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Hamster Dancin' Around the World

 
 
ossobuco
 
  1  
Reply Fri 10 Aug, 2007 01:59 pm
Yes, that's a darling picture of BBB and Dollie, Maddie, and Penny..
0 Replies
 
Noddy24
 
  1  
Reply Mon 13 Aug, 2007 01:33 pm
From Penny herself:

I have been doing lots of very interesting things. Iffy (the pit bully who lives with Noddy and Mr. Noddy) took me for a walk around the yard and showed me all sorts of fewments and scat.

When the droppings come from prey, they are fewments.

When the droppings come from hunting animals, they are skat.

Iffy warned me not to go walking alone and not to leave the yard because I am a hamster with fewments.

Bear droppings are lumps about the size of a jar of peanut butter.

http://www.bear-tracker.com/bear.html

Bears are omniverous. Bears eat everything--including birdseed. Noddy can't put her bird feeders up until November when the bears will hibernate for the winter.

It is against the law to feed bears. Bears can get very socially pushy if they think people have food. Bears push hard.

Coyote scat looks like dog scat. There is a coyote nearby who howls whenever the alarm goes off for the volunteer fire company to assemble.

http://www.bear-tracker.com/coyote.html

Chipmunk fewments are larger than mouse droppings but not as big as gray squirrels or even red squirrels.

http://www.bear-tracker.com/chipmunk.html

http://www.bear-tracker.com/gsquirel.html

Iffy has a very interesting yard. She says there would be more animals if the birdfeeders were in use and if there wasn't a lot of pounding, pounding, pounding from the new house next door.

Other animals:

Turkeys:

http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=wild+turkeys&gbv=2

Raccoons:

http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=wild+turkeys&gbv=2

Skunks:

http://images.google.com/images?gbv=2&svnum=10&hl=en&q=skunks


I have a special seat on a bottle of sweet and sour sauce on the window near Noddy's desk and computer. The woods are very interesting.
0 Replies
 
sozobe
 
  1  
Reply Mon 13 Aug, 2007 03:44 pm
Cool!

"Fewments" is a great word.

Sozlet's off doing something right now but I bet she'll enjoy Penny's account.
0 Replies
 
Noddy24
 
  1  
Reply Mon 13 Aug, 2007 04:15 pm
Soz--

Thanks.

All I know of venery I learned from The Once and Future King
0 Replies
 
sozobe
 
  1  
Reply Mon 13 Aug, 2007 04:53 pm
Sozlet says:

    I didn't know that Penny could write and read! Actually I'm sure she can't read. I liked this skunk picture: [img]http://www.pacofhudson.com/skunks.jpg[/img] Can you show it to Penny? I think she would really like it.
0 Replies
 
Noddy24
 
  1  
Reply Mon 13 Aug, 2007 06:50 pm
Tell the Sozlet I'm a gifted channel for Spirit Writing. Penny's thoughts are much easier to put on paper than the thoughts of the Dear (and Undear) Departed.
0 Replies
 
Noddy24
 
  1  
Reply Wed 15 Aug, 2007 03:09 pm
From Penny:

I just saw a hummingbird, looking for the sugar water feeder. Unfortunately bears are very fond of sugar water.

The eye teeth of a bear are as big around as a tube of lipstick. Iffy showed me what was left of the sugar water feeder.

Last night we heard hundreds of thousands of crickets. We also watched some very clever bats who kept turning on the motion-activated outdoor light so they could harvest lots of bugs without much trouble.
0 Replies
 
onyxelle
 
  1  
Reply Wed 15 Aug, 2007 03:14 pm
having been away (ack) totally MISSED out on this. can it be done again? I wanna play Surprised)

are alll the a2k kiddies doing this? (irrellevant, but what an education from around the world!)
0 Replies
 
dyslexia
 
  1  
Reply Wed 15 Aug, 2007 03:15 pm
I remember from my childhood from my grandfather told me how to calculate the temperature by counting the number of cricket chirps per minute but I can't remember any details.
0 Replies
 
Noddy24
 
  1  
Reply Thu 16 Aug, 2007 12:57 pm
Dys--

http://www.loc.gov/rr/scitech/mysteries/cricket.html

In our neck of the woods there are too many crickets to hear individual churps. A female can lay 2000 viable eggs and obviously many females have.
0 Replies
 
Noddy24
 
  1  
Reply Thu 16 Aug, 2007 04:09 pm
From Penny:

Iffy and I were left All Alone-o today and I saw a Real Bear.

