of your cars from one of the John Elway dealerships. Also, she is considered to be something of a good luck charm for them because the first two years she lived there they won the Superbowl. Never mind that they didn’t win the last five years she was there. Go Broncos!

5. Our hero. This guy is all over the internet right now, but there’s still a few of you who may not be aware. You know here at the Quill Sisters we’re all about public service announcements. Dr. Evan Antin is a veterinarian. He’s flown all over the world to treat exotic animals and is now based out of a clinic in Conejo Valley, California. Read about him here. Our veterinarian is very nice, but he’s not this cute. If you’re in Dr. Evan’s area, take your animal in for a quick physical. We’re sure your fuzzy buddy needs some booster shots or something. Let us know how it goes. We’re pretty sure that the Bright kitties could use a check up, but no one is going to let us pack up all the animals and go on a road trip. More’s the pity.

Ava and I are nuts, but in a self-deprecating, silly sort of way that doesn’t usually cause harm. Our families know it. Our friends know it. We suspect you, dear reader, have a pretty good idea.

We embrace it. We recognize when one of us is heading right into a cuckoo spiral, but we can rarely do anything about it. Usually this manifests itself in our work environment - either working our day jobs doing mortgages or in our writing careers.

Perhaps work is the problem? We’ll have to contemplate this.

Until then, we have to go to work where people are mean and even crazier than us. Seriously.

Ava was ranting today about some stupid thing while we were driving to lunch. “Wait until I tell you what this crazy person did.”

As par for the course, she was thinking that somehow this person’s inability to recognize reality was somehow her fault. We both do this. It’s ridiculous. It’s stupid. And its own brand of crazy.

“Oh my god,” I said. “Do you think we need therapy?”

“We don’t need a therapist to tell us we’re nuts.”

“No, actually, I just want a therapist to say it’s ok to stab people.”

So that was Wednesday.

I watched a DIY primer on animal smuggling. The show was on the National Geographic Channel and it was presented as a cautionary tale on the dangers of smuggling endangered animals. I considered it more of a Smuggling 101.

Basically I learned a couple of valuable nuggets of info - some are sort like, duh. You know how introductory classes are. But still, you have to take it. The 200 series classes have it as a requirement.

Not in pants. No!

1. Do not try to smuggle tiny monkeys in your pants. Tiny monkeys don’t like being shoved in your crotch for seven hours. You wouldn’t like it either.
2. Tiny turtles have salmonella. It’s a good thing we’re not interested in turtles. However, Operation Flying Turtle is a great name for a caper.
3. Smugglers - or at least the actors who play them on TV - are very sweaty people. You’d think if it was true, that’s all the customs agents would have to look for. “Oh look, Bob. There’s another sweaty one.”
4. If, at some point, you think to smuggle a different baby monkey in a fake pregnancy belly you should probably rethink that plan. When it wakes up it’s not going to be happy and it’s right next to your belly. Gads!
5. George is a great name for a monkey. We suspect they were thinking he was curious.
6. All the smugglers try to fly into LAX. Why would you do that? Don’t go to Los Angeles, idiot!

I’m ready for my final. I’m going to ace this.

We happened upon this story on the Huffington Post and it gave us pause.

The only reason this isn’t a story about us is that the main character is a bird. We’re a bit iffy about birds. The odds are that unless it was a parrot who asked us specifically to rescue it, we probably wouldn’t. Yes, we’re prejudiced against the avian. Also the reptiles. Things do not look good for snakes and lizards.

All that being said, this is a beautiful bird. It’s a kestrel falcon and is only about the size of a robin. So cute and small. Essentially a pocket raptor, only we wouldn’t recommend putting it in a pocket based on how this story goes.

A very nice Floridian gentleman found it in his front yard and thought it was hurt when it didn’t try to fly away. “The bird sat there and acted tame, and he’s like, ‘Well, it really likes me.'” So he gently brought it into the house and thought he might keep the tame bird for a pet. The officials suspect the bird had smashed into a window or something and was stunned. “Tame” behavior is not unusual in that situation, apparently.

