The Bud-Filled Stowaway

My husband and I were at Home Depot yesterday and, as always, he headed off into the things-a-handy-guy-needs sections of the store while I strolled though the aisles that included bird seed, bird houses, plants, plant accessories and, because it’s that time of year, Christmas decorations. This is our standard routine whenever we visit any type of home improvement center. He snoops around his aisles, I snoop around mine and after we’re done, we hook up again.

I began in the stuff-for-birds section of the store, wandered over to the Christmas aisle and eventually ended up in the small greenhouse, which is overflowing with colour this time of year. There was an assortment of beautiful festive plants, including stunning cyclamen, gorgeous poinsettias and charming Christmas cacti, all begging to be taken home. But despite their pleas to go home with me (and the huge temptation to cave in), I callously ignored them.

“No” I said. “I will not be swayed by any of you.”

Then hubby came over to join me, he paid for his things-a-handy-guy-needs and we drove home.

And that was that. Or so I thought.

Well, this morning I found this on my kitchen counter:


Can you believe the nerve of this Christmas cactus? It was clearly a stowaway since I have absolutely no recollection of selecting it, paying for it at the cash, bagging it properly to protect it from the cold, placing it on my lap on the drive home, inserting it in a ceramic container and plunking it down on my kitchen counter. None.

Now, how in the world did it manage to follow me home without me noticing?

Watch those Christmas plants, folks. They are devious.

Ferrety Friday

So here we are once again folks, on the most exciting day of the week – Ferrety Friday!

"Woo hoo! So what’s on the agenda for today, ferret-loving lady?"

My, my, my...this sure is a change in attitude. Last time, I believe you yawned when I said I was going to be writing something about ferrets every Friday.

"Oh, that wasn’t me. That was the other voice in your head"

[blink] Oh...there's more than one...

Anyway, today I’m going to write about ferrets and how much they sleep, which is heaps, by the way. And the reason I’ve decided to focus on that today is that I discovered (through my web tracker) that a few of the keyword searches on search engines that have landed people on my blog have involved ferrets and sleep. For example, on my blog’s list of searches, I found things like:
“Can a ferret be lazy?”
“Ferret is lazy and sleeps”
“How to wake up a ferret”

So, it seems to me that there are people out there desperate, yes desperate, for information about ferrets and their sleeping patterns. Perhaps their little fuzzy face is not up and about as much as they’d expected and they’re a) worried that it might be sick or b) surprised that what they expected to be a highly-energetic and super active pet has turned out to be a couch potato. Well, as much as I hate to burst the bubble for the people in category (b), if they were looking for a pet that is up and at ‘em for the majority of the day, they shouldn’t have taken a ferret home.

Photo from SXC

Ferrets love their beauty sleep. A healthy adult can sleep anywhere from 14 to 18 hours a day, with older ferrets sleeping more than younger ones. They typically sleep in two to six hour periods and sometimes get into DS (dead sleep) or DFS (dead ferret sleep) or FDS (ferret dead sleep). Call it what you want, one thing’s for sure: when ferrets sleep the dead sleep, they sleep very soundly.

“How soundly do they sleep in dead sleep?”

I’m so glad you asked. They sleep so soundly in ‘dead sleep’ that an inexperienced owner may think their ferret has died when they find them in that state for the very first time. The animal in question will be limp, seemingly not breathing and almost impossible to wake up, no matter what its owner does. But relax; sooner or later your fuzzy will regain consciousness, figuratively speaking.

“I’ve heard that ferrets will sometimes sleep more than 18 hours”

They can, but they shouldn’t. Their polecat relatives sleep only between 15 to 18 hours a day and so should your ferret.

Photo from SXC

“So why do some domestic ferrets sleep more than they should?”

Because they’re bored, depressed and quite often physically unfit. I mean, think about it for a minute. A caged ferret has little room to maneuver; they don’t have enough room to exercise their body and to satisfy their abundant curiosity. With nothing else to do, they curl up and snooze. Eventually they become ‘couch potatoes’, and even when you do let them out, because they’re so out of shape or because their play area lacks stimulation, they’ll just plunk down somewhere and slowly drift off to sleep.

