Meet Charlotte

I found Charlotte wandering the streets of Ventura in August of 1999. She somehow escaped from either her previous owner, or a small nearby pond, but I know had I not needed gas that morning Charlotte would have ended up a little grease spot on a busy stretch of road.

As I left the gas station that morning I saw what looked like a hamburger with feet walking across the road. Curious, I pulled up along side of it and opened my car door for a better look. To my surprise I found a small turtle that was out for a brisk morning walk. She is surprisingly fast on her feet, and ran from me before I could grab her, so I got out of my car, and scooped her up.

I had nothing in my car to keep her in, so I held her in my hand like a hamburger while I drove the rest of the way to work. Once there, I secured a small Tupperware bowl from one of my coworkers, and filled it with enough water to make my new charge comfortable.

Later that evening when we got home, I went out and bought a nice aquarium, and set it up with all the comforts of a turtle home. I figured her to be about four years old then, so by my reckoning she is approaching her 10th birthday this year.

Of all our pets, Charlotte demands the least attention and care. She is quite content in her aquarium paddling around her rock, and feeding on the occasional turtle food pellet, or when she's really lucky, a night crawler. I personally think she's beautiful, and quite smart. When she sees me coming she frantically paddles over to the edge of her aquarium, and when she looks up at me I swear she smiles. I guess most people would say it's all in anticipation of food, because she has been conditioned to forever link me with the magical appearance of turtle food pellets that fall from the sky every time I come into view. Maybe so, but I like to think that in her little reptilian brain there is enough room for a small amount of turtle love.

As much as I love her, I think Charlotte would be better off with someone who has more time for her, and has other turtles for her to romp with. I love my little Charlotte, and it will be hard to let her go, but I know it's in her best interest, and in a small way I do find comfort in that.

I have contacted some folks in the San Luis Obispo area who are associated with a turtle rescue operation. I will be interviewing them today, and hopefully they will turn out to be a good match for my little four-legged hamburger.

The Great Dandelion Hunt

Jacqueline loves a good dandelion snack while on her afternoon walk. Today for your viewing pleasure Jacqueline demonstrates her prowess at stalking, catching, and devouring a wild dandelion she found while cruising through the grasslands near our house.

The Wrestling Match

Ebby, our big black cat, had a lot more patience for Thalia when she was a kitten. The wrestling match below could never happen today.

What Narcotic I am Taking for Pain Right Now...

My old high school chum Frank of Manic Viking fame has a regular feature on his blog called What I am Drinking Right Now. Frank is quite knowledgeable in the area of alcoholic beverages, and he often shares with his readers a favorite mixed drink recipe, or a quick critique of a brand of scotch or beer that he enjoys.

Being quite unimaginative myself, I have decided to steal the idea and write about what narcotic I am taking for pain right now. Before I do, I would like to say that I am under a doctor’s care, and am monitored every month by my physician for chronic, acute pain. I have legal prescriptions for all the medications mentioned, and I take these medications as directed by my doctor. These medications can be very dangerous, and even deadly if not taken as prescribed. I do not in any way advocate the recreational use of any prescription or illicit drug.

Today I am wearing a 100 mcg/hr Fentanyl Transdermal Patch. Fentanyl has an analgesic potency about 80 to 100 times that of morphine, and was introduced into medical practice in the 1960s as an intravenous anesthetic. Now it is also used for chronic pain management, and has proven to be effective for people that suffer from acute, chronic pain, and are opiate tolerant. While Fentanyl is a great weapon to wield against monstrous pain, it can be bolstered by the periodic ingestion of Norco 10/325 (which essentially is double strength Vicodin,) for what is termed as “Break Through Pain”.

Before I started wearing the patch, I was taking Norco 10/325 anywhere from three to six times a day, and Soma, a muscle relaxer, two to three times a day. Lately the pain has increased to the point where Norco can no longer control it. I have still been able to work 40 hours a week, but the pain is so great that I am exhausted by the end of the day and go straight to bed when I get home. I have also been spending a greater number of my weekends in bed resting my spine and body so that I can continue to work each week.

The Norco routine can be pretty rough. I was only allowed so many each day, and it never really was enough to keep me pain free. I would start my day by taking a pill and waiting an hour before gaining any relief. I would enjoy maybe an hour with little pain, but then over the course of the third hour the pain would creep back, and by the forth hour would be at it’s full force again. After suffering through that hour, I would take another pill, and start the whole cycle all over again.

