Keriosity

We just spent 4 days in Mexico. I have never been to Mexico. I had a great time! We were there with a large group of friends, staying in a beach-side condo community where some friends own a condo and the rest of us rented small houses. The rentals were typical rentals - a little rustic, not perfect - but all right near each other and that was the idea. Nothing to do but drink beer, play games, eat great home-cooked meals, and spend time together. It was relaxing and fun!

But there were some bugs. I don’t really care for bugs. I love camping; my own family has a little getaway house in rural Delaware that has its own spider township; I love the outdoors in general. But I do not like to be near bugs.

More than once, I went to the bathroom in our little rental house, only to hear “Un momento, por favor!!!” and find that the sole occupant was a giant cockroach, sitting on the john reading the magazine that I had strategically placed in there for squishing bugs. That’s how gigantic the roaches were. I half-expected them to hog the blankets at night, but we kept the lights on so they’d stay away. (The bed fleas, however, didn’t care whether there was light or no light. )

Mexican bugs are HUGE! How can there be such large bugs in existence?! There are a few big bugs here too but big bugs are everywhere in Mexico and therefore Mexican bugs must be very smart. They know to hide out until they grow up to be huge muthuhs that no human foot CAN squish and then they can safely mingle among the general population.

I’m guessing they don’t have many natural predators. I noticed that there are many stray dogs wandering around but not many cats at all. You’d think that the dogs would probably be keeping the cat numbers low but then you realize that these dogs don’t seem to have much ambition - they barely get out of the way of cars. Obviously something is managing the cat population and it must be the 2-foot cockroaches. My theory is that the dogs have seen the roaches overtake the cats, and they have developed a symbiotic relationship with the roaches. The dogs could take out the roaches but then the cat population would be on the rise and the dogs would have to do some actual dog work to control the cats and you can just imagine how tiring that can be for lazy dogs. So the dogs don’t kill the roaches so that the roaches will do the dirty work and everyone is happy. Except the cats obviously. Also - I didn’t see many little dogs. Hm…

You can see I’ve thought about this. I had some down time while waiting for the bathroom to free up.

I have a new friend who has taken up residence on my patio. But this one can stay for a while. Isn’t she cute? She must have been sitting right near the safari plum because she skittled out when I watered it two days ago - like “Hey! Watch it!” She stayed on the wall the whole time I was outside reading my book. And she was outside again yesterday on another part of the wall and she’s still around today.

I did a little research online and I’ve identified her as a Western Fence Lizard. I’m not positive she’s a girl, since I haven’t checked her belly (males have a blue belly) but since she’s so little, I’m going to assume she’s a female. Males also have blue spots sometimes, but they can also camouflage themselves - so being on a orange wall, it would be hard to tell that way. This one also lost her tail at some point recently. It’s very stubby. Females are rarely seen, but they come out in March and April to fatten up for mating season. Wouldn’t THAT be nice, girls?! I hope she stays! I want to leave her snacks so she can get fat, grow a luxurious tail, and find a man! We girls need to stick together and help each other out! My patio can be her single girl pad as long as she moves out to the canyon before laying her 40 eggs this summer - I’m not running a lizard day-care center here.

In other wildlife news, I saved a bunch of ducklings yesterday! I was driving down the busy road about to turn into my complex when I saw a mother duck and her babies on the side of the road. I pulled over and ran back to help them. Some guy had also pulled over to help. I don’t know if she was trying to cross the road with them or what, but she jumped onto the curb and they couldn’t jump up because it was too high, so they were peeping and trying to jump and she was quacking and quacking. There was a storm drain inches away and I was afraid they would fall in! We were able to scoop them all up onto the curb and help them into the bushes to join their mom. There must have been about 6 or 8 of them. What a great feeling it is to help such little critters!

I know that any week now there will be a zillion baby bunnies all over the property too. It’s that time of year - baby animals!

One day I will explore the reasons that I am willing to risk my life on a busy road to help a mother duck and her babies, and why I’m all excited to help a lizard shack up and have 40 babies, but get me near a mini-van with a sippy-cup holder… the knowledge that there must be a human baby nearby causes me to cringe in a manner reminiscent of the first time any of us saw the movie Alien.

Aw I wish I had pictures of those ducklings. They were so cute and fuzzy!

I hope you’ll indulge me another blog about pets. This one has pictures!

Gummy started his Prozac yesterday. The good thing about Gummy is that he acts like a dog in many ways. He has no cat ego. One of his dog traits is that he takes pills in a dog food meatball. This is almost unheard of in cats. I know this because I have given pills to approximately 1436 cats. I have personally witnessed 2 cats do this - Gummy and this hyperthyroid cat named Clyde who eats everything, including your finger if you try to give him a pill in the traditional cat technique (shove it down his throat). Luckily for Clyde’s owner and me - Gummy and Clyde eat meatballs.

My sister Tina coined the term “happy meatball” especially for Gummy’s Prozac meatball. It fits. Here he is waiting for his meatball - he is very happy!

