Love that musk

A few weeks after Carlton and I had bought our house and moved in, I was at the grocery store after work to buy a few things for dinner one night.  I happened to bump into the guy who sold the house to us, Ted, and we chatted for a few minutes while I helped him find a specialty ingredient listed on his wife's "Honey Do" shopping list. As we talked, he invited Carlton and me to hang out with his wife and himself along with a group of their friends who get together once or twice a week.  Of course, I totally jumped on the opportunity to get to know some people who were our age in Moultrie!  Ted and his wife were recent UGA grads, and their group of friends were all newlyweds... the perfect group for Carlton and me to get in with!

So, a few weeks passed and plans were made for Ted and his wife Erin to pick Carlton and me up from the house and drive over to Tifton for dinner at a Japanese Steakhouse.  Ted, 28 was (and is!) a loud, sarcastic, animated character-of-a-guy who's easy to get along with right off the bat, and his wife Erin, 23, was so easy-going and sweet that we knew we'd stick around with this group.  We met the other couples: Cam & Erin (yep, a second Erin) were a freshly newlywed couple of two (or was it 6?) weeks, and Eric & Stella were also newlyweds of a few months.

After dinner that night, it became a regular weekly ordeal for each couple to host a dinner night and swap out cooking/entertaining responsibilities.  I soaked up the friendship and garage-door-style friends we had made... no knocking, no front door doorbell business... just bust through the carport door right into the kitchen, throw the beers in the fridge, and get to talkin' and laughin'!

The first time we had dinner at Eric and Stella's house was a big surprise to me.  I had heard tall tales, rumors, and other stories of a dog named Magnus, but other than that, Carlton and I knew nothing about him.  Honestly, I was expecting something like a Miniature Schnauzer or a Chocolate Lab or a Jack Russel Terrier.  But Eric and Stella had actually aptly named their dog.  Magnus's name fit him perfectly... he was a gigantic American Boxer and before I was even in the house he was running towards ME!!!  "Stand still and don't make eye contact! Don't run away, he'll chase you down and eat your guts! Hide your fingers, they're merely sweet morsels for this monster!" I told myself in instant stereotypical panic and fear of the beastly animal who was now fearlessly... sniffing my crotch and "wagging" his little inch-long nub of a tail???

Wait. I'm still alive?  I still have a face?  He's not eating me?  I still have my ears... my stud earrings didn't sparkle in the light and attract any quick-snapping jowly jaws of death?  And my ponytail is still intact... he hasn't yanked my hair off my scalp?  He's "wagging" that little nub and not snarling at me? These dogs aren't savage killing beasts?  I let him sniff the back of my hand.  He pushed his forehead into me and practically forced me to pet him.  Magnus was... kind?  Loving?  Sweet?  Craving love and affection from everyone around him?  Okay, I can live with a happy-go-lucky snub-nose dog!  And ever since then, Magnus and I have been the best of friends when Carlton and I visit.  (I ganked these pictures of Magnus from Stella's Facebook photo albums, so they may be a little distorted.  But ain't he cuuuuuuute?!??)

I even speak for him when Eric and Stella aren't paying attention.  For some reason he sounds a bit like Disney's character Goofy, only with a little more of a congested-sinuses undertone, and no "hyuk, hyuk, hyuk" after every sentence spoken.  He's actually quite the pouty whiner.

Well, nights with friends are always good ones.  But nights at Eric and Stella's are especially great for one of us... and it's not a person... it's a dog.  Of course, Magnus loves all the extra attention with all the extra willing-to-scratch fingers around.  But the truly happy dog in this situation is Vespa.

Vespa and Magnus have never met.  But, oh, would Vespa love to get to know Magnus!  I've tried and tried describing to Stella and Eric Vespa's elation, her exhilaration, her extreme-to-the-max love of Magnus's... musk.  When we come home from their house, it's usually around 11:00 or so on a Sunday evening and Carlton will quickly jump into the shower and get ready for bed.  And Vespa takes that opportunity to sniff and sniff and sniffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff until she just can't even breathe anymore!  Vespa is head-over-heals crazy about Magnus's musk.  She just can't get enough!  She'll actually sniff in for so long that she doesn't breathe out until she's almost choking or something!  But the whole time, Vespa's tail is just a-waggin'.