Then he posted a proud picture on Facebook. Nothing good ever comes from Facebook. Some ratfink “friend” turned him in to the Fish and Game people. Someone from an animal rescue group called up our hero and informed him they were coming to collect the bird. He gave it up without a fight because he’s not a bad guy.

Here comes the tragedy in our little story. “The man came to the door with a huge, bloody chunk missing from his lip. He had tried to give his beloved pet a kiss goodbye.”

It’s thought it was the bird’s first kiss. The fellow from Fish and Game considered, “[The bird] didn’t know what was happening. He probably thought the guy was coming at him to eat him or something.”

Of course that man tried to kiss his pretty bird goodbye. Ava and I totally get that. People are constantly barking warnings at us not to touch wild animals because they’re going to kill us. We have two responses to this.

1. We firmly believe when we get ahold of our wild baby - whatever it is - we will fatten it up and it will love us!
2. If we die from a wild animal mauling then so be it. Isn’t that a better way to go than languishing from a long painful death from cancer?

We’re just sayin’ we’d have kissed that bird, too. We are definitely kissing the panda.

Everyone in our office is sick with some sort of upper respiratory infection. We know it’s viral because one of our people went to urgent care and they said so. When we say everyone, we pretty much mean EVERYONE. It’s like a ghost town with people dropping like flies. Amylynn’s been likening it to 14th century Europe and the black plague. There is one operations person left out of six, so the poor girl is being inundated. Of course, the Sisters spent much of the day plying her with coffee, lunch, and sweets to keep her content. She asked us at one point if we were bribing her. “Obviously!” we told her. “We need our work done and if everyone is too stupid to think of it, that’s their problem.” Anyway, we’re on a strict regimen of hand washing and avoiding other people. Thank Zeus for the internet. Here’s some funny stuff, or at the least it won’t make you sick.

1. Dessert report. Oh, my. This little delicacy is not to be missed. It’s called a kouign-amann. Pronounce it like Queen-a-mon. We didn’t know where it’s from. Holland? Germany? Heaven? We did some research after eating several dozen of the things to discover they’re French. Of course they are. We don’t know what we were thinking. According to the

Mike Brown (left) and Konstantin Batygin. Borrowed from Sciencemag.org.

Wikipedia page there is a strict recipe of 40% dough, 30% butter, and 30% sugar. What could possibly go wrong with a recipe like that? Find a place in your town that has these and eat several. You won’t be sorry.

2. A very complex word for it. They - the astronomy smarticles - believe they may have located another planet just beyond Pluto. They haven’t seen it, of course. That’s very far. Very, very far. But something out there is causing a disturbance in the force, if you know what we mean. Something is causing elliptical orbits and that something has to have gravity, right? The scientists are calling this thing, “a massive perturber.” Blahahahahahaha. We have quite a few “massive perturbers” in our lives and that’s how we’re going to start identifying them. MPs. You may join in our inside joke if you like. We love to hear about your very own MPs. The person at the grocery store with 37 items in the 15 Items or Less line. The person ahead of you at the ATM who is taking FOREVER. What are they doing up there? Taking out a loan application. Or maybe your crazy boss who won’t stop texting you? Massive Perturbers all.

3. We’re getting this printed on business cards. Bei bei, the most adorable baby panda EVER, made his public debut at the Smithsonian Zoo in Washington DC this week. We’ve been watching him on the PandaCam ever since he was just a little bamboo nugget. So of course, the news people interviewed all these people who waiting in like for like 93,759 hours just to see him. Some of them were wearing panda suits - like jammies, not suits made out of pandas. That’s sick. Others were less insane. The best one of the lot had the words Panda Enthusiast written as her descriptor under her picture during the interview. WOW! We didn’t know there was a technical term for it. We thought Crazy People was the best we could do. We are totally Panda Enthusiasts. We’re going to get shirts made.

