This is Hoggy. He lives under my shed. He also loves to nibble on my plants.
He's kind of cute, but he's also a bit destructive. I opted not to plant any tomatoes this year (one if his favorites to take a single bite from) and focus on my peppers. Undaunted, he's been burrowing around in my veggie patch.
And I think he's been snacking on my hostas.
Still, I don't know if I can evict him. I may resort to using mothballs to deter him before I have to call
The Man.
Labels: 2008, animals
By: Alyssa | Thursday, May 22, 2008 at Thursday, May 22, 2008 | | 
Sure it is easy - but can you deny the cutness of baby ducks? I didn't think so.
Surely this makes up for my lack of a turkey photo?
Labels: 2008, animals
By: Alyssa | Wednesday, May 21, 2008 at Wednesday, May 21, 2008 | |
We were driving in to work on Monday - I was getting a drop-off near the T - when I spotted something that sent my heart aflutter.
Me: Oh My God!
Deeps: What?
Me: (pointing excitedly) Stop the car!
Deeps: I'm in the middle of the road.
Me: Pull over in the parking lot.
Deeps: You shouldn't yell and point in my face while I'm driving.
Me: But there's a turkey!
Deeps: What?
Me: Look!
We observed an enormous male turkey hanging out under a low tree. He was staring at an office building near Alewife.
Me: That is the biggest turkey I've ever seen.
Deeps: How many turkeys have you seen?
Me: I grew up in Indiana, so I've see a few. Also peacocks.
Deeps: That's weird.
Me: Drive over by the turkey, I want to take a picture.
Deeps: For what?
Me: The internet!
Deeps: We need to go to work. You stay away from the turkey.
Me: But... if I don't take the picture then I'll never make it on the
deadly turkey watch section of
Universal Hub.
Deeps: What a tragedy.
Me: I'm letting Adam Gaffin know that you hate Universal Hub.
Deeps: I don't hate Universal Hub. Besides, that turkey looks big and angry.
Me: That's how all turkeys look!
Deeps: I wouldn't know.
Me: I think Adam loves turkeys and would like to see this turkey.
Deeps: Haven't been featured for a while, have you?
Me: No.
Deeps: You can't engineer interest...
Me: I think I can with that turkey picture.
Today I saw Canadian Geese in the parking lot, but no turkey. If only I could get a picture of the geese fighting the turkey....
Labels: 2008, animals, marriage, weird stuff
By: Alyssa | Wednesday, May 07, 2008 at Wednesday, May 07, 2008 | |
Yesterday I walked to the local train station - it is a bit of a hike, but it is pretty. People were out running and biking and I strolled along listening to podcasts.
Somewhere near Alewife Brook I saw a guy with a dog have a run-in with the goose. The dog was on the smallish side and the goose saw a window.
Wings spread, bill parted, the goose charged and honked and dog and man beat feet. The goose waddled over to the small pond and hopped in the water. The dog cowered at the edge of the brook as the goose looked on.
I giggled and I feel pretty confident that the goose smirked.
Labels: 2008, animals, weird stuff
By: Alyssa | Thursday, April 17, 2008 at Thursday, April 17, 2008 | |
This is the bird, Perry. He flew over my head a few times last week and I followed him across the Public Garden to the tree where he landed.
He's pretty big, I guess he's a he - I'm not a bird expert. Anyway, he flew low over my head and despite the crowd in the park walking home, nobody else took notice. I didn't get any great pictures, but you can at least see him.
Apparently he does a little early dinner flight around the Boston Public Garden just before 5 PM. Keep an eye out, he's extremely impressive.
Last night I walked home again, Perry flew over and circled a bit. The sun was setting and the sky was pinkish gold. He caught the right ray for a moment he was brilliantly illuminated before I lost him again.
Labels: 2007, animals, Boston
By: Alyssa | Thursday, November 01, 2007 at Thursday, November 01, 2007 | |
It's Fall, so squirrels are getting ready for winter. I thought they collected acorns, but
this photo reveals that perhaps they have a more sophisticated palette.