Yesterday Noddy had a man come in to "seal" the driveway. This means he spread an oily goop over the asphalt so that rain and melted snow wil run off the driveway next winter.

This morning during one of Iffy's naps, I looked out the window and there saw a bear walking through some dusty mulch and then across the nice, shiney driveway. He left big, dusty footprints on the asphalt.

The bear didn't want to barge through the holly hedge--holly had prickles, so he walked around the hedge.

Noddy looked at the tracks and said this was not the young bear who raided the feeders in June. That bear was about the size of a little kid on a tricycle. My bear was as big as a kid on a bicycle.

His hind feet were bigger than Mr. Noddy's hind feet--in shoes. The tracks really looked like bare people feet.

Tomorrow we may go up to Columcille.
0 Replies
 
Noddy24
 
  1  
Reply Fri 17 Aug, 2007 02:03 pm
More dictation from Penny:

Today we went to Columncille.

http://www.columcille.org/

The picture on the home page keeps changing. Keep watching.

The area just south of the Pocono Mountains is known as the "slate belt" because a great deal of slate was quarried there.

Mixed in with the slate are granite monoliths--big stones. A man with a quirky mind thought it was a shame that the Celts of Old Europe should have all the magnificent Bronze Age monuments, so he hired a large truck and a backhoe and a crane and made a monolith park, an American Stonehenge.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stonehenge

We were going to hike a bit on the Applechaian Trail, but sat in the car and watched a severe thunderstorm instead. The hail was as big as mothballs and the ground was covered with hail. We couldn't drive until it melted.

This is August, so it melted quickly.

On the way home we stopped at the farm stand. Blueberries are over for the year, but peaches and nectarines are in season. Next week plums will be ready to pick.

We bought some shoepeg corn on the cob for Mr. Noddy and some soft fruit and some of the first schnitz of the year. Schnitz are dried apples, leathery and very interesting to chew.

http://www.hormel.com/kitchen/glossary.asp?id=38062

http://www.berksweb.com/pam/schnitz.html

Tomorrow we may go to Quiet Valley which is an old fashioned farm.
0 Replies
 
Tai Chi
 
  1  
Reply Fri 17 Aug, 2007 07:02 pm
Lovely pictures from Columcille, Noddy. That looks really interesting and worth a visit for sure.
0 Replies
 
ossobuco
 
  1  
Reply Fri 17 Aug, 2007 07:07 pm
I'm loving Noddy's way of showing Penny the sights - it's terrific.
0 Replies
 
Diane
 
  1  
Reply Fri 17 Aug, 2007 09:08 pm
Agreeing with Tai Chi and Osso.

Noddy is unique, thank heaven. She adds her own style and descriptions and brings us along with her.
0 Replies
 
BumbleBeeBoogie
 
  1  
Reply Sat 18 Aug, 2007 08:09 am
bm
bm
0 Replies
 
Noddy24
 
  1  
Reply Sat 25 Aug, 2007 12:03 pm
Thanks, all, for the kind words.

Penny dictates:

We did get to Quiet Valley.

http://www.quietvalley.org/about/links.htm

http://www.quietvalley.org/ourfarm/ourfarm.htm

I learned lots of things. I will tell you some of them.

Everybody knows that roosters crow to remind the sun to get out of bed, but did you know that roosters will crow in the middle of a rainy afternoon to tell the clouds to go away.

Pigs will eat anything. Some farmers thought that mean pigs were good lean pigs. Our guide said that a baby cousin of hers fell in the pigpen and was almost all eaten up.

