Posts Tagged ‘Animalia’

Missing My Little Salmonella

chickes will take over the couchI’ve had a lot of pets over the years, but none left more of a mark than a very special chicken, known affectionately as “Salmonella” or “Chicken”.

Salmonella came to me in a small cardboard box. I can’t say I was too pleased when I opened up this supposed gift to find a shivering fluffball squatting in a pile of its own poop.

I didn’t even know what to expect! My friend had just told me that “there was a chick he wanted to introduce me to” and showed up at my door with this box minutes later.

HAR! GOOD ONE!

Thankfully, baby chicken poop smells like cornbread so it wasn’t completely unbearable living with poultry.

Unfortunately, little Salmonella grew at an alarming rate. A heat lamp and teddy bear shoved in an IKEA drawer worked at first-and there is nothing cuter than a chick squeezing her head through a teddy bear’s arms just to snuggle up-but Chicken outgrew her home within a few weeks.

Not only that, but I had to drag my pocket pet all over the place because without a warm hand or pocket to sit in, Salmonella would hop out of her drawer, flop onto the carpet 5 feet below, and proceed to trip around the apartment chirping like a fiend until someone picked up the little shit.

Bringing a chicken on all your errands might work for SOME people, but I’m still trying to convince everyone that I’m not insane.

chicken faceSalmonella grew up to become a cute, attention whore of a bird: This chicken would strut around the backyard gurgling and squawking for attention until someone…ANYONE…either fed her or stood around while Chickie scratched around for bugs.

I attempted buying another chicken to make Salmonella’s life less miserable, but it turned into a disaster.

Chicken #2 (a.k.a  Pugly) was an abomination of nature: Half Silkie and half Brahman, Pugly looked like a mutated hairball with a black beak and a bright, red brain protruding from his forehead.

Even though Pugly lived up to his name in looks, he completely shunned Salmonella, and ended up falling in love with one of the gardening shoes I kept on the porch. (Salmonella had the most gorgeous nuggets around…so this was inexplicable behavior on Pugly’s part.)

The last straw was when Pugly fiercely attacked Salmonella for getting a little too close to his Shoe-toy. It didn’t help that this feathered perversion turned out to be a rooster. He came with an attitude and a built in alarm set to 6am.

Pugly was promptly returned to his previous home.

It was hard giving my Salmonella away when I moved to an apartment complex that preferred to keep their property Chicken-free.  Having a chicken as a pet makes for a great conversation piece. People immediately open up…and I learned a lot from the bird.

For example, I never knew that chickens have an affinity for turkey sandwiches. (I’m going to hell.)

Nor did I know that chicken will float on water completely oblivious to the world… after accidentally jumping in a full bathtub.

And I’m still amazed at all the sounds that came out of that tiny bird’s beak during the 5 years that I took care of the thing. Chickens have a special squawk for different types of predators…so I always knew when the neighbor’s cat was there for a visit, or when a hawk was circling overhead.

A chicken can despise flip flops.

Chickens love creating music.

Yep…chickens can teach us all a thing or two.

Appreciate those eggs!!!

I’m surprised at how many people knocked on my door wondering what happened to the incessant chicken noises that they’d gotten so accustomed to.  I found out later that Salmonella habitually snuck out of the yard and ran around the property for 8 hours while I was at work- she waddled around greeting neighbors, getting fed, hanging out with the pigeons-and the neighbors just threw her back over the fence before I got home. Everyone knew where the chicken lived.

We all felt at a loss without Salmonella in our lives and decided to have a bbq to make up for it.

The chicken, on the other hand, probably forgot about me as soon as the new owner let her sit on the couch and watch TV with the family.

eggs aren't always good for you

Smelly Jellies!!

jellyfish are spectacular!

I love Jellyfish!

As long as they’re not swimming near me…

I just read a story about someone’s workday completely ruined by one of these gelatinous freaks of nature…and I couldn’t keep it to myself. 

How selfish would it be if I didn’t share someone else’s misery with you guys?

Trust me. It’s hilarious!

Remember…if you think you’re having a rough time at the office…at least it’s jellyfish free:

 

April 1998

Hi Sue,

 
Just another note from your bottom-dwelling brother. Last week I had a bad day at the office. I know you’ve been feeling down lately at work, so I thought I would share my dilemma with you to make you realize it’s not so bad after all.

Before I can tell you what happened to me, I first must bore you with a few technicalities of my job. As you know, my office lies at the bottom of the sea. I wear a suit to the office. It’s a wetsuit.

This time of year the water is quite cool. So what we do to keep warm is this: We have a diesel powered industrial water heater. This $20,000 piece of crap sucks the water out of the sea. It heats it to a delightful temp. It then pumps it down to the diver through a garden hose which is taped to the air hose.

Now this sounds like a darn good plan, and I’ve used it several times with no complaints. What I do, when I get to the bottom and start working, is I take the hose and stuff it down the back of my neck. This floods my whole suit with warm water. It’s like working in a Jacuzzi.

