Louisiana in March

I've mentioned before how long it takes me to clean out my camera phone... Well, these azalea pics were taken in my mother's driveway in late March. That would be two trips ago!

That trip was such an emotional roller coaster. They had told us to go plan my sister's funeral. We did and, as if on cue, she woke up from that coma, sat up in bed and started talking nonstop!

For those of you unfamiliar with azaleas, they are really beautiful...for about five minutes! The flowers are thin and fragile and as soon as it rains, they are gone. The rest of the year, they are these large, gray-green, fuzzy bushes, living just for a fleeting bit of glory!

I think that when I took these, I was looking for a little beauty in a world so bleak and...the glass head inside me was wishing someone made glass in that color pink!

Digging for Treasure

Our Aussie friend Atila or 'tila boy has a remarkable prey drive. This differs from Mabel's prey drive in that hers is about the chase whereas 'tila is looking for a meal! (Ewww!) 'tila discovered there were rats living in a trash pile at the creek and managed to convince his human to actually hike with a shovel to help him discover more rats! Some of the pack rats actually line their homes with cactus splinters so that shovel comes in handy! 'tila dives in and points and his human digs.

Sometimes, Bart "helps."

 And what does our heroine do while all this digging is going on??? Why, she snoopervises, of course!

About the only good thing about the Rangers taking over our beloved trails is... they cleaned up all the trash!

Viscious Black & White Kitty

I've spent a lot of time on my own blog lately... rereading this post.

Yes, Mabel has been playing with the nasty black and white kitteh at the creek! Actually BART has! Riddle me this: How does Bart sees skunk + Bart chases skunk + Bart barks at skunk = Mabel gets sprayed????

I heard his strange barking as the dogs has run on ahead to a favorite swimming hole. I called them both as I ran toward the entrance where I found Mabel running back to Momma! She was kinda freaked. I phoned Bart's Mom as we walked back. We were a good 75 yards down stream from the incident when suddenly there's the skunk again, tail UP!

I leashed up Mabel and had the hardest time with Bart... he wanted no part of the skunk but he knew he didn't want to be near Mabel!  After a gag inducing drive home, I knew the drill. But not the proportions! Thank goodness I wrote the recipe down.

One soaking of the baking soda / peroxide / Dawn +
rinse+
One thorough soaking of Skin So Soft and another soaking of the baking soda+
rinse+
One Hairy Beast shampoo+
rinse

and she's "almost" skunk free!  There is a faint hint of it and I'm sure there will be for a month or so.

My poor baby!

This Sucks!

Mabel Lou here. It seems my mom has turned this into a stupid duck blog! Mallory Shamallory! She needs to be writing some more posts about ME! And if that's not bad enough, just look at what happens to ME when she goes to feed the ducks:

Yeah, THIS SUCKS! Momma won't let me go in cause there's now leash laws even though nobody is there AND Momma thinks I'M gonna scare Mallory and those viscous dinosaur descendants of hers! AS IF!

We see a momma duck with SEVEN babies on our new hiking trail and I don't bother them at all. Not me! I keep a VERY respectful distance!! Momma ducks are MEAN and I myself have witnessed  those nasty little duckings attack little birds in our own pool!  This rottweiler mix is no match for ducks!

Momma tells me we are "almost" done with ducks... whatever that means... I just hope she means it!

Coyote in the Duck Pond!

The other day, as I popped in to feed the ducks, I startled this guy heading into the duck pond!

I gave chase to make certain he was scared off before calling the ducks.  They all came but several would remain in the water while others ate... each taking a turn. The whole flock seemed very nervous the whole time and I stayed there keeping watch until they all had their fill.

Now that I have ducks I love... I'm so glad our state, California banned foie gras!!