Labels: 2007, animals, weird stuff
By: Alyssa | Monday, October 01, 2007 at Monday, October 01, 2007 | |
This morning I made a terrible discovery while watering my little veggie patch - the
groundhog, aka Hoggy, likes tomatoes.
I found several big red tomatoes, ready for picking and still on the vine, partially eaten. Hoggy has bothered with my bell or jalapeno peppers. But the tomatoes are toast - bruschetta perhaps?
Anyway, I've got to start waging my war against Hoggy. I thought we could co-exist peacefully - with my cat staring at him through the window as he sunned himself in the yard. He could eat my hostas, but the tomatoes are off limits.
And so it begins. Let loose the dogs (or cats) of war. I gotta find some mothballs... and maybe
Bill Murray.
Labels: 2007, animals, weird stuff
By: Alyssa | Wednesday, August 22, 2007 at Wednesday, August 22, 2007 | |
Other
podcasts may be cooler. They may say smarter things. They may even have an adorable baby who coos and gurgles during recording (I'm looking at you
Wicked Good Podcast). But we have something that is also about the size of a baby.
No - it isn't the cat. She's the
size of a toddler.
We have our very own
woodchuck (also known as a ground hog). I've spotted him a few mornings in a row. He hangs out in the back yard and munches on my mostly dead hostas. It has been dry, so I didn't think it was worth watering them once we moved beyond the "we could use a little rain" levels to "verge of drought".
Apparently the woodchuck, I call him Hoggy, isn't especially interested in my unripened tomatoes. And he ignored the jalapeno peppers I tossed his way. As long as my veggie patch is not destroyed and he doesn't eat my hydrangeas, I'm okay letting Hoggy have his way with the hostas.
Wait,
they can climb trees? If Hoggy jump out of a tree onto me, all bets are off.
I mentioned to Deeps that there is a groundhog. I'll skip telling him about their amazing climbing abilities. He's still scarred by that Easter I made him watch
Night of the Lepus.Labels: 2007, animals, podcast
By: Alyssa | Monday, July 30, 2007 at Monday, July 30, 2007 | |
I know it is summer because the humidity arrives and I am forced to wear short pants. Stupid short pants.
But the other way I note the arrival of summer in Boston is that the baby ducks are born. Yesterday I finally saw some flitting around the lagoon - they were very tiny. But they were fast.
I'll admit, I was starting to get a little nervous about them.
The Peregrine falcon has been flying around and I was wondering if he'd gone for an easy snack. Oh yeah, I went there.
The ducks were too far away for me to photograph with my crappy camera, so imagine some baby ducks in your mind. And while you're at it, imagine a coupon for big savings on a digital camera. Now imagine that I've won the lottery.
What? Too much?
Labels: 2007, animals, filler
By: Alyssa | Wednesday, June 06, 2007 at Wednesday, June 06, 2007 | |
I'd say right now the squirrels and I are even. Sure,
they've killed some of my pepper plants. And my basil may never be the same. And it appears as though they've eaten 275 of the 300 bulbs I planted last year.
Yesterday I was busted for trying to "out think a squirrel." I don't know how squirrel brains work. I just shoo them out of the yard and put up things that discourage them - like a net over the veggie patch.
Sure, maybe I investigated buying some cougar urine. But I haven't. And I can't get Deeps to go pee around the yard. I thought that was more cost effective. He did not.
Right now, I'm using the best tools at my disposal - the neighborhood cats. I'm going to plant some cat nip so that the kitties hang out a little longer. And last night I gave the Poopus a little TLC. A few minutes of light grooming resulted in a good pile of cat fur that I spread around my container veggies.
So far so good.
Tomorrow we'll return to my regularly scheduled randomness.
Labels: 2007, animals, poopus
By: Alyssa | Tuesday, May 15, 2007 at Tuesday, May 15, 2007 | |
I've been keeping watch over the back veggie patch and chasing off squirrels whenever possible.
I have this vague recollection about squirrels and feeding grounds and something I saw on Animal Planet. I think if you disrupt the squirrels at a feeding spot several times they aren't inclined to return. I could be wrong.