“How do you keep a ferret from becoming a couch potato?”

Ferrets need to get out of their cages a few hours a day to exercise and interact with their owners. Ideally, your pet should be out and about 4 hours a day, and definitely no less than two. If you can’t provide a ferret with the necessary amount of exercise that it needs, don’t take one home as a pet. Because although they will sleep quite a few hours a day, when they are awake, ferrets are highly-energetic, inquisitive and in need of contact (in the form of affection and playfulness) with you. Now, this does not mean that you have to hover over them the entire time that they are out of their cage; ferrets can play well on their own. It just means, don’t ignore them completely.


So, just to wrap up a post that is getting much too long, let’s just recap:

- Ferrets sleep 14 – 18 hours a day.
- They need a minimum of 2 hours (preferably 4) out of their cages to play and explore.
- Interacting with you is important to their happiness.

“What about free-roam ferrets, the ones whose owners don’t keep them locked in a cage?”

That’s a good question. But one that we’ll save for another day when I will write about “To cage or not to cage”

Now before I end this post, let’s peak in on Bailey.

Hey Bailey! What do you think about all the things I wrote today?


That’s what I thought.

Don’t Geese Have Calendars?

This morning, while sipping my (crucial) second cup of coffee, I shook my head, chuckled and said to self: “I must still be half asleep because I swear I just heard the sound of geese outside, which can’t be because it’s December and they’ve all left for the south”

And self said: “Maybe not all of them...”

So I ran to the window with my camera in hand (just in case) and what did I see?

”A miniature sleigh and eight tiny reindeer?”

Ah, no...but that certainly would have made a more interesting post.

I saw this:


Yes folks, those are actually geese up there, still hanging around my Canadian city here in Ontario. A northern city that is located in hardiness zone 5. A hardiness zone that makes me want to migrate to the south for the winter.

Autumn migration for Canada geese typically occurs from September to about the beginning of November. Now, according to my calendar, it’s the beginning of December, so the geese should be long gone. And yet, here’s a large group of them still hanging around.


I suspect that the surprisingly mild and wonderfully pleasant weather in November encouraged them to stay in town. And that’s all very nice, but one thing’s for sure about Canadian winters: it gets cold in the winter, damn cold. And even though you may get a few days now and then that are mild, don’t be fooled. The weather in Canada, especially this time of year, is a crap shoot. It can turn on you at any time. One day it’s sunny and mild, which gives you false hope that winter may just pass you by, and then BAM, a major snowstorm pounds the city and the temperature takes a wicked dive (even the hair in your nose freezes).


Someone should tell the geese it’s December and that they should hightail it out of here before it’s too late.

Don’t geese have calendars, for heaven’s sake?

The Bushy-Tailed Pests

By mid-October, most of the birds that were hanging around the backyard had left for warmer regions, so we took down all the feeders hanging from the trees and stored them in the shed. But because there are some birds that stick around through the winter, we decided to hang one bird feeder and one peanut feeder from poles that we attached to our deck. This way, we could enjoy some feathery visits from our kitchen window, and our winged friends could find something to eat during the harshest days of winter.

Cool idea, right? And it really is, except for these bushy-tailed pests that have moved in and taken over:



What frustrates me the most is that I can hear the chickadees and the blue jays and the cardinals chirping in the trees nearby, so I know they want to stop by our feeders for a snack. But can they? Nooooo. Because the bushy-tailed pests literally wrap themselves around whatever food is available.



Obviously I have to come up with some type of solution to this problem so that we can enjoy a visit from some of the birds in the area searching for food, which can be scarce this time of year. It’s been a battle of wits since the summer with the squirrels where bird feeders are concerned. And so far they’ve won every time. I have to admit that I admire their tenacity and their ingenuity; no matter what type of squirrel deterrent we conjure up, they manage to overcome it.