Pigs would rather not be dirty animals. Sometimes when their sty is crowded--or not cleaned on time--they can't help but be dirty.
This is not their fault.

Women and girls wore sunbonnets. Sunbonnets don't just keep the sun out of your face. A lot of farm work is messy and smelly: cooking on open fires and collecting eggs when the hen house isn't cleaned, and digging root vegetables. Sunbonnets are easier to wash than long hair.

Taking baths used to be very complicated. Everyone knows that if you don't have indoor plumbing you have to carry water for a bath. You also have to carry wood to heat the clean water. Then you have to carry the dirty water outside. It is easier to wear a sunbonnet.

Quiet Valley was not a profit making farm. The farmers raised enough food for themselves. In good years there was a little extra meat or vegetables that could be sold or bartered for store-bought goods.

Quiet Valley farmers made shoes and boots for themselves and their families and sometimes for neighbors. A pair of girl's shoes could be swapped for a well-made barrel.

Barrels were very important for keeping things in. If you knocked a barrel apart to make wooden skies out of the slats you would be spanked.

One of the things you make and keep in a barrel is sauerkraut. Sauerkraut has six "esses".

SHRED: When you cut the fresh cabbage in pieces.

SMUSH: You have to pound the layers of cabbage down in the barrel to get rid of the air. Air can make preserved food go bad.

SALT: Sprinkle salt over layers of cabbage. Actually you shred and salt and smush and shred and salt and smush.

SEAL: Put a tight lid on the barrel.

SET: Let the cabbage ferment for at least two weeks.

SERVE: With pork. Not a pig that has eaten a baby.

***************

I had an immortal adventure last night. There is a house being built next door. It will be a Cape Cod
http://www.ehouseplans.com/cape_cod_house_plans_home/images/34603.jpg

The high windows that stick out are called dormer windows and this house will have three windows in the front and two in the back. The carpenter took me up the ladder and helped me write P-E-N-N-Y on the inside of an outside wall of a dormer in the back.

P-E-N-N-Y will be covered up with dry wall, but my name will be under the drywall forever and ever.
0 Replies
 
sozobe
 
  1  
Reply Sat 25 Aug, 2007 12:54 pm
Bringing this forward (I THINK it's the latest, correct me if I'm wrong):

sozobe wrote:
That looks good!

So, revised:

1. Dys/ Diane (ABQ) (late July)
2. Noddy (PA) (early August)
3. Montana (New Brunswick) (Late August)
4. Fishin' (Boston) (early Sept.)
5. Dag (Boston) (late Sept)
6. Prince's party in Boston -- this'll be at some point during week of Sept. 30th -- Oct 6th. (Boston)
7. Tai Chi (Canada) (early Oct)
8. ehBeth in Tranna (mid Oct)
9. ehBeth various places in Canada (mid Oct)
10. ehBeth in Vienna (late Oct/ early Nov)
11. Euro handoff (early Nov -> late Nov)
12. FreeDuck (Atalanta/ Morocco) (Dec)


Thanks for being such an excellent Penny-hostess, Noddy! Looks like Penny goes off to Montana next. (Er, the person, not the state...)
0 Replies
 
Tai Chi
 
  1  
Reply Sat 25 Aug, 2007 12:55 pm
Noddy24 wrote:
I had an immortal adventure last night. There is a house being built next door. It will be a Cape Cod
http://www.ehouseplans.com/cape_cod_house_plans_home/images/34603.jpg

The high windows that stick out are called dormer windows and this house will have three windows in the front and two in the back. The carpenter took me up the ladder and helped me write P-E-N-N-Y on the inside of an outside wall of a dormer in the back.

P-E-N-N-Y will be covered up with dry wall, but my name will be under the drywall forever and ever.


That is just the coolest thing ever.
0 Replies
 
Montana
 
  1  
Reply Sat 25 Aug, 2007 12:56 pm
Oh boy!!! Penny is headed this way :-D
0 Replies
 
 

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