Seven Quick Takes: Seeing Wildlife, Bookshelf, Naming Grandchildren, and More!

I made a comment recently in which I complained that we never see any “real” wildlife. I stand corrected. First, my children reminded me that when they went to the bike trail with their dad, they saw a family of California quail. Since that is one of my dream birds that I’ve never seen, and I take them out in nature regularly, it makes perfect sense that they’d see them when they are with their dad and I’m not there.

Not that I’m complaining.

Much.

Also, as we were leaving the conference, I saw what I thought was a large rabbit on the church’s field. We’re rabbit people, as you know. So I pointed it out, and Siah slowed down the vehicle, and we all stared at it for a moment. Suddenly, the sprinklers turned on, and the creature jumped up and started to leave and…it was not a rabbit! It was one of our native kit foxes! So that was exciting. I haven’t seen a wild one in a few years.

I started a Bookshelf page. You can see it way up in the tabs section at the top. I’m still keeping track of my reading in the footer of the site, but I just decided that I like pretty covers. So this is where I’ll keep my “current” reading and my all-time favorites.

Of course, I put it up last week and then I finished a book on Sunday, so it’s already out of date. But, relatively speaking, it’ll be my current reading.

Speaking of reading, what are you reading right now? I love to talk books.

The aptly named Loppy the Rabbit has a new favorite pastime. He has always delighted in annoying our goat flock, but now he’s taking it to a whole new level. For whatever reason, his very presence disturbs my goats. They hate him. Just the sight of him causes Charlotte’s nostrils to flare. Well, somehow Loppy figured out that when I’m milking, the rest of the flock is behind bars, so to speak. Previously, he would run in and out of their cage, dodging all attempts to horn-toss him. But now? Now he stands right outside the cage, makes himself tall upon his hind legs, and…stares at them.

This infuriates them to no end. It all started on Monday when I heard the baby, Pepper, crying over and over in a way that was just not normal for her. When I went to check it out, I saw that Loppy was right there, staring at her. She would cry, head butt the fence between them, and then cry again. It happened over and over. The fencing is bent out of shape from their attempts to get at him, and I don’t know if rabbits can look smug, but I have a sneaking suspicion that Loppy is Smug.

By the way, I fear for the names of my future grandchildren. The rabbits belong to the girls, not the family, and so they named them with no input from anyone else. This has been a trend with rabbits and the tossing around of future rabbit names. When A-Age-Nine first bought her current rabbit, which is mostly white, we asked her what she wanted to name it, and she said, “Whitey.” And this after Q-Age-Seven had named her Mini Lop, “Loppy.” She eventually settled on “Snow” but still…I keep thinking I’ll have grandkids named Blondie, Freckle, and Blue-eye.

Yesterday we went to go swimming at my grandma’s house. On the way over, I was “racing” a train. Do you have trains in your town? If so, you probably understand this mentality. I wanted to beat this train to the intersection, so that I didn’t have to wait for it. Needless to say, the train won. As I get close to said intersection, I notice that the train is slowing down. It gets slower. And slower. And slllloooooowwwwer. It’s pretty obvious the thing is stopping. So I look back at my children and I say, “I bet that train is going to stop and leave ONE car in the intersection so that we can’t get through.”

And we all laughed.

We stopped laughing, though, when it really happened.

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