Below is a video of Vespa sniffing away at Carlton's crocks and athletic shorts that he wore to Eric and Stella's house on this particular Sunday night.  She can't even take the time to acknowledge me calling her name over and over again.  Please ignore all of her hanger chew toys and my overly-countrified accent... sometimes it's hard to hold on to that Hillbilly Georgia accent when you're around a bunch of Redneck twang!

Happiness

I'm back. Well, at least I think I am. For now, at least! I was away from blogworld for more than just a little while. But even though I wasn't physically typing anything, I was taking pictures. Pictures of happy things like the coming of Spring time...

...and a perfectly perfect trip to see my very best friend along with some other very old and very wonderful friends. And by very old, I mean the friends-of-13-years kind of friends. It was a really great evening.

Ooo! And while I was there, I had my very first Yarn Shop shopping experience. I'll write about that in detail later.

Then Carlton and I spent Easter weekend with our families. Vespa is always happy to see her Sissy and rassle a whole bunch.

We celebrated the hatching of two whole separate families of bird babies (and mourned the sickness of two very undeserving ferns as well as the tragic loss of little Crouton, R.I.P.).

I went as Sisterly Supporter and photographer to see the Bride's wedding dress (squeeeee!) and to see the wedding/reception venue.

So, while I was loading these happy pictures off my camera and into my Picasa album tonight, I was also browsing through the blogs posted today by bloggers I follow.

In keeping with the theme of happy pictures, Pioneer Woman is currently hosting her next Photography Assignment. This round's theme? Happiness. I've participated in her assignments before and must boast that I have felt quite adequate with my submitted photos. Either way, it's always fun whether you participate and win (totally not me), participate and not win (totally me), or simply click over to her Flickr page to see what everyone else is looking at through a camera lens (obsessively me). If you like cooking and trying out new recipes, reading funny stories about calf nuts and bassett hounds, taking pictures and getting great/free photography advice and tutorials, wearing cute-and-comfy clothes and getting great/free fashion advise, and if you really like the over-all breezy personality of her current Photography Assignment, I can promise you that you'll fall in love with the Pioneer Woman. Quite frankly, in her own words, she'll "make your skirt fly up!"

The very short life of a little bird baby named "Crouton"

First, a background story:

About two months ago I bought a couple of nice, big, healthy, fluffy ferns and hung them on the two corners of our front porch. They're a great addition to the facade of the house, and they definitely make it look inviting and homey.
About a month-and-a-half ago, just as birds started chirping happily as temperatures rose for Springtime's arrival, a momma and poppa bird decided one of the ferns would be transformed into a home and a nest was hastily--yet, might I add, neatly (I was impressed with her tidy weaving technique and liked her minimalist decorating style)--constructed within the leaves of the fern. Then the very next day there were five eggs tucked right there in the center, so incredibly neat and cute and itty-bitty. And by itty-bitty I mean smaller around the middle than a dime. Tiny little things: white with little black speckles, like cracked black pepper. Before too long the eggs hatched and we were proud landlords to a family of seven.

Then the bird babies grew, ate, grew some more, ate some more, and eventually flew away... leaving my beautiful, fluffy fern a total limpy, dried-up poopfest with a sickly hole on one side where momma had entered and exited enough to break all the fern branches off. Boo, birds! Once the babies were gone I waited a whole day to be sure the new-to-flying birds wouldn't return to the nest before I grabbed some plastic knitting needles and dug that rotten poopy nest out of the plant, watered it like crazy, and began nursing it back to its happy, fluffy fern self. We're still on the road to recovery.

