Elvis Update....

Here are a couple of pictures of Elvis. I've taken to calling him Emilio Lizardo, from the movie, Buckaroo Bonzai.

Pictures of Elvis

Our little skink is alive and kicking, and growing back his tail:

A New Pet....

In the course of this summer, two skinks have made it into our house. The first one ended up as Lucky chow, but Lara caught the second one after it had lost its tail. It just so happens that Carl can complete a Boy Scout requirement by raising a reptile, so we readied up an aquarium and now have a skink in the living room. Lara dubbed him Elvis.

This marks the first time that I have not named one of our pets. I feel kind of weird about that. Since it is a blue-tailed skink, I'm thinking blue-tailed calls to mind blue suede, hence Elvis, but when I brought that up to Lara, she said, no, she just liked Elvis. So, I'm gonna call him Elvis, the skink of rock and roll.

Since I don't have a good picture of Elvis, here is an idea of what he looks like:



And here is our cage set-up for him:


Let's hope Elvis lives a little bit longer that Matilda, our Praying Mantis from last year!

Maggie's Arm Is Busted, And Her Brain Is Twisted...

Sorry it's taken so long to post this picture:


Katie and Maggie got in a shoving match, and Katie broke Maggie's arm when Maggie fell backwards.

Since then, Maggie got sick. With something a lot like the flu. Lara took her to the doc today, and they swabbed her cheek to see if its the swine-y version or not.

I have been traveling all over for the program at which I work. Catch my latest travels and pizza reviews at Twin Rockets Are A Go, Baby! In the last month, I've been to Minneapolis, Chicago, (twice) and Buffalo. Here's a picture of Buffalo:

Yeah, if you're not at Niagra Falls, it isn't anything special...

While I traveled, I spent a couple of nights with our dear friends, the Aimones. You know they are special when they rate their own blog tag:

Sure, you could have lived without seeing that, but why would you want to? Much more important than Tony in control of his living space, is Tony in his new kick-butt Volvo racing machine. No, this is not an oxymoron. Hey Tony, send me a picture!

Two days ago, out of the blue, Maggie looked at me after dinner and said, "Dad, I think our dog Lucky is French."

Exactly. What was I supposed to do? I laughed and laughed. Then I said, "I think so too. That explains a lot."

Our Dog Lucky Is Weird

First, Lucky stuck her head in a box of snacks. She kept her head in the box of snacks for a long time. I went to get the camera, and she knocked the box off of her head with her paws. The photo I took catches the last moment before the box fell off.


Then, another day, Lucky just kind of laid down on the floor, while we were changing the sheets on the bed. We threw a pillow down, and it landed on her head. She didn't move or flinch. Even though she was awake, she stayed there with a pillow over her head. Tell me the last time you saw a dog do that. She is not right.

We've Gone To The Dogs....

Okay, that was a pretty stupid post title, hokey and cheap, but I couldn't resist the cheap pun....

Here are Buster and Lucky, with a little extra thrown in at the end...

A Surprise Trip To Dallas, and a Sad Homecoming...

Over the weekend of January 3rd, we decided to visit my sister in Dallas. Her family was throwing a surprise 50th Birthday party for her, and on the spur of the moment, we gathered up the kids and drove down to visit. We left Friday day, and arrived at about 2:30 am Saturday morning. Her surprise party was not until the evening, so we decided to spend the day at the Dallas Zoo.

After the zoo, we got ourselves ready, and prepared to surprise Carla at the wonderful party set up by her daughters. I think we did!

We had a nice drive home, but had suspected, and actually talked about, the eventual death of one of our old cats, Ptolemy. When we got home, we were informed that Ptolemy hadn't eaten or drank anything since we left. He was having a hard time standing on his own, and was obviously in pain. We decided that night to end his life. Here are the last pictures we have of Ptolemy, with a sad group of kids around him. The kids each wrote a remembrance of Ptolemy, and read them before I buried him in our backyard. May you rest in peace, Ptolemy.

Ptolemy 1994-2009.
Rest In Peace, you lovable little shithead.

Schroedinger's Fish

Well, I had to go to work on Saturday, primarily because I needed to continue medicating my fish, Afrika Bombatta. Unfortunately, when I arrived, I could immediately tell that Afrika was dead. There was a certain smell throughout the office, and when I searched and found the little guy, he was not moving.

I cleaned up the tank, and then took him to an outdoor trash can. I just couldn't flush him, he was like seven inches long, and I didn't want to have him get stuck in a pipe somewhere before it left the building.

For the remainder of the day, I worked on some music, which you can check out at my band's page Twin Rockets Are A Go, Baby!

Off and on, I thought about just when my fish died. Until I went there and gathered the evidence, the possibility existed that the fish was alive and well. There was some chance that this would happen. So, I wondered about probability and quantum mechanics on my ride home.