Sometimes I think I read or saw something, but I just dreamed it - like the other night when I was yelling. Turns out Deeps was coming to bed around the same time as I was dreaming about yelling at Gene Simmons. Yes, that
Gene Simmons.
Why? Who knows. But I guess I was actually yelling at Simmons to, "Get out of here," and then saying "What?" over and over again. Apparently it was very confusing to my husband.
I'll be honest, it's confusing to me.
But back to the squirrels - I'm watching them closely, the hose is hooked up and my trigger finger is ready.
Labels: 2007, animals, weird stuff
By: Alyssa | Friday, May 11, 2007 at Friday, May 11, 2007 | |
I read this
great book about rats last year. So when the news broke that Boston
has an alleged rat problem, I wasn't especially surprised. Rats and people go together like peas and carrots. We have food, they want food - presto!
Of course, if a rat runs across my feet I'll be confused and I might scream if I'm startled. I feel the same way about snakes.
Thank God we're not
overrun with snakes. I'd never leave my house.
Icky.
Labels: 2007, animals, Boston, weird stuff
By: Alyssa | Wednesday, May 02, 2007 at Wednesday, May 02, 2007 | |
I'll see if
Kristen remembers this story.
When we were in college our senior year we lived in a pretty crappy apartment that was cold and drafty and we had a little mouse problem. The mighty Poopus was on the case and cornered
a mouse in the kitchen.
K was upstairs - I think in the shower or something - and I saw the mouse, the cat and basically started to flip out. K heard me screaming and blazed downstairs in her bathrobe to see what was going on.
She screamed, I screamed the cat was like, "What?" - that's when we realized that nobody was going to do anything about the mouse and that we'd have to deal with it ourselves. Kristen tried to distract the cat. I grabbed our other roommate's winter glove and gently pried the mouse out of the cat's clutches and flung the offending mouse out the back door.
She went up to get dressed, I washed my hand about 3 million times and we never spoke of the incident again.... 'cause that's what roommates do.
Labels: 2006, animals, college
By: Alyssa | Thursday, November 30, 2006 at Thursday, November 30, 2006 | |
Someone is killing pigeons. Sure pigeons are gross, and many people view them as rats with wings. My relationship with them has never really been that hostile. So, I wouldn’t care except that I’ve had three unfortunate run-ins with pigeon parts – a pigeon head, a pigeon wing and a partial pigeon leg with foot attached. All three parts had been ripped off – it was gross and a little horrifying.
I was thinking that the culprits were cats. But that didn’t make a whole lot of sense to me because I’ve never actually seen a cat running loose in Evanston. I’m sure it happens, but in all the years I’ve been here I haven’t seen it. Plus, all the parts were in the more “urban” downtown region of Evanston where there is nary an animal in sight.
Yesterday the mystery was solved in as much as I’d like it to be. On top of the
old Marshall Field’s building lives some Peregrine falcons. The building has been converted to condos and no one can do any work on the roof because the protected birds have been roosting there for a while. Apparently the falcons are fond of your run-of-the-mill pigeon. And I guess the Peregrines are messy eaters.
So the moral of this story is that if you’re ever on the north side of Chicago and see pigeon parts, it could be a cat – how pedestrian – or it could be a Peregrine falcon.
Case closed.
Toodles to the Queen MumI’ve never been a Royal watcher or Anglophile, (although I do enjoy many fine BBC programs) but I have pulled my head out of my own life for a short moment to think of the Queen Mum. I guess I liked her. I know absolutely nothing about her except that she was the Queen’s mum, she was a cute old lady and she had a fondness for big, bright, flowy dresses with giant, smart hats. And of course the pumps and purse matched. She was old school and she was clearly the most fashionable Royal after Diana.
You’ve got to admire a woman who’s not afraid to wear a poofy, lemon yellow dress with a matching hat.
Labels: 2002, animals, famous people
By: Alyssa | Friday, April 05, 2002 at Friday, April 05, 2002 | |