4. Ooooooh! We hope that you know us well enough at this point to realize that we love Tiffany. Not the 80’s singer. We don’t know anything about her. What’s she doing now? We have no idea. We’re referring to Tiffany the jewelry store. Of course we love their jewelry. Obviously. That color blue is a favorite, too. You probably also know we live in the wild west out here. We’re sure you can imagine our wide-eyed reaction to this little gem. We could really use this during the zombie apocalypse. Really, there’s no reason why you can’t shoot zombies in the head and still be stylish.

5. She’s living our life. The Sisters aren’t really crazy about monkeys. That’s not to say we wouldn’t scoop one up should it wander into our periphery. We know ourselves better than that, and we suspect you do too. You know what we are crazy about? Among other things - many other things - dogs. Big dogs, little dogs. Fuzzy, silly dogs. This Rhesus Macaque in New Delhi just adopted a stray puppy. She carries him around and shares her food and protects him from scary stuff. They take naps together. The citizens of New Delhi don’t know why she did it, but we do. Duh! Look at that puppy! We’d adopt him too. All tiny and spotted and adorable. Just look at that tiny tail. We’d name him Farley. Or maybe Edgar. Lucky monkey. Some people won’t let us have a puppy. Some people are just mean.

You might be aware, or you might not, it’s robot season. Robot season starts at the beginning of January and goes through April-ish. The worst part of robot season is from January to mid-February. That’s when the robot actually gets built. During that time, Ava all but lives alone. The rest of the family is out until all hours building the robot.

Here’s a helpful cat.

So, it’s her and the three cats. Ava has never lived alone and she doesn’t like it. Not at all. The purrballs do not like it either because she focuses all of her attention on them. It’s not unheard for them to call up Amy and ask to go live at her house until build season is over.

While Ava is left to her own devices at home, she writes. Her latest unfinished novel needed to have a very critical fact researched. She needed to know what was the least amount of inches a window could be open for a one-year-old lioness to climb out of.

In typical Ava fashion, she rounded up one of her kitties and attempted to measure his head after having read that would be the part that would have to get through - the rest of the cat is fairly squishable.

Milo - the kitty she captured first because he’s a little on the chubby side - was not at all excited to have his head measured. He gave her the “Are you an idiot?” look. After a brief struggle, the measurement was taken. Next, Ava spent some time rigging up a two shelf contraption for him to try to crawl through. She explained to him this was to simulate an open window. He

See - he has helpful kitties

gave her the “What the F is wrong with you? Someone could get hurt. You’re not in construction like dad” look. She made him do it anyway, explaining that everyone in the family had to do their share - after all, he did want to continue to be housed and fed, didn’t he?

Well, the head measurement thing worked - he made it through a three-inch opening several times before he called the authorities. Based on a top secret mathematical formula - we now know that a one year old lioness should be able to escape through a window open about ten inches.

Just to be on the safe side - Ava and Amy have decided to contact Kevin Richardson AKA The Lion Whisperer and see what he thinks. We’ll let you know if we’re right.

The Bandit keeps losing teeth. He’s ten so it’s not unheard of, but he looks really goofy and charming at the moment.

He lost one last week. Then on Saturday we were eating frozen yogurt when he lost another one. Sassy and I didn’t believe him. Who loses a tooth eating yogurt? But holy cow, there it was, in his palm.

Today when I got home from work, he handed me yet another tooth.

What the heck?” I asked. “I didn’t even know you had any loose ones.”

He shrugged. I mean really, what’s there to say?

Later we went to the grocery store. We were standing in the dairy section when he caught me looking at him. Back when he was younger and lost a bunch of teeth he was actually excited about it because it made what he called “a cheese hole”. This was a gap in his teeth in which he could insert pieces of shredded cheese.

A cheese hole. Obviously.

So there I was staring at him in the dairy section.

“What?” he asked.

“Jeez with the holes you have now, we could shove cheese wedges through there.”

He giggled at the prospect. We proceeded through the store imaging what else we could get through that gap.

“Pretzel sticks,” I suggested

“Baby corn,” he countered.

As we went down the aisles. “Small carrots. Thin cookies.”

“Very skinny breadsticks.”

You know, the science fair is coming up… Finally, an experiment that might be fun.

