I Like Pigeons Because Nobody Else Does

Red bat:

California towhee:

Little Buddy this morning in bed:

The greatest dog park in the world is right up the road in Balboa Park. I think I have more fun there than Sinbad and Little Buddy. Sinbad is usually too nervous to do much of anything (although he was slightly more independent this trip than last) and once LB is finished making his rounds socializing and butt-sniffing, he’s ready to go home. I ended up talking to a woman and her girlfriend for quite some time who were completely smitten with LB. He’s soon going to need his own fan page.

Kurt’s Camera Repair on Mission Gorge Road is the greatest. My camera was fixed in less than 24 hours and I am back in action with the news lens!  All is now right in my world.

Ignore the filth. He rolls in the dirt and then sleeps on this lounge.

A rare serious moment

How nice of Little Buddy to break-in my new sleeping bag:

I’ve been getting unnerving phone calls since May. They’ve come with increasing frequency and intensity over the last month. It’s always a man’s voice that sounds muffled. He has an accent I don’t recognize and I can only ever understand the words “dog”, ”operative”, “plan” and “lost”.  Then today I got this picture in my email:

what did this dog do in his former life?!

We weren’t allowed to talk about this until it’s release date which is today. Something about copyright issues. We were lucky to get Paris Hilton to promote it:

I forgot to mention when I posted this photo originally that Little Buddy now has a west coast following in addition to all his fans in the east. Our friends Kim and Eric met him a few months ago and were totally smitten. They’re so taken with his overwhelming cuteness that when we met them last Friday for drinks, the first thing out of Eric’s mouth was “How is Little Buddy?” Not surprisingly, they offered to babysit any time he needs care.

Early this morning we were on our daily walk down by the bay. A woman on a bicycle stopped “Is that a zipperke?” she asked.

Trying my best to stifle a tsumani of laughter welling up inside me I replied, “A schipperke you mean? Yes, he is.”

“Oh! Schipperke, Zipperke, they both sound so similar” she said in extreme embarassment, bending over in a transparent attempt to fix something on her bike. I didn’t hang around to continue the conversation. I could no longer contain myself. We rounded the corner and I stopped to laugh like a schizophrenic hanging out in front of the downtown library.

I told my friend Mary (head of Midwest Schipperke Rescue) about the incident and she said in an email, If that doesn’t describe the breed in one word I don’t know what does. How true! I only wish I’d thought of it first!

I’m still laughing and it’s 9 hours later.

Here’s Sinbad in his office:   It’s at this vantage point – the walkway between our house and the neighbor’s – that he can most efficiently monitor the goings on about his kingdom. His routine is the same every day; 45 minute walk at 7am, breakfast at 8am, go to the office to keep watch for interlopers from 8:10 until 4pm with periodic breaks to see what I’m doing, another walk from 4pm until 4:20, greet dad and play until 5pm, eat dinner, and then complete miscellaneous things in the evening like choking Mr Turtle and hanging out with us on the couch. His hearing is so acute and his vigilance so intense that he can hear a fly landing on the back porch. And the offending maggoty visitor is promptly chased off.

Two days ago we awoke to find a cat in the backyard attempting to kill birds at our feeders. Quietly, I opened the door and unleashed the hounds. For those of you that know Little Buddy, I don’t believe any of you have ever had the opportunity to witness an event in which his beagle genes are expressed. He spotted the cat and as if being shot out of a cannon, exploded out the back door braying like a redneck’s beagle on the trail of a ‘coon. The cat attempted to climb the back fence but fell back and ran a different direction. By this time Sinbad was in on the action (he is not built for speed) but the cat had escaped. Too little, too late, Sinbad barked and huffed and puffed and pranced around as if to say oh yeah cat? put ‘em up, put ‘em up! Just come back in here, I’ll tear ya to shreds! Occasionally throughout the day I’d see him patrolling the yard and stopping periodically at the spot where the cat exited the yard. Just checking, you stinking cat, just checking, he probably would have said.