The Fentanyl patch has given me my life back. I have very little pain while wearing the patch, which works by continuously releasing the medication all day for up to three days. I am now able to carry on with all the normal tasks of everyday modern living that have been heretofore almost impossible. I can walk and sit longer, work better, and I look forward to going places with my wife again on the weekends. It's still early in the treatment, but I have suffered no side effects either.

Hopefully one day I won’t need any pain medication, and then I will finally be able to join Frank for one of his drinks.

UPDATE: When I finished writing this entry my doctor's nurse called and said my doctor wants to send me to a Pain Specialist. I though I was one of those already.

How I Almost Bought an Antique Living Room Set.

This past weekend I wasn’t feeling real well. I told my wife on Friday that I would like to rest in bed as much as I could over the coming weekend, and being the angel that she is, she said it wouldn’t be a problem.

Sunday morning my sister-in-law called and asked my wife if she would like to go to the garden show at the fairgrounds. She needed a new pot for a plant she bought, and wanted my wife to go to keep her company. I decided to stay home in bed rather than subject my back to all that walking and standing. Besides, Flying Leathernecks was on, and I love a good John Wayne flick.

Sometime after the movie my wife called me. She said that she was at an estate auction, and that she bid on, and won, a lamp for me. She wanted me to come down to the fairgrounds with the credit card to pay for it, which I was actually more excited to do than I thought I would be. See, she sounded excited herself, and she bought something for me that she knew I would enjoy, so it was rather inspirational and motivated me to get up, get dressed, and drive out to the auction to see my new lamp.

I really like the lamp. It is a Tiffany style, Dragonfly table lamp, and it looks great when it’s all lit up. But before I actually got to see it, my wife gave me a quick tour of the merchandise up for auction that afternoon, and showed me two other items she wanted to bid on. One was an orange glass vase with a bas-relief rose design. The other was a small bronze sculpture of a fairy sitting on a rock or something. We then got our own bidder’s “paddle”, a piece of construction paper with a number on it, and waited for the items to come on the block.

After a while the vase finally came up, and my wife successfully won the bid for it, after that she handed me the paddle, and I bid on, and won the bronze sculpture. The next item up for bid was an old living room set consisting of a couch, love seat, two chairs and two end tables. My wife expressed interest, but I figured we had spent enough that afternoon already and convinced her we should sit out on this one.

As the bidding for the set progressed, I found myself distracted by another beautiful lamp sitting behind the auctioneer. Not having been at the auction as long as my wife, I was unsure whether or not it had been sold. I nudged my wife and asked her if it had been auctioned off yet, but she didn’t know which lamp I meant. Forgetting all about the paddle in my hand, I pointed it out to her.

"NINE-HUNDRED! I HAVE NINE-HUNDRED WHO’LL MAKE IT A THOUSAND!"

I had no idea what I had just done, but my sister-in-law was quick to point it out. "Jeff", she said, "You just bid on that living room set!"

"What? No I didn’t."

"Yes you did!"

I looked up and the auctioneer was looking right at me, and asking me for a bid of $1100.00. Apparently someone behind me out bid my errant bid of $900.00, and so the auctioneer was trying to get me to raise my bid. I looked at him like a deer in head lights as the whole nasty situation finally materialized inside my tiny skull. All I could do was fiercely shake my head, but the auctioneer wouldn’t give in. "Come on, $1100.00!" I kept shaking my head; unable to speak for fear I might again bid by mistake. Finally, the auctioneer believed me, and yelled, "SOLD, TO NUMBER 86 IN THE BACK ROW."

I felt relieved that I didn't end up buying the set, but I also felt bad for the poor schmuck behind me who had to pay $200.00 more for it because I wanted to know how much a lamp was.

Anyway that is how I almost bought an antique living room set.

Dozing Miss Jacqueline

I caught Jacqueline dozing off last night just after I got home. I thought I would share...

Mamunia

Looks like we are in for a rainy week here in sunny southern California. I happen to enjoy the rain, and living in an area where landslides are not a concern, I can afford to enjoy it.

Others may not be so lucky.

There's a lot of water still locked away in the hills and cliffs where people have chosen to build their houses. I hope for their sake the ground stays where it should.

Pretty Thalia

I always thought Athena was a very beautiful cat. I also always thought I would have ample time to take plenty of pictures of her showing just how beautiful she was. I was of course wrong. There are precious few pictures I have of her, and from those I do have it is hard for someone who did not know her personally to see how striking my Mama was in real life.

Thalia is also beautiful, and here is a sequence of shots that hopefully show off her beauty.