Afrika Bombatta
RIP
2000-2008.

Man, we've been hell on pets this year.

FISH Update:

My African Cichlid fish is still alive. Upside down, but still alive. So, I did what I should have done on Friday, and ignored the fish store clerk's advice, and I bought some medicine and performed some fish doctoring. When I left work today, he was still kicking.

Several people have commented on the state of my fish, and wondered why the fish does not have a name. This has made me wonder, when is it that a pet requires a name? Most people don't name their fish. It's enough to know you have a fish tank. The 20 individual little swimmers are just fodder for the plecostimus, eventually.

However, when Carl had hermit crabs, they had names. A great big old snail we had we called grandpa snail. I think the pet earns a name by a combination of size and personality. That is, if it isn't quite big enough, we anthropomorphize our pets, or if they are of enough size, they also carry enough brain to interact with the family. We have to call them something, so we know how we feel about them, or, we have to call them something, so they know what they are called in the pack. Did Grandpa snail ever respond to being called Grandpa? No, but he did respond to an algae chip dangled in the water. He would truck up the side of the glass, and actually eat the algae chip out of my hand! That's a hell of a lot of personality for a snail, and earned him that name.

This is the situation: The fish is big, for a fish store tropical fish, and does respond to me in a variety of ways, and in the last few days, I can't help but feel sorry for the little son of a bitch. He meets both criteria of anthropomorphic personality and size, so even if he only has the name for one more day, he is named.

I call him Afrika Bombatta. I hope Li'l Afrika makes it through the night.

No Really, We're Kind To Animals....

When I got back from my trip to Chi-town, I was saddened and surprised to see my fish, originally Lara's fish, a African Cichlid, laboriously swimming upside down in his tank. We bought the little guy about 8 years ago, with a brood of others, not knowing how territorial and vicious the little bastards would be. Within a few months, there were only two cichlids left. Then, there was one. It would kill anything we put in with it, so it was decided that I would put it in solitary confinement up in my office at work.

He has been happily living up there for over two years. He is probably close to 7 inches long, which makes him about the biggest cichlid I've seen home raised, and he is also among the oldest tropical fish we've ever had.

So, even though it's hard to get attached to a fish, he has been around for a long time, and it is clear that he has some kind of internal parasitic infection going on. As soon as I got back in my office, I went to the local fish store (Will and Vic's Fishnet, a Carbondale institution), and described the situation to one of the employees of the shop. "He's swimming upside down, his belly is distended, and he's got a raw spot on his chest. Also, pinkish, possibly bloody areas in the creases around his fins. Is there anything I can do for him?" To which the employee replied, "Yeah, you can kiss his ass goodbye."

It was said with sympathy. He said there really was little I can do, and as serious as the symptoms sounded, it was unlikely that he would respond to any treatments for the swim bladder, or any of the parasitic medicines they had. So, I respect the employee for not trying to sell me stuff that wasn't going to work anyway. But still, I expect that on Monday, another Pugh household pet will have met its maker.

Matilda, We Hardly Knew Ye.....

One morning, not long ago, we saved a little praying mantis from an early frost. It made a home in an abandoned hermit crab cage, ate several crickets and assorted moths and other bugs, and one night, BLAM!! laid an egg case on the inside lip of the cage (can't get good picture of it).

Then, a couple of days later, Matilda could no longer resist the grip of age on her tired exoskeleton, and succumbed to the reaper.

Matilda, rest in peace. In about 6 months, we'll let you know how/if her progeny spring forth.


R.I.P. Matilda, 2008-2008.

A New Pet....

About a week ago, in the chilly air of the morning as Carl and the girls were getting ready for school, one of them saw an injured praying mantis in the driveway. It was going to freeze the next day, and no one wanted to see the hurt little mantis end up bird food (how it probably got hurt to begin with) or frozen. So, mom and the kids brought it into Carl's old crab cage (prior home to several hermit crabs, all of whom had went the way of the dinosaur).

The mantis survived the day, and the injured spot, on its abdomen, which was oozing green goo, had begun to heal, and was now a crusty black spot. I'm no entymologist, but this looked like a positive thing.

Next, a debate loomed over whether it was a he or a she. Lara was convinced it was a she, Carl thought it was a he, and I thought that it was probably female, although it was an awfully small one. Its abdomen was pretty large for its size though, and this is the time of year that egg cases are deposited....

Which is exactly what happened after the first full night in her new digs. So, we named her Matilda, and she has been eating pretty healthily for the last few days. We have fed her crickets, mosquito hawks, grubs, moths, and about any other bug we could catch.

Now, isn't it strange, that we can feel compassion for an injured praying mantis and with glee collect an assortment of hapless, no less innocent creatures, to be her food? You don't see us getting another cage out for the abandoned stink bug, do you? People are odd like that.

Matilda, our latest, albeit temporary, addition: