Technically, Luna is a Green dog, as we are a Green family and Luna goes to all marches and events as “Green dog.”
Nonetheless, we are putting on our party hats to celebrate the Democratic resurgence in the US.
Oh, and there’s a birthday in the family tomorrow, so there’ll be more celebrating on that account.
So, put on your glad rags (or show us your Halloween pics, hint, hint) and join us.
[Hmmmmm. Who knew alpacas could mombo.]
I’m not the quickest apple on the tree (to stir my metaphors) and I’m just getting on to the idea that you and your partner live in ecological heaven and have LOTS of cool critters nearby.
I have a friend who has a Great Pyr to guard her flock of Shetland Sheep. The GP literally lives with the woolies and even eats with them. In one of my rare camera-less moments I witnessed The Perfect Picture…4 Shetland sheep and one GP …. 5 butts all eating the same feed from the same trough. It was great. It was hard to tell which butt was which….
I think Luna takes the cake though. I love the shades.
Our property is about 5 acres pasture and mixed pasture/bush, with another 10 acres of bush, surrounded by lots more bush. We have alpacas, Muscovy ducks, Golden Campine Chickens, and Luna and Albert (a mini-lop rabbit, now largely toothless).
The bush sports wallabies, paddymelons, echdina, the occassional wombat, and at least 40 species of birds – from tiny Yellow-rumped Thornbills to huge Yellow-tailed Black Cockatoos. I can’t go out of the house after sunset or before sunrise without disturbing at least a few critters grazing around the house. We also have a wide variety of skinks, and Tasmanias only lizard species. Then there’s the flora, which is also fantastic, so yeah, we’re happy here.
I actually tried to find shetland sheep when Imogen’s mother wanted a few sheep, and they haven’t made it to Australia yet. Which is a shame as they are about the cutest sheep ever.
Albert is still my favorite. Although Luna looks really good. 🙂
Albert is starting to get over his post-dental-surgery funk.
He’s been leaving his room more frequently and is currently in the living room just chillin’.
Unfortunately, it’s been a bad month for teeth in this house, with one root canal (Imogen) and two replacement fillings (me) rounding out the over $2000 collective dental bill. Who needs money anyway?
It’s about the same here with dental. Fmom broke her dentures, well I actually ran over them with the car. Long story. One of my front teeth that I had recently refilled and the dentist said everything is fine now, just broke off. I’m getting more and more of that red neck look now, and I don’t like it. 🙁
I do wish they had a dental vaccine.
I lost a front tooth once, and got a very temporary crown. If I popped it off, pulled a baseball hat down on my forehead, I lost 50 IQ points instantly.
but rabbit are semi-nocturnal. So, I’ve just given Albert a big bowl of finely-chopped califlower, broccoli, raw peanuts, and raisins to hold him ’til morning. He only occassionally makes a ruckus in the middle of the night, but we’ve found that a full-belly quiets him down (mostly because he has to flop down with his belly to one side to digest).
“we’ve found that a full-belly quiets him down (mostly because he has to flop down with his belly to one side to digest).”
This is exactly what I do to!
If I tried to do that to one of my dogs, the stuff would never stay on long enough to actually take pictures.
I have to be really stern voiced, and fairly quick, to get a photo with the glasses on. The hat will last a wee bit longer before she trys to take it off.
I expect her to be patient when asked, especially since she has to be still around small children or scared animals. So, “wait” is something that she understands. Of course, she is well rewarded for her troubles.
Ah, that’s it. I could dress up Hopeful and take a picture while he’s eating — the house could fall in on Hopeful while he’s eating and he’d never notice.
It’s amazing what you can get animals to do for food. Human animals especially.
What a great dog!!!!
Awwwwwww…. That’s just too cute. I love it!
I can’t take pictures of my Hopeful unless she’s asleep because she’s still constantly running all over the place, or if she sees me approaching with the camera she tries to jump up and tackle me.
But this is her favorite pose anyway. She can’t simply lie on the couch, she has to use the pillows.
