Category: pets

Where the Wild Things Are

These are barred owls.  They live in my back yard.  We named them Bob and Terry.  Barred Owls are Texas natives.  I took these two pictures this morning.  Bob flew into that tree with his kill hanging from his talons as I watched, but none of the pictures came out of him in flight.  😦They aren’t too scared of us.  Terry watched me as I took out the trash.  Then, I ran for my camera and he waited until I got back. 

My culture taught me to fear owls, so it’s kind of scary to see them so close.  However, this couple has been here since way before we moved in to our house and I’ve grown a soft spot for them over the past four years we’ve lived here. 

We even got to watch them teach their two baby owls how to fly and hunt last year.  It was amazing and I was late to work almost every day, but I came in with baby owl stories, so I totally got away with it. 

(Yeah, yeah, the kids have demolished the back yard.  I’m over it.)  This is Terry.  She heard me come onto the porch.  She turned and looked at me, then went back to her hunting lesson. 

One of the babies is on the opposite side of the trampoline net.  Can you see it?  The other baby is on a low hanging tree limb to the left, but I couldn’t get a good shot of her from where I stood.  Bob is in a tree high up to the right.

I could only get the three of them in a single shot, but here it is.  I don’t have the best camera, so these are probably the best pictures I’ll ever be able to get.

It didn’t take long for Bob to swoop down and catch something in his talons.  They eat mice and lizards and such.

We got their names from the movie, Where the Wild Things Are.  The movie came out not long after we noticed we had a pair of owls in our back yard. 

Do me a solid?  Don’t tell any of my indigenous relatives that I love these owls. 😀

10 on 10: June

I joined the ten on ten photo project this month where you take ten photos over ten hours on the tenth day of the month.  Thank you Rebekah at a bit of sunshine for ten on ten!
10:14 a. m. She has babies hanging on her stomach.
11:05 a. m. Giving Foxy a rubdown before I leave my house.

12:11 p. m. That huge ass drink is what Whataburger calls a medium.



1:03 p. m. Oh, Chris!  There you are.



2:38 p. m. It’s getting warm outside.  Maybe I should watch another movie.



3:13 p. m. Picked up a new suit to suit my wet summer.
4:01 p. m. About to start cleaning wine bottles for our next rack. (Which is peach wine, by the way.)



5:04 p. m. Making crawfish pie.  All Betty Crocker like.



6:01 p. m. Watching Gone and drinking wine.
6:43 p. m. It’s ready!!!!!
8:02 p. m.  It was an hour ago, but I still feel bad.  I’m an idiot.
It’s actually 11 photos.  I’m not sure how I ended up posting 11 instead of 10, but that’s okay.  One to grow on.  I hope you had an excellent Sunday, June 10th, like I did!!!

Funk Family Photo

My family.  We were never the type of people that wear matching outfits and hire a photographer to snap pictures of us walking hand in hand down the beach.  We’re the type of people that find a photo that we think is totally gangsta and recreate it.  That is exactly what we did for my Mom’s birthday a few years ago.

The picture is a polaroid of my parents and some of their friends, circa New Year’s Eve 1981.  It is amazing.  The pullover sweaters, the Farrah Fawcett wings, the crepe paper. 

Here is the original…. My Mom is on the bottom right with the margarita we still can’t pry from her hand.  My dad’s brother, BB, is on the bottom left with the molestache.  My Dad, the goofball in the back with someone’s bitchin’ Boston Terrier. 

Here is our awesome recreation…Also, this picture shows the subjects of most of my posts, so now you get to meet everybody in their finest form.  In the front from the left: Me, Ducky, Champ Superstar.  In the back: Babafa, Fiata, Bud, Pepper.

The backdrop is my Mom’s living room because it glows with the early 80’s pallette we needed. The bad patterns and sweater vests were raided from my Mom’s closet.  We couldn’t find party hats, so we taped plastic cups to our heads.  This was three years ago, so the kids were 3 and 5 and already such good sports.  You have no idea how many takes it took to get this one.  Wait, here’s an idea.  Here are the other takes….


It was fun making a memory to jog my Mom’s memory for her birthday.  I love my family and our awesome ideas.  
We put the funk in disfunctional!

There’s a New Sheriff in Town

PaChomp: “Wow, I wish Pepper was here.  I really miss her.”

Ducky: “Yeah, I miss her too….” (he points and laughs at me) “and I wish you wouldn’t have killed her!”

Then we all laugh hysterically.  Our household maintains a dry, morbid sense of humor no matter the circumstances and this creative gene quadrupled in my five year old son.  He’s right, though, I really did kill our dog that we had for eight years.  Not on purpose, of course.  I’m not that morbid.  Or funny.  Though we make horrible jokes about her death, we all loved her and miss her very much.  


Dante Cul Pepper 2002-2010
I killed Pepper because I was astounded by the cost of dog collars these days and so I bought her one of those cheap collars that doesn’t have the safety release mechanism that breaks the collar apart if it is hung on something.  Plus, the cheap collars didn’t come in a size small enough for her tiny neck, so I had to get one that’s just large enough to form a noose.