Everything is going well until all of a sudden, my butt started to itch. So, of course, I scratched it. This only made things worse. Within a few seconds, my butt started to burn. I pulled the hose out from my back, but the damage was done. In agony, I realized what had happened. The hot water machine had sucked up a jellyfish and pumped it into my suit.

This is even worse than the poison ivy you once had under a cast. Now I had that hose down my back. I don’t have any hair on my back, so the jellyfish couldn’t get stuck to my back. My butt crack was not as fortunate. When I scratched what I thought was an itch, I was actually grinding the jellyfish into my butt.

I informed the dive supervisor of my dilemma over the comms. His instructions were unclear due to the fact that he, along with 5 other divers, was laughing hysterically. Needless to say, I aborted the dive.

I was instructed to make three agonizing in-water decompression stops totaling 35 minutes before I could come to the surface for my chamber dry decompression. I got to the surface wearing nothing but my brass helmet. My suit and gear were tied to the bell.

When I got on board the medic, with tears of laughter running down his face, handed me a tube of cream and told me to rub it on my butt when I got into the chamber. The cream put the fire out, but I couldn’t poop for two days because my butthole was swollen shut.

…Now repeat to yourself: “I love my job. I love my job. I love my job”

 

Unfortunately, I doubt that  this story is actually true. I don’t have any hair on my arm…and I can tell you first-hand that jellyfish don’t need hair to stick to you: The millions of harpoon barbs covering their tentacles do just fine exploding into your skin, and they can stick to just about anything…

but there really is no harm in laughing at a good story.

Haaaaaaaaaaaa

Feeling Music in Your Gut

As a kid I was fascinated (and maybe a little grossed out) by tennis racquets because the strings where made of “catgut”.

Well, it is only NOW I find out that the less fortunate feline never really uses its gut to fend off tennis balls.

Catgut may just be short for “cattlegut” since farm animal intestines were originally used to string your violin or tennis racquet, but no one really knows EXACTLY where the term comes from.

But what’s important to remember here is that the next time you’re at a beautiful symphony enjoying the sounds of strings, harps and violins playing in perfect unison … know that a goat or donkey part is delicately being plucked to bring you all that glorious music.

The only problem I have with all this is that I can never think of a hotdog the same way again.  Every time I look at a hotdog, I am just reminded that the lowly little sausage staring back at me could have been oh, so much more! It could have been part of a perfectly designed instrument…and instead it is left as part of a sub-par meat product.

I vow never to take away an intestine’s chance at making something of itself ever again!

Synthetic strings are beginning to replace the traditional animal intestine.

But catgut is still used in developing countries where goats and cows are a little more common…and cheaper… than a piece of synthetic thread.

Hey! You can still get stitches made from catgut over there too.  Screw the infection!

I’m definitely happier knowing that a cat’s gut is pretty much useless except when it comes to sending Whiskas from one end of the cat to the other… or when it comes to making balloons.

catguts are crap (full of?)

Happy Halloween!

 

it's coming to get you!

What? You don’t think unicorns are scary? Well, you’d be wrong

Why do you think this one’s so fat? It’s from eating all those people!

Well, at the very LEAST…it eats gingerbread men pretending that they’re people…

 OOoooooooOOOoooooooo

 

Alright, I have a confession to make: I have NO time to do anything besides look for work and complain about not finding anything (more time required for the latter).  The little unicorn was something I drew a week ago and I just plopped it in there.

I’m so ashamed…but I’ll make it up to you.

Ratty Intruder

little Rat Just Wants to Eat your peanutsI would like to take a moment to reminisce about the time my house was broken into…REPEATEDLY.

At first, I would notice little things missing here and there: Pieces of paper, cookies, chunks out of my favorite sweater.

It really wasn’t too bad until the culprit grew some balls and ran across my BARE foot, dragging his huge gut and saggy testicles behind him.

I. Felt. Everything. 

Ugh. My foot was pretty much taken advantage of by a rat. I didn’t even know rats had foot fetishes…

This was YEARS ago, but I can still remember how terrifying the whole experience was. I couldn’t do anything but stammer as I watched the hairy shadow continue to scurry across the floor and to the backyard through the open glass doors.

Sick!

My kitchen was always pretty clean, but after that ratty encounter it was damn near spotless…and I was sure that the intense smell of bleach would keep any living thing at bay.

Unfortunately, the nightly visits continued. The rat had figured out that my roommate liked to stash her 50 lb bag of rice in her bedroom. There was obviously no space for it in the kitchen…plus it doubled as a bean-bag chair. 

Every evening, this rat would squeeze under her door and head straight for the all-you-can eat rice buffet.

beer goggles all day and nightOn a side note, I told my roommate to put the bag of rice on top of something. I checked in on her the next day and yes, the rice was in fact, on top of something…a cardboard box…a FOLDED cardboard box…meaning that the rice was about half a millimeter off the floor…and I’m being generous here. So now the rice-buffet was literally being served on a cardboard platter. Are you kidding me???

