Ernest

I came across this in a picture book. Doesn't it look like little Ernest? Only his long hair made him happy.

He cut it in high school, though. Now he looks like this.

Rumor has it he might visit at Christmas!

Partners in crime

The babies are all grown. 

A few minutes later they were all busy in the bathroom. I couldn't get a video started soon enough

but they were moving in unison, heads and ears together, back and forth like a coordinated dance.

Time to Feed Fifi

I was getting that look.

Which means...

Or else she will turn into Vlad the Cat

But now for something slightly different, Freddy Purrcury!

It’s that time of year

Halloween yesterday. 

Bee Handling

Actually not bees. I believe we are dealing with yellow jackets, or “predatory social wasps.”

Handy got stung by a hidden nest in our yard during the summer. But I digress.

I wanted to discuss my apparently new position as book store yellow jacket remover.

People freak out. Get rid of the bee!  Um, I don’t think it’s a bee. But I’ll take care of it. So then I deal with it. Yes, there are yellow jackets around the trash right outside the door. Solution: I carefully empty the trash.

Bee (yellow jacket) in the window. But please don’t kill it! Solution: I cover it with a glass, slide some paper between the pane and the glass, carry it out and let it go near the street planter. Also I empty the trash again because that’s where they are congregating.

I thank my years of elementary school playground/lunch duty for the ability to deal with this in a calm manner. Those lunch table yellow jackets loved sandwiches! And the trash. Solution: cover your food. Empty the trash.

I can also deal with spiders, scuttling black bugs (smash ‘em!),  dead or only slightly flapping objects the cats used to drag in, (solution: dustpan) and in a very new twist, bold pigeons walking straight into the store (solution: run them back out the door)! I can’t deal with fully flapping things so if the pigeons take flight inside then we will have a problem.

Co-workers are grateful that I deal with “bees.” I doubt they will deal with the full metal pigeon invasion.

Although work rumors say “solution: falconer!”

Leo Love

Even Naughtier

One of the orange boys (I was told it was Leo) broke the screen!

This is why we can't have nice things.

Seriously, the screen door was 51 years old and pretty frail. We had it rescreened and the boys are back at their sitting spot.  Of course at this time it was too hot to have the slider open.

Leo is evidencing some guilt here and is trying to escape from the scene of his crime. He was lounging happily until he saw me attempting to take a picture;