That looks so familiar. Both of the Totos love to sleep on pillows or on messed up blankets on the sofas. Gooserock even messes them up ahead of time in each corner so the Totos don’t have to work at getting them messed up just right. LOL I’m at my away job or I’d
post a couple photos of my pillow boys.
the upholstered furniture…when I’m around…but the chaise in the ctyd belongs to her…
clik to enlarge
“move?!…find another place to sit…dude”
I asked to be taken to Bonorong Wildlife Park for my birthday (yes, it’s my birthday; don’t go making a big deal of it. It’s not that I have a problem with getting older, it’s that I have a problem with people making a big deal out of things).
This is an Eastern Rosella. They are native to Tasmania and hang out at Bonorong for the feeding stations.
We get Green Rosellas at our place, but the two don’t mix. Ten kilometers south of here you see Easterns, so we must live very close to their mutual boundry line.
A face only a mother could love, but georgeous feathers.
great pix, as always!
Their ears, while normally red, will turn bright red to even purple when they are fighting over food. They also growl and chuff and make all sorts of vocalizations when tussling over a carcass. It was these noises that convinced the first europeans that there was a devil animal somewhere out there in the dark.
We were there early in the day, and it was overcast, so the skinks were not moving at all. The large one in the middle (who is at least a foot long) is probably the mother of the others. Skinks are live-bearers and mothers tend to look after their young for awhile. In the wild they probably would have moved off to find their own territories by this age, but in the park they appear to have no problem sharing territory.
Apparently orphan wombats are fed a diet of shoelaces. “Bella” is only a few months away from release into the wild. When full grown she will weigh as much as Luna and be the animal equivalent of a bulldozer.
“Chips” weighs about 12 kilos, and eats 2 kilos of eucalyptus leaves everyday. This provides so little energy that Koalas have “evolved” the smallest brains (proportional to their size) of any marsupial, and they sleep 20 hours a day.
The gland on Chips’ chest allows him to mark his tree, so that a female in need of servicing can find him and climb on up.
The size of a wharf rat, though much, much cuter.
This one, along with two others, were just peeking out of their hay nests.
They may have “evolved” the smallest brains…but “eat, sleep and wait for the chicks to show up”…sounds like they’ve become the zen masters of Slackertude…just sayin”…:{)
<…ps…happy birthday…>
The Slacker Movement clearly has found its symbolic animal!
every great movement needs a totem
I can only see one potential problem with Koalas representing the slackitude movement. Their name literally means “does not drink.” Climbing down from their trees would expose them to predation, and take too much energy, so they have evolved to need so little water that they can extract what they do need from the mosture in eucalyptus leaves (which are leathery and tough).
The “does not drink” counts the Koala out. 🙂
I thought it might. 😉
OK since the Koala is out, we now need to come up with a living/breathing totally slackerly animal. I’ve thought of the 3 toed sloth, but they move to fast.
Is that the Unu, or the Ai? I can never remember which one has three toes and which one has two toes.
Heck if I know. I even googled and couldn’t find anything about Unu or Ai. I did read the 3 toed sloth sleeps 19 hours a day, so it’s in the running.
From wikipedia (I screwed you up with the spelling, it’s unau, hot unu).
The Choloepus didactylus, two-toed sloth, unau – relatively small fast-moving sloth. Fast-moving puts that out of the running.
Sloths are not cute enough. What about wombats? Socialable, slow moving, except in brief spurts, ignores things in it’s way, and cute. The cubic scat is so unique, we should be able to make some connection there.
As long as it sleeps a lot, I’m all for it. Even a slacker needs to move fast every now and then.
Wombats do sleep a lot – usually belly up and legs akimbo (its hilarious looking).
I knew there was a reason I really liked Koalas.
Happy B’day keres. I guess you know now you’ll be on Olivia’s list and it won’t slip by again. 🙂
Curiouser and curiouser. Now, let me see. The female has to climb to tree to find him because he’s too busy sleeping? Mercy!
Hi Puget.
Sounds like the perfect slacker life to me. 🙂
Hi FM. I finally caught you up at the same time I’m here. Kinda late though. How’s FMom?
Yes, definitely the perfect slackerly life. LOL
Yeah usually I’m fast asleep by now. FMom is finally in a natural sleep and I think tomorrow she’ll feel better. I caught my second wind sometime back and haven’t slowed down yet. I see a heavy sleep coming on.
I had no idea wombats were so large! They are cute when their little, though.
They’re cute when they are big as well. But their philosophy is “through, not around,” and many a person has been taken out at the knee in Wombat territory.
I decided to do what I tell my students when they turn to me for answers. I looked wombats up in Wikipedia. They mentioned the wombat knack of either go under fences (underground, I assume) or through them. They do look awfully cuddy fully grown. Apparently they can hit 40 kph for 90 secs. I guess that’s the sprint to the burrow speed and then the cartilaginous butt defense takes over. The first Europeans in Australia must been constantly astounded by the strangeness of it all.
Wombats and Koalas actually have a common ancestor – a wombat-like creature the size of a hippo that roamed Australia during its megafauna phase. They actually look a lot a like and share lots of similar charateristics.
They both still have the cartilaginous butt plate, but the Koala’s developed a notch that makes it perfect for keeping one’s butt from falling asleep when wedged into the “vee” of a tree branch for 20 hours at a time. But while Koalas opted for a low energy diet and a brain that hardly needs feeding, Wombats whet the opposite direction and became the smartest and largest brained of the marsupials.
Wombats are social, and where food permits, live in colonies. Their burrows can be 20 metres long with specialized rooms and planned turning circles.
This has been another edition of long-winded answers to unasked questions.
You are a regular font of wisdom on curious critters of Down Under. I love hearing all about them.
BTW, Keres, do you have a website or a blog somewhere or is this the only place we can enjoy your photos and your critter knowledge?
Alas, I’m too much of a slacker to have a web page. I did many years ago, and may yet have one again someday. But for now, I have enough other things keeping me busy – like the immanent birth of our first baby alpaca (called a kria). Nina is due in about three weeks, so I’m keeping a very close eye her weight and behavior.
She looks like she’s ready to pop so I won’t be surprised if she is early.
My friend who has the GP and the Shetland sheep is also a weaver and a spinner of great talent. I dabble at it occasionally. Alpaca hair is lovely stuff.
Good luck with the birth. A new baby is always exciting. The first birth I ever witnessed was that of a horse. I was so excited, I forgot to breath until I got dizzy and had to. It’s truly wondrous. You will keep us posted won’t you?
Hope all goes well. I understand the deliveries are usually easy; few with complications. It will be great fun to see your pictures.
Something smaller than a shoe eating shoelaces contendedly will grow up to be a Luna sized bulldozer? I love the critters you have there!
How cool! I often wondered how they came by the name. Great photo
happy birthday, dear keres. That was me not making a big deal out of your birthday. Otherwise it would have looked like THIS:
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, KERES!!!
I’m going to say, in a low key, hope you have a happy birthday.
and I promise not to make a big deal out of it — this year (especially since I’m relieved that you didn’t want something like the Brooklyn Bridge for a birthday present).
(I don’t consider pictures of cakes a big deal)
Does this mean that the traumatic experience of sending large packages to Australia has scarred you for life?
depends on how old I live to be
(otoh, following their journey and thinking about you all getting them was quite a kick)
Gorgeous! Astonishingly glorious!!
but I get a kick out of it everytime someone sends it to me and wanted to share.
TO: GOD: FROM: THE DOG
Dear God: Why do humans smell the flowers, but seldom, if ever, smell one another?
Dear God: When we get to heaven, can we sit on your couch? Or is it still the same old story?
Dear God: Why are there cars named after the jaguar, the cougar, the mustang, the colt, the stingray, and the rabbit, but not ONE named for a dog? How often do you see a cougar riding around? We do love a nice ride! Would it be so hard to rename the “Chrysler Eagle” the ” Chrysler Beagle”?
Dear God: If a dog barks his head off in the forest and no human hears him, is he still a bad dog?
Dear God: We dogs can understand human verbal instructions, hand signals, whistles, horns, clickers, beepers, scent ID’s, electromagnetic energy fields, and Frisbee flight paths. What do humans understand?
Dear God: More meatballs, less spaghetti, please.
Dear God: Are there mailmen in Heaven? If there are, will I have to apologize?
Dear God: Let me give you a list of just some of the things I must remember to be a good dog.
1 . I will not eat the cats’ food before they eat it or after they throw it up.
This always makes me smile. Thanks for posting. I’ve not seen it with the animation before.
you are welcome. A dear sweet friend sent me that in an email.