He purrs when he eats it. He loves dog food. (This becomes a problem every morning when Milhous gets his breakfast. Remember how I said before that Gummy was slightly retarded? Here’s an example: He doesn’t understand “angry” when it’s being directed at him and doesn’t realize that if he just stops trying to eat what’s in Milhous’ bowl, Milhous won’t bite his belly. In fact, this whore-cat incident is the only thing I’ve ever seen Gummy get angry about. He just doesn’t do anger.) Milhous is not happy about the happy meatball because he knows it’s dog food. He recognizes the can and is utterly beside himself that the cat is getting what’s in the can and he isn’t. Everyone is upset, in fact. The can is pretty big and it will go bad before I can use it all, so what’s the harm? Milhous and Goat each get a little happy meatball, minus the drugs, when Gummy gets his. Daisy doesn’t because she has food allergies. It’s just easier than getting barked at for 10 minutes and having Goat on the kitchen counter searching for meatball remnants.

The patio came out very nice. I put up the garden fencing, supplemented with some trellises and plants here and there in spots that still were still accessible to the whore cat. I found out that her name is “Shadow” and she lives across the courtyard. No wonder she wants to leave her home so often. Shadow?! No offense to those readers who have or have had pets with these names but it’s right up there with Max and Oreo as the least creative pet names. And it totally doesn’t suit her! She’s a sleek Abyssinian! Shadow is for a black cat or a black dog. (btw - Goat came with the name Goat, so that’s not my fault. I wanted to name him Ichabod. We could have called him Icky for short. Gummy is short for Montgomery, keeping with our Simpson’s theme with Milhous and our two departed mice named Patty and Selma - also because of his bad teeth, we thought he’d have to have all his teeth removed at some point. A preemptive nickname.)

Shadow came by this morning while I was taking pictures of the patio and she was very upset about the fence. I saw her owners’ kid around the courtyard a few minutes before, so I had to lay down on the living room floor like a sniper with my water-gun so he wouldn’t see me hunting his beloved cat. Gummy crouched down next to me. I squirted her (gently) in the face, which sent her running. I swore I heard Gummy snicker.

I put up the sensory deprivation window coverings. That makes me sad. Poor kitties. I have been keeping the sliding door open a few inches for a little while in the day because I just feel terrible. They’ve been living in NYC with no view of anything interesting for 3 years. Then they have 3 weeks of seeing trees, flowers, bugs, sky, yes another cat but still…how could I take that away cold turkey? Gummy is very confused. “Why is everything so blurry?”

It will take about a week for the Prozac to start to work. I wonder if he’ll have dry mouth and insomnia like people get. Or vivid dreams - sometimes that’s a side effect. It’ll be so hard to tell because he already drinks a lot (he loves the water bowl for some reason. He puts his toys in there.) and does dream often (his feet and face move). And he snores (another dog-like trait.) Gummy: the retarded, bad toothed, bad hipped, snoring, meatball eating, soggy toyed, snorts when he’s concentrating, purrs when Daisy is getting brushed (he’s happy for her), snuggles with his rawhide donut, play-bites too hard, dog-cat who is stressed-out over feeling angry for the first time ever. How could you not want to do all this to help him?

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Some of Gummy’s pets that have frequented the water bowl: the snake, the octopus, the Rudolf finger puppet, and the rubber mouse (not pictured). The octopus has also visited the food bowl on occasion.

I’m bored. So very bored. Emil went to NY today and I have nothing to do. My friends are working. I’m mad at my pets right now so I don’t want to hang out with them. It’s raining. I’ve already been to Target this morning. I went to the movies and saw Neverland with three other strangers at 2:00 in the afternoon. Now I’m sitting on the sofa watching the news. There is nothing to do.

The big news stories of the day, by the way : The rain and the earthquake in Manhattan Beach that no one felt. The rain, of course, is HUGE news. They cut in every 10 minutes to check the Doppler. I saw rain footage before that the reporter was describing as “coming down in sheets”. Sheets? No. I guess this is pretty bad rain for around here, but it’s really just normal rain. (I’m just glad that I don’t have to walk 6 blocks to the subway, getting splashed along the way by big trucks hitting potholes filled with sludge.) I am happy for the weather guy today - it’s his day to shine. He actually said on the air the other day that he was bored. That’s how nice the weather had been for several days.

This always occurs to me when I watch the news on a day like today:

Will we ever get to a point where reporters no longer have to be OUTSIDE in the pouring rain, blizzard, hurricane, or stifling heat to do stories on how terrible the weather is? Can’t we use green screens for this sort of thing? We have windows. We know it’s terrible outside - why do we need a live person getting soaking wet and blown half-way across the street to believe it? It’s so mean, isn’t it?! Who did THESE people piss off? Aren’t there interns for jobs like this? Why are seasoned reporters doing the “it’s raining sheets!” stories?

And how many times in NY are they going to have THIS stupid story: “New Yorkers are preparing for the big snow storm that’s going to hit our area. This local man went to Home Depot this morning to stock up. Sir? What did you buy today for the storm? ‘Well, I thought I should get a shovel. And I bought some rock salt for the front steps.’ Yes it seems that he’s not the only one buying shovels and rock salt. It’s going to be quite a storm!” Really? Shovels and rock salt are being purchased in the winter before the snow?! Wow, what a scoop! This story is repeated before each snowflake falls every winter and it is immediately followed by the story that Penny Marshall reports live from the city salt facility on the West Side Highway, assuring us that the salt trucks will be out and they will have plenty of salt. We get it - shovels and salt.

So here I am, stuck inside, with a cat who won’t stop peeing on the carpet, a dog who won’t stop barking at noises and two other cats who I’m just mad at because they associate with the pee-er and the barker. *sigh* I guess I’ll give myself a pedicure and read my new book. It could be worse. If I were having a day like this in NY, I’d be bored and cold.