I’m home a lot. Of course I want to hang out with the dogs, but they’re too busy – Little Buddy is serious about sleeping and Sinbad is too busy working. Looks like I’ll have to get another dog.

I am positively ashamed to say that before two weeks ago I had never been to Longwood Gardens in Kennet Square. Me, nature-lover extraordinaire, never visited.  My sister came up with the most excellent idea to take our guests there for the day and it was fabulous. We were there just at the time the fruit trees were blooming and the weather was perfect.

We did a few more things later on during the week, but I’ll post photos of them in the near future. I had a fairly exciting two days at work today and last friday. Plover chicks are hatching and we’re banding them as best we can. Since they leave the nest within just hours of hatching, you’re dependent on a lot of luck and a little bit of perseverance. For instance, just this morning we checked on a nest and saw the tip of a tiny bill poking through a small hole in the center of a network of spider-web cracks on the egg. We returned just two hours later and the chick was out of the egg and hiding under a plant adjacent to the nest. Any later and we may have missed the bird completely. These birds are born precocial, meaning they are ready to go at birth as opposed to altricial birds which need parental care.  They are probably the cutest baby birds I’ve seen (these are from last week):

Notice their coloration. They’re almost indistinguishable from the surrounding sand. Here are some shots from today. The new chick is still wet.

Other news, Sinbad and I have started taking obedience classes at the San Diego Humane Society. Tonight is our second night of class and he’s doing very well…of course, every time I say or write that to someone he does something like pull the blankets out of his crate and pee on them or climb up on the ottoman, proclaim himself king by showing his teeth, and then refusing to move.  But lately he’s taken on more of a submissive role in response to Gene and I which has been a nice change.

Some of us are having a tough time getting up and moving today:

I was in the kitchen today and heard flapping in the yard. I saw a shadow out of the corner of my eye and I knew immediately what was going on so I ran for the camera.

Not a whole lot going on here recently. The zebra finches have settled in and now, since on a proper diet and suitable housing (I found a large cage for them on Craigslist), they have unfortunately begun to lay eggs. I say unfortunately because the last thing the world needs is more birds in captivity. But in a fortuitous development that is also disturbing in a cannibalistic sort of way, they’ve eaten every one they’ve laid. That’s fine. I don’t intend to get into breeding these animals. It pains me to see them in a cage in the first place, but they needed a home and we had the space and I’m certainly not going to bring more birds into the world doomed to life in a prison. The male drives Gene crazy with his incessant male calling, but they sure are cute little birds. I wouldn’t refer to his sound as “singing”. It’s more like the sound of a screeching rusty bicycle chain.

Things at the museum are going well. The gang there is great and are a fascinating bunch of people. One of the women has a boyfriend who is pals with John Waters and in a very well-known local band that just returned from a tour in Japan (The Locusts in case your interested). She wants to be a taxidermist. Another works at the zoo in the avian propagation department. One of the guys has done over 3900 sky dives and another guy is just an really interesting character. And, of course, Phil the curator is really cool. I prepared another thrush today while Greg did a Norway rat. The rat had an awful smell much like I imagine the Yellow Bastard must have smelt like. I can’t even describe it.

Gene and I did nothing eventful for the holidays and that even includes exchanging gifts. We’re in the process of buying furniture for the house and are spending quite a bit of money on making it look like adults live here instead of college students, so we decided to forgo the gifts. I have to admit though, I was terribly disappointed that he didn’t agree to another dog for my gift.  Thanks to everyone who sent Christmas cards. Mine were late because I just didn’t feel like doing them. I get more and more scrooge-ish with every passing year because I am getting so sick of the materialsm and greed associated with this purported “time of giving”.

We’ve got a great event coming up on Monday: whale watching! I got two free tickets from the volunteer coordinator at the museum. The ship is docked just across the bay, only 5 or 10 minutes from our house. Every winter thousands of grey whales migrate north along the Pacific coast. You can even see them standing on the shore (edit: yeah, sure, whales sometimes stand on the beach), but the cruises are supposedly much nicer. I’ll probably get sick as hell, but I’m going anyway.