it’s been a while since I posted some pics of Villain, the Love of my Life. By February the horses are furry and smelly and coated in mud. But that doesn’t make me love my fuzzers any less. (on the other hand, it doesn’t mean that I’m not eagerly awaiting Spring so I can give Villain a good scrub and wash his wretched turnout sheet)
chris on February 8th 2009 in Animals
Ok, so there aren’t any other rhyming pets that fit with ferrets and parrots, sue me. I can’t be responsible for this outrageous oversight. Take it up with the taxonomy experts.
We had a guest at our house for a week, a blue front amazon parrot named Reggie. Now Reggie has lived in a house with cats and ferrets and dogs and prairie dogs and iguanas – not to mention small children. Not much phases her. Mostly she just keeps an eye out, fluffs her feathers and mutters a lot.
Arcas on the other hand FREAKS OUT when a new pile of dirty laundry shows up, so as you can imagine the appearance of a parrot nearly sent her off the deep end.
She nearly split her tiny little gourd when she realized there was an intruder in the living room. She barreled down the steps, skid into the foyer, zipped into the living room and started randomly bouncing off the walls. For those of you who aren’t familiar with ferrets, this is a pretty standard procedure for my ferrets. It was when she caught Reggie’s scent that she started making noises which clearly indicated her level of overstimulation was rapidly on the rise. Pinpointing the new smell to the critter sitting on the end table, she decided that she had to get UP there. What she was able to ascertain was that to get to the intruder’s cage, she had to get ON the sofa. Easier said than done since Arcas’ vertical leap is about, oh say three inches.
Ferrets are nothing if not tenacious. Not that she had much of a plan once she got on the sofa.
But being cute makes up for a host of sins and poor planning, which is pretty much any ferret’s saving grace. And Arcas is particularly good at this skill. She flashes that adorable little bib and cocks her head and her oddly red eyes shine. And that’s pretty much where I mostly forget that she’s trying to make a tragically poor decision to leap three feet from my antique sofa to reach a parrot who could totally bite her little ferrety feet clean off.
In an odd flash of sane decision making (rare, ever so rare) Arcas, with some persuasion from yours truly, abandoned her plan to fling herself at the bird, heaved herself to the floor and careened under the grandfather clock. (The clock being a very favorite ferret safety spot for staging terror attacks on the unsuspecting felines.)
What changed her mind is beyond me. No loud noises. No sudden moves by the bird, who just kept looking at Arcas and muttering. It takes a lot to knock Reggie out of her common study. At any rate, I seriously doubt Arcas had a sudden realization that her plan – if indeed she had one – was not going to end well. Ferrets have no concept of consequences as far as I can tell and I’ve had years of experience sharing my house with them. Ultimately, I suspect that her tiny little ferret brain was suddenly distracted by a stray thought. Like how awesome some good Scottish Beer would taste.
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chris on October 16th 2008 in Animals
So the torrential downpour of the last few days finally stopped and the sun came out. It came out with a vengance too. So much for our two days of Spring. Summer’s here!
I’d been wanting to get some nice shots of Villain since it started to warm up and he’d sheded out most of his winter coat. Wait too long and he looks remarkably less black. Since the beginning of May he’s been spending most of his time outside and is starting to get “highlights” so he looks more like a bay and less like a black paint with a white sock.
No matter, he’s still terribly handsome!
And so, for your viewing pleasure, more pictures of Villain.
chris on June 6th 2008 in Animals
I’ve been a bad horse-person, yes it is true. I haven’t been to see Villain for over a month.
The Love of My Life has been totally ignored by me in favor of my car. I racked my brain trying to figure out how I was ever going to explain this treachery to Vill. What excuse would justify my absence?
Then it came to me….a bag of carrots will cure all!
The bag of carrot peace offering did in fact work….and not just on Villain. The rest of the herd seemed overjoyed to see me once they got wind of the orange veggies in my hand. That of course lead to me being surrounded and nosed at, which was just fine by me. If only I could spend all sunny days surrounded by a herd of horses trying (politely) to get my attention.
Villain didn’t so much care for me paying attention to “his” herd and not him, so I had to cut the love fest short.
And so now for your viewing pleasure, pics of the handsome horse and some of his band.
chris on May 30th 2008 in Animals