Boy, do we hate having to go to work when our families have the day off for a holiday. Yes, we work in the finance industry. No we don’t get MLK Day off work. Half of the companies we work with will be closed, but not us. Nope.

When our families are all still nestled in their beds with a warm cat and maybe a fuzzy dog to snuggle with, we will be getting up and putting on work clothes and going in to be harassed by too many emails and impractical expectations.

Sigh.

Well, hasn’t this week been a kick in the ass? We’re pretty sure that no more people we love need to die this year. Surely the quota has been met. So we wallowed and whined and moaned. We laughed too, but they were tears from a clown. Or something like that. Anyway, the Quill Sisters respectfully ask you to take good care of yourself. It seems the best plan is not to turn 69. Just ignore that age. Go from 68 right to 70. Because we love you, we’ve done some serious research on the internet to find you five funny things this week. Read on and it’ll boost your spirits. Well, it won’t make them worse. We promise.

1. Someone who clearly avoided the curse of 68+1. This took place in Maryland. An 87-year-old fellow answered his door to a stranger. The guy at the door said there was a problem with the old guy’s well and it needed to be checked. The old guy wasn’t falling for that nonsense. This old dude reminds us of our dad - cantankerous. At this point, we imagine he old guy told the stranger to get off his lawn. Sadly, the stranger ratcheted up the encounter and pulled the old man to the ground whereupon our hero bit him. Now here comes the best part. The old man has a kick-ass wife who then showed up to save the day by punching the bad guy in the head. And there you have it. Don’t mess with old ladies.

2. It look us 350+ to get a decent one. Donald “Chip” Pugh has gotten himself in considerable trouble. Enough trouble to necessitate a mug shot. We’re not sure if he was just in a foul mood at the time, although that would be reasonable considering a mug shot usually happens after an arrest, but he was very unhappy with the one the police in Ohio were using. He disliked it so much that he actually sent the police a selfie and asked them to use it instead. This time, he was wearing a sport coat and sunglasses. “Here is a better photo,” he said. “That one is terrible.” We agree.

3. We want the fuzzy kind not the slick kind. If you haven’t seen the video yet, you need to hop on over to the Facebook page for the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Last month a wild California sea otter swam into their tide pool and hung around. The employees were concerned that she might be injured, but then she popped out a baby! Honest to Zeus, this may be the cutest otter in the history of otters and that is a long and illustrious history, my friends. We have boomeranged sea otters to the very top of the list of Animals the Sisters Must Possess. We’ve always known they were cute, but HOLY MOLEY. The way this baby floats around on his momma’s belly and she lifts him up for little kisses… Melted hearts.

4. If we’d won the lottery… You’ve probably heard that the Playboy Mansion is for sale. It’s listed for 200 million dollars. That seems like a hell of a lot for a fixer-upper, in our humble opinions. We’ll be the first to admit, we’ve not been in the Playboy Mansion but we imagine the interior decorating is atrocious. We picture a whole lot of crushed velvet and leopard prints. We did some internet searches and found this picture. Sweet Jesus. Nevertheless, we’d consider buying it if we won that 1.5 billion dollars solely because of the famed grotto at the pool. That’s the perfect place to keep otters. Apparently, if you buy the place, you have to let Hugh live in the apartment over the garage. Alright, fine, but we’re going to need him to make some room for the otter chow. Amazon is delivering it, two-day shipping.

5. A new career path. We found new jobs. We’re moving to Virginia next week. There’s probably several more openings, so feel free to apply yourself. Caromont Farms is hiring baby goat cuddlers. Squeeee! They’re expecting about 90 kids in mid-February and they will need to be fed four times a day and cuddled. Apparently, all this love and attention helps them grow into strong goats who make good cheese. We LOVE goat cheese - especially with blueberries and walnuts. We were excited about this prospect until we read the last part. Then we went certifiably over the edge. One of the goat cuddler duties will be, “dressing them in small goat-sized sweaters that need to be worn on the regular to ensure they stay warm.” That’s right WE GET TO DRESS THE GOATS!! We don’t even need to get paid; we’d do this for free.