No hidden messages here; I just like ice cream:
I like ice cream!
Reply
Monthly Archives: June 2010
Baby Explains Recent Misbehavior
Baby carries on baby business.
Asked recently about her apparent unwillingness to cooperate or to act according to her parents’ wishes, Abigail Moore explained, “I don’t really listen to them. I pretty much do whatever I want.”
Pressed for additional details, Abigail continued, “look… they have their agenda and I have my agenda. Sometimes our goals synch up, but often we simply want to go in different directions. Hell… lots of times I can’t even figure out what they’re babbling about any way, so I’ve learned to just tune them out most of the time. I just filter out all the words except backpack, quack quack, raisins, Granma, and bath.”
Baby plans no changes.
Abigail’s father was not shocked to hear such revelations from his daughter. “Yeah… that sounds about right. I’d estimate that Abby listens to me about 10 percent of the time and complies with my requests about 1 percent of the time. I’m hoping to double my success rate over the next 17 or so years.”
Abby’s mother insisted that the problem was overblown. “I haven’t seen much of this behavior. Abby frequently does what I want her to do as long as she wants to do it and has started doing it prior to me asking her to do it. It’s not a perfect system, but it works out. Success is all about anticipation.”
Asked if she plans on behaving better in the future, Abby reflected, “probably not. Right now I’m in a phase we small people term ‘liftable.’ As soon as I get a little heavier, I’m pretty sure I’ll be able to ignore my parents completely. The dog weighs about a buck-five and he hasn’t listened to anyone in like four years. He’s the gold standard for me right now.”
Avian Violence at Chez Moore!
When will they turn on us!?
We seem to have a problem attracting the right winged visitors. I put up a bat house two years ago; hornets moved into it. I replaced the bat house with a bird feeder last year; birds are now killing (and eating!) each other (in addition to the seeds!) in our back yard!
At first we thought this was a freak occurrence. A pile of feathers suggested bird violence, but there was no corpse. On cue, a big black bird flew back into our yard carrying a sparrow in its beak! Ok… fine… Lord of the Flies meet Lord of the Birds, but later the same day, the black birds took down another sparrow and proceeded to eviscerate and dine upon the victim.
We either need to stop the murders or write a new verse to Abby’s favorite cartoon bird song:
I love to watch the birdies play!
Tweet! Tweet! Tweet!
The black ones kill the grey ones!
Chirp! Chirp! Chirp!
They like to eat seeds!
Tweet! Tweet! Tweet!
But they also eat each other!
Doon doon! Doon doon doon! Doon doon doon! Doon doon!
I think the crows are doing the actual killing, but the redwing blackbirds seem to be getting involved with the eating, so it’s kind of a general black bird issue at the moment. Hogan the ridgeback has been known to momentarily inconvenience squirrels on the feeder, as they will casually move from the feeder to the top of the fence when he gets within a couple feet of them, but he’s essentially useless against flying pests. He’s pathologically afraid of greenhead flies, so he’s never going to get the job done against crows. What we really need is a grotesquely-massive house cat or some kind of a midget panther, but these beasts seem to cause more difficulties than they solve.
I may try to domesticate some crows with peanuts (apparently that’s an option!), or I may just wait until it’s a dark and stormy night and move the damn bird feeder into a neighbor’s yard.