Saint Patrick's Day

I've never really liked Saint Patrick's Day. The way I see it, Saint Patrick's Day is a day of forced conformity, as in the wearin' of the green, and violence, as in pinching if you don't wear the green, or worse if you happen upon a bunch of drunken Irishmen. I NEVER wear green on Saint Patrick's Day. Never. When approached by some drunk who feels they have the right to pinch me because I am not wearing their colors, I tell them my eyes are green, and therefore I am exempt from their pagan ritual. Believe it or not, this usually works. When it doesn't, and they pinch me anyway, I punch them. That ALWAYS works.

In any event, I do believe in America, and in America even the drunk Irish can have their day, so in honor of that, I would like to present my audience with an episode from my favorite old time radio show, Fibber McGee and Molly. Right click and save as from this link, and listen to one of, if not the funniest comedy duo of old radio.

Funny Money

The other day after walking the dogs I saw what looked like a piece of US currency next to our neighbor's fence. I dragged Angel and Jacqueline over to the fence, and collected several pieces of a twenty dollar bill. I remember reading somewhere that if you had at least two thirds of a bill you could turn it into the bank and get a replacement for it, so I gathered up my ripped up twenty and went to work taping it all back together. Here's the result:

I was so proud of my work that I showed it to my step-daughter, who quickly recognized it as counterfeit. She held it up to a light and showed me that the thread that runs through all twenty dollar bills was missing. While it was under that light I also saw what a sloppy fake it was, so I was a little disappointed that I spent all that time taping together twenty bucks that I wasn't going to be able to spend.

Sigh.

Carnival of the Dogs

I haven't been keeping up with the Carnival of the Cats recently, but I try to help out Carnival of the Dogs at Mickey's Musings every week with Carnival of the Dogs. I hope to get something for both next week, but for now...

Thinking of Old Friends

I found a few more pictures of some of the family pets we had when I was a kid. For Christmas in 1971 my sister got Bonnie, our Silky Terrier, and I got a Kodak Instamatic camera. I made good use of that camera, and many of the pictures I took have survived over the years. The problem is they are not centrally located, a problem I am going to correct soon.

In any event, I want to share a couple of pictures of my favorite little Silky Terrier, Bonnie, and her Siamese friend, Tinkerbell.

Crows

My parents were very generous when it came to the pets they let their children keep. We were not only allowed to have dogs and cats, but lizards, horned toads, snakes, hamsters, chipmunks, doves, crows, and even a red-tailed hawk. The only requirements we needed to meet in order to qualify for ownership of a certain type of pet was a demonstration of knowledge in the care and handling of the animal in question, in addition to the customary prerequisite that we were solely responsible to “walk and feed” them as required.

It was out of this liberal policy of pet ownership that my appreciation for animals grew, and I soon realized that the accepted hypotheses at the time that said animals had no feelings or emotions were pure hokum. I also learned quickly that animals in general were much smarter than the general human population gave them credit for. I think many people believe their dog is the smartest animal on the planet because he learned to sit for a treat after the second or third try, but in my experience even a wild animal can be taught with the proper motivation.

In some cases, however, an animal’s intelligence can be revealed by their everyday actions. Take for instance the crow. I have had a total of four crows as pets over the course of my lifetime, and let me tell you they are pretty damn smart animals.

Around 1972 or so my brother found an ad in the classified section of our local paper for the sale of baby crows. For five dollars you could buy your own baby crow, complete with pinfeathers. My brother did some quick research at the county library, (remember those?) and learned what he would need to do in order to care for a little crowlet. He presented his case to our parents, and got the go ahead to purchase two crows, one for him, and one for me. We were able to finagle two out of our folks because, as usual, I road my brother’s coattails. He did all the research, but he would teach me what he had learned as we went along.

For the first few weeks the crows stayed in a cardboard box in our room. At first they were no bigger than the palm of my 11 year-old hand, but with a steady diet of bread soaked in a mixture of milk and bone meal, they quickly grew to the point where they could easily hop out of the box. Though they still lacked the feathers needed for flight, they were very capable of making a mess of things in our room. It was at this point that my father stepped in, and built us a cage.

The cage my father built was simple in design, and was perfect for our needs. Using only 1½-inch, wire mesh stock, my dad made a cylindrical cage with a top, but no bottom. It was sturdy enough to stand on it’s own in our yard, but light enough for us to lift it so that the crows could get out when we wanted them to. By running a couple of long boards through it we gave it added stability as well as a place for the birds to perch. We would cover it with a tarp to keep the crows dry in the rain as well as a little added protection during the night. They were also safe from cats. Because they had grown up inside our house where we had two cats as pets, the crows really weren’t aware that a cat might actually want to eat them.