And now for the story of little Crouton....
About one week of peaceful fern doctoring took place before I discovered a new momma and a new poppa building a new nest... in the only happy, healthy, fluffy fern on the front porch that I had left! Ooooh, I was so mad! Please, birds, find this fern unsuitable and move a long! Alas, Momma and Poppa Finch deemed the fern sturdy and well-camouflaged... plus, it's in the best school district of the county and I think that was the selling point for Momma.
Repeat the whole build-nest-lay-eggs ordeal. But add an extra egg. This fern was definitely gonna be pooped to death by the time birdy rearing was over in a few weeks! I watched for a few days and slowly but surely the eggs hatched. Two hatched, then three more hatched... but the last egg didn't hatch for another two whole days. On the day it did hatch, I peeked into the fern to check on it (because I'm nosy like that and I was concerned!) and I noticed the egg had been pushed out of the nest and into the leaves of the fern. As I pulled the egg out of the leaves, I realized it was only half of an eggshell attached to the tiny bottom of the last-to-hatch baby bird.
"He must have fallen out of the nest as he pushed his way out of the shell," I thought to myself. I carefully put him back into the nest.

The next day I peeked into the fern and discovered that the baby bird was in the same exact spot again! Not in the nest, but under the leaves of the fern right next to the nest. Even though his other siblings were already growing (and he was still just as tiny), I decided to put him back into the nest and give it one last try. "He must get a bug every now and then even if he is half the size of his fatty siblings!"
Welp, the next morning came along and I peeked in only to find... you guessed it... little bird baby in the fern leaves again. Poor little guy. He must have been deemed a "failure to thrive" hatchling since he hatched two whole days after all the others. He was too little to stand against the siblings when Momma came by to feed them. He just got kicked to the curb.
I just couldn't stomach the thought of these birds growing and flying away, and me digging out the nest with plastic needles only to find this tiny bird baby skeleton underneath. That would just be too much. So, my heart sank and by 9:00AM yesterday morning I had brought him inside.

I put a few knitted swatches (yes, hahaha, of course Trisha had knitting swatches just lying around) into an empty box that our last bank checks had been mailed in, set it up underneath a lamp, found a medicine dropper and some fruit juice and started nursing the pitiful little booger.
He settled in under the lamp and went up and down in chirping and eating quality. Sometimes his tummy would be empty but he wouldn't eat. Other times his belly would be full and he would chirp and eat like crazy. He bobbled his head around like a dummy, and I thought to myself, "well, maybe his mom really did know best after all."
But he ate, pooped, chirped, and slept.
Carlton and I found it incredibly funny that Vespa was so still when we let her look at him, although she constantly swallowed and licked her chops, and vibrated with tense excitement. We decided that the bird should be named "Crouton" because Vespa would totally love to crunch on his toasty little body.

He made it through the night, which neither Carlton nor I expected. Vespa woke up and needed to go out at about 4:30AM, and once we came back in I checked on him, fed him a few drops of juice, and left him to sleep some more. He was quite feisty.
This morning he was acting kinda dumb again. Flopping around, breathing sporadically, and overall just looking kinda floppy. But this afternoon I checked on him and fed him a few times. He was back to his spry, chirpy self again. So weird. But at 5:30... you guessed it... his head was floppy and he wouldn't eat.
And then when I checked on him at 7:00, not only was he not responsive at all, but he wasn't even pink anymore. He was just there, laying sorta sideways, and not breathing anymore. Crouton had died.
Of course I'm kinda sad, I was the one who rescued him from The Great Fern Entanglement. Carlton's kinda sad because, well, it was a tiny baby animal who just couldn't make it, and that's just plain sad.

But Vespa... oh, Vespa. She's just totally devastated. Inconsolable. When she came into the room to look for little Crouton, she didn't believe me when I explained the situation in terms she understands (usually pertaining to food), "All gone, Vespa. Da baby is alllllll gone." She ripped the check book box to shreds, turned all the knitted swatches over and over and over again, and whimpered for little Crouton. Which just makes the whole thing a even a bit more sad.

R.I.P. Crouton, May 10 - May 13

Let's all take a moment of silence.