So I grew to expect our little intruder. It was our ritual: 

  1. Ratty poop-factory comes over at the most inconsiderate hours
  2. Rat eats our food
  3. Rat  leaves a few turds behind as a tip
  4. Rat drags himself and his testicles all over house and leaves

THANKS buddy!

I placed traps around the house and near the rice bag. Nothing. This thing was smart. I still don’t even know how it got into the house.

Eventually the rat grew so ENORMOUS that it had to gnaw away at my roommate’s door just to fit underneath.

I ended up catching the thing with a “Zapper”. It’s basically a plastic box that electrocutes a rodent once it crawls inside. I secretly hoped never to catch the thing. I was moving out soon anyway…I could deal with this for another month. I have a hard enough time bringing myself to squirt bug-spray on a roach.

But…the rat wasn’t that lucky.

Maybe it was tired of eating rice for the past 2 weeks. Or maybe the rat knew that its life was coming to an end anyway: No morbidly obese rat is going to be able to outrun a cat…or a heart attack. This was an easy way out…quick, painless electrocution.

Anyway, I took a deep breath and checked the trap, but I wasn’t mentally prepared to find a ferret in there.

Oh wait…thank god…it wasn’t a ferret…just the biggest freaking rat I’d ever seen. It had to have been over a foot long. What the hell do they PUT in those Costco rice bags??!

I don’t know if the rat deserved to die just for trespassing…but I took a lesson from the ‘little’ guy and know to only steal food from people’s houses ONCE…or twice at the most.

scary...

Pets and Bulimia

bulimic dogI’ve lived with a girl who faked being handicapped, a Minotaur and a fundamental Christian who belly danced on the weekends for some extra cash. But nothing was worse  than when one roommate decided to bring along her cat.

I was excited at first. I wouldnt mind a cat around the house; they can be cute, and cuddly and maybe even funny once in a while … but once the bundle of fluff was carried into my apartment I knew the experience would be a disappointment.

This manic depressive cat did nothing but lie on the carpet and lose chunks of fur.

Alright, so she did more than that: Mrs.Fluffy’s 22 hour naps were punctuated with regular barf sessions. To find the cat, you’d just have to follow the barfy trail she’d left behind…sort of like a hairy, slug.

Or, you’d just have to listen for the “urk, urk, urk, urk, urk…”

I knew who to blame, though….and it wasn’t the owner.

 Oh, no…It’s the media.

Thousands of pets are afflicted with bulimia, and who could blame them?

After seeing the sexy felines on Fancyfeast commercials and watching the self-righteous Pedigree pups strut around on screen, any pet is going to feel self conscious. Our pets are brought up believing they have to look like all the cartoons on TV or the stuffed animals that line the shelves at Pet-co.  

So they barf.

Damn media!

barfy kitty

The Lady that Peed in the Palm of my Hand

I was never sure if I should be offended that a ‘LADY’bug is an insect known for its voracious appetite, bulbous body and the weird habit of bleeding all over the place, but the name really has nothing to do with the animal itself, but rather where it came from:

In the Middle Ages crops were being devastated by aphids (as if people didn’t have enough problems at the time). Farmers began praying to the Virgin Mary for help and shortly thereafter swarms of the beetles came to the rescue. Of course, they were called “The Beetles Of Our Lady” after that little miracle, but “ladybeetle” or “ladybug” is definitely more catchy.

Germany is full of ladybugs. There are days in the summer where the shiny beetles crawl around all over the sidewalk, store windows and cars.

I’ve found branches weighed down by giant red clumps made up of thousands of ladybugs. When the weather gets warm enough (The little lumps won’t move unless it’s warmer than 50 degrees.), these writhing masses dissolve into swarms that eventually find their way into your hair and potentially your mouth (especially if you tend to walk through an infestation with your mouth hanging wide open…that’s how I like to catch most of my bugs…a butterfly net? pshaw).

Like all kids I’d love finding a brightly colored beetles to play with, but was horrified when one of these supposidly dainty, little ladybugs left a disgusting (but still dainty), yellow puddle in the palm of my hand as thanks for my devoted attention. That little assnugget of a bug wasn’t very ladylike.

I was even more disgusted when I found out that the yellow, little fleck left on my hand wasn’t even pee, but blood that the ladybug had squirted through the joints in its legs. Its what they do when they’re being harassed, apparently. I’m not such a huge fan of ladybugs anymore.

  Its Gross but they're still cute

Penguins Can Do No Wrong

If there is one thing the world can never have enough of its penguins. I will always welcome their stubby little bodies into my life, and can only dream of the day when a chubby little penguin waddles towards me with its floppy little wings prepared for an embrace.

So…if two supposedly gay penguins foster a baby chick and  help increase the penguin population in the process then kudos to them.

 Penguins are Awesome