Every morning, before we were allowed to have our own breakfast, my brother and I would serve our crows either hardboiled or scrambled eggs. We would take the plate of eggs out and set it on the top of the cage. Then we would lift the bottom of the cage just high enough that the crows could get out, and believe me, they would be ready to get out as soon as they saw us come out the back door. They would usually fly around the neighborhood for a while, and then come back and eat their breakfast on top of the cage. After that, they were free to fly around for the rest of the day. Only when it started to get dark would we round them up, and put them back in the cage.

That is pretty much the extent of crow care. They really are a low maintenance pet once they learn to fly. The only problem then is the mischief they get into.

I heard some time ago that the ideas that crows like shiny objects, and that they stash treasures in secret hiding places are both mythical. I am here to tell you first hand it is absolutely true that crows are indeed attracted to shiny objects, and I can verify the existence of a crows cache of treasure. The way I discovered one of my own crow’s treasure spot happened because my mother’s 1968 Pontiac GTO needed a new head gasket.

My father is not only a genius of crow cage design, but he is a master mechanic as well, and one Saturday afternoon he took to the task of repairing my mother’s car. It wasn’t long before he had most of the top end of the engine in pieces on the driveway. I remember being quite impressed with my old man because it looked like a lot of complicated work, and I guess it was because he grew increasingly aggravated as the afternoon wore on. As my father’s patience started to wear thin, his use of colorful language increase exponentially. Auto repair seemed to exhaust my father’s patience quicker than most other activities, and so when I heard him start cussing out mom’s car, I knew it was time for me to go amuse myself in the back yard.

Most days the crows pretty much kept themselves busy by flying around the neighborhood, but this day they decided to torment my poor old dad. During a short break my dad had a banana for a snack. I know because I passed by the car on my way to the backyard a little earlier and saw the peel on the driveway next to my dad as he lay under the car banging away at some stubborn car part. While he was occupied with the immovable object, the crows stole the banana peel… and stuffed in deep into an exposed exhaust port of the engine.

When he discovered what they had done, my dad went ballistic. He told me in no uncertain terms that I was to immediately round them both up, and confine them in their cage for the remainder of the day. Of course the language he used was a bit more assertive, but that was his general meaning.

Being a good son, and fearing for the life of my crows as well as my own, I got them both incarcerated in record time.

Later that afternoon my father, after successfully replacing the faulty gasket and removing banana peel from the exhaust port, started putting the engine back together. When he had the heads in place, he started putting the bolts in that held them in place. My father is very organized, and most of the bolts that he took out of the engine were right where he left them. The rest had seemingly disappeared.

I found out about the missing bolts almost immediately. I heard my father’s booming voice as he yelled for me to “Get those goddamned crows and find my bolts!” You see it wasn’t the first time such attractive items as head bolts had become the property of my pets while no one was looking, and my father was quick to realize it was the crows that stole his bolts.

The good news was that we always knew to check the crow’s hiding place for missing items first. The bad news was the crows kept changing the location of their plunder so we often didn’t know where to look. The good news is, we were sometimes smarter than the crows, and knew if we gave them something shiny, they would lead us right to their booty.

I quickly ran around the house to the backyard, and let the two crow loose. After a couple quick laps around the house, one of them noticed me holding out a nice shiny new penny. He swooped down from the sky, lit on my arm just long enough to snatch the bait from my hand, and then flew right up to the roof of our house.

I watched as my pet strutted across the roof until he reached his cache that was neatly stuffed under a couple of wood shake shingles. He took his penny, and stuffed it under a vacant shingle.

I quickly ran over to where the backyard fence met the side of the house, and scrambled up to the roof. I made my way carefully to where the crow had stuffed his penny, and there in the shingles I found five head bolts, two rings like you would get out of a bubblegum machine, a small superball, one die, my mom’s favorite broach, a toothbrush, and assorted pieces of tin-foil.

I grabbed the broach, head bolts, and the superball, (all under great protest from my crow,) and found my way back down to ground level. I handed over the bolts to my father, who still wasn’t very pleased, and gave my mom back her broach. Mom was so happy she gave me a fudgesicle.

I took my fudgesicle, and still wishing to avoid dear old dad, went to the backyard, and watched as my crow gathered up all his prized possessions one by one, and moved them to a safer side of the house.

Jacqueline's First Real Photo Shoot Part II

I finished scanning the rest of Jacqueline's pictures yesterday with the intent of posting them today, but there are nine of them so I figure I will space them out over the next few weeks instead. (I promised her she would be the most famous Long Hair Chihuahua on the Internet.) They will make nice entries for the Carnival of the Dogs at Mickey's Musings anyway.