Ducky and Pepper, both 8 lbs, circa 2005

I’m sure you can connect the dots from there, but I’ll talk slow for all the fucktards out there.  Her collar got hung up on the bottom of the fence in our back yard and she couldn’t get loose because her fucking collar was made for A) cheap bastards that want their dog to die or B) cheap bastards that think their dog is intelligent enough to keep from hanging themselves.  I am the latter cheap bastard, of course.


Goin’ to Pawpaw’s, circa 2009

I joke about her because it’s the only way I can talk about her without getting too emotional, but I have missed her since that day, November 19th, 2010.  Don’t worry, she doesn’t mind that we make jokes.  She understood us way back when we tested all of our baby toys out on her before Ducky was born.  Likewise, I knew she had a sick sense of humor like us the day she called me a bitch and put me outside.  She gets it.

Boppy Test I
Walker Test V

So back to my title story that my adult ADD won’t let me begin…

There’s a new sheriff in town and her name is Foxy Cleopatra.  Foxy, if you’re nasty.  She’s about 8 months old and a very sweet chihuahua (or chicken la la, as Ducky calls it).  We have had her for about a month and we love her already, although she is still trying to learn the rules of the house.  She loves to have her ears rubbed and she touches everything with her nose.  Ugh.  She is also very sensitive to our jokes, so some breaking in is in order.  Other than that, she is a great dog, so I wanted you to meet her.

I promise I will try not to kill this bitch.  Cheers to Foxy!

So Little Time, So Much to Say

I just made my first post in the past couple of weeks.  I haven’t forgotten about my blog.  I’ve got so many stories to tell.  I’m keeping a list in my head.  I really should write them down so I don’t leave any out.  Don’t be alarmed, though.  I have 5 excuses!

1.  I just finished wrapping up the project I have been on for the past 6 months.  Whew!  I still need a celebratory beer to wash down the stress.
2.  Babafa wrecked his truck and now we’re down to one car and a Harley that needs work.  Don’t worry, he’s still kicking.  Good thing Babafa went to Harley school.  I’m just spending more time on the phone with the insurance company and the bank.
3.  Ducky has been doing egg hunting trial runs to prepare for the big Easter egg hunt at his daycare.  This was a HUGE fucking deal.
4.  Kiki is officially a backyard dog.  All the indoor drama aside, this involved many scrap pieces of wood covering the weak spots in the fence, cement blocks to cover openings under the house, chicken wire to block off the picket fence, you get the idea.  Babafa actually did all the work, but I put in a lot of time bitching while he worked.
5.  And, finally…with our current financial woes, vehicle losses, and doggy disasters, Babafa and I have taken to getting wasted and I can’t type well when I’m three sheets to the wind.
Anyway, things are still great.  Babafa, Ducky, and I can get through anything and this blog keeps me going.  It makes me appreciate the little things like Ducky’s faces and Bud being single…still.  Just know that there’s more where this came from and I can’t wait to tell you all about it.  I love you all!!!  Muah!!!!

Oh yeah, I also need to add that I want to keep my blog public, but I’ve changed it up a little for security reasons.  I’ve created stage names for everyone mentioned in any of my posts and I added a cast of characters to the right so you’ll know who’s who.  I’m sure people will be able to hack into my life no matter what measures I take, but if they find this I hope they laugh…and then I hope they get what’s coming to them.

Kill or Be Killed

This story is about Pepper.  A six year old, part dachshund, part wire-haired terrier.
Pepper is a wind-in-her-beard, family dog by day….
…and a pure bred killing machine by night.
Her evenings are spent patrolling the perimeter in hopes of ridding our home and yard of the latest gang activity. 
Last Wednesday witnessed her second kill.  It was a testament to her abilities.  After placing the kill near the front door, she pushed her way into the house, sat on the couch, propped her feet on the coffee table, and calmly said, “Beer.”  
The criminal?  A member of the South Squirrel Mafia, locally known as SSM.  For the past year, our neighborhood has been taken over by these button-eyed, bushy-tailed, nut-eating rodents.  Pepper, for one, can’t. stand. it.  She has a plan to annihilate each of them, one member at a time, by a simple beheading, the details of which she lays out in what she calls the Decapitation Proclamation.  
It’s a tough job, but somebody’s got to put their life on the line to keep us from harm.  Why not the smallest member of our family?  I once pleaded with her, “Pepper, I’m so concerned for your safety.  Don’t you think we should let the boxer take on such a huge and dangerous responsibility?”  She spit in my face.  
She has recently enlisted Kiki, the boxer, as her back up.  Maybe Kiki will have her day in the line of fire once her training is complete.  
Pepper’s honor, courage, and commitment is not only for her own self-worth, but also for her family and her home that must be protected from the SSM at all times and at all costs.  God be with her.