Pesky critters.

And their attempt to make me feel sorry for them by saying “please don’t be mean to us; all we want is some food because we’re so hungry” isn’t working. I mean, look at the size of these things. If you ask me, they should be jogging on a treadmill, not wrapping themselves around a peanut feeder.



Darn those squirrels... ARGH!!

The Bucket List

A couple of years ago, my husband and I went to see the comedy ‘The Bucket List’, starring Jack Nicholson (a grumpy millionaire) and Morgan Freeman (an intellectual mechanic). It’s a movie about two terminally ill men sharing a room in the cancer ward, both of which have been given about a year to live. At first they don’t care much for one another, but eventually they become friends (you know this is inevitable since these two men are the main characters in the movie). So when they finally kind of like each other they each compose a bucket list – things to do before you ‘kick the bucket’ – and head off to an around the world adventure to fulfill each wish (funded by the grumpy millionaire).

It wasn’t the most realistic movie in terms of the disease, since anyone who has been very sick (or knows someone who has been very sick) will tell you that getting through each day with the emotions, the symptoms and the treatments that go with cancer is difficult enough, never mind having the abundance of energy required to fly around the world, climb a mountain or skydive. But ‘The Bucket List’ is a movie. And it’s fictional. And on top of that it’s a comedy, so it doesn’t have to be realistic. Because if it was realistic, it would certainly not be a comedy since it would be depressing.

But I digress. As usual.

Getting back to the point of this post, what I wanted to say is that as we were driving home after the movie, my husband and I got to talking about what our own ‘bucket lists’ would consist of. I mean, what are some of the things we’d like to do before we die? Not that we’ll actually do all of them, especially the ones that require what we don’t have much of: money. But it doesn’t cost anything to dream, so why not make a list just for the fun of it. And not everything on the list is unattainable, so who knows what the future may hold.


At first I thought about listing very unusual things, like reading people’s thoughts or moving objects with my mind (telekinesis) or being able to see ghosts or time traveling. You know, abnormal and interesting things. But since life is much too short and I don’t see anything in the works for time traveling, I decided to concentrate my efforts on things that I may be able to experience in my lifetime.

Here is my list:


1) See Some Of The World

...or most of it...

There’s no doubt about it, I love traveling. I wish I had more time and definitely more – much, much more – money to see as much of the world as possible. Some of the places I’d want to visit are:

Australia	New Zealand	Fiji
Tahiti	Bora Bora	Cook Islands
Austria	Denmark	Finland
France	Germany	Iceland
Ireland	Italy	The Netherlands
Poland	Portugal	Spain
Sweden	Switzerland	United Kingdom
Vatican City	Thailand	India
Japan	China	Singapore
Brazil	Argentina	Chile
Peru	Venezuela	Ecuador
Aruba	Bahamas	Barbados
British Virgin Islands	Saint Lucia	Cayman Islands
Turks and Caicos	US Virgin Islands	Bermuda
Cayman Islands	South Africa	Egypt

States in the US: Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, New Jersey, New Mexico, Nevada, North Carolina, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas

Canadian Provinces: British Columbia, Prince Edward Island, Alberta

A little bit of an ambitious list, don’t you think? I probably could name a few more places but let’s see how much of this I can fulfill before I kick the bucket. I’d be happy if I could get to visit 10% of what I’ve included above.


2) Walk Through A Desert

Okay, maybe not through an entire desert, which is a little extreme. But I’d certainly like to see one up close, dig my feet through the sand and maybe even – what the heck - ride on a camel.


3) Go On A Safari

I get excited just at the thought of going on a safari to observe and photograph big game and other wildlife. This would be a super cool experience.


4) See Gorillas In The Wild

I’d love to plan a trip to Africa to see the mountain gorillas, the largest and rarest of the species. These gorillas have thick black hair, large jaws and teeth, and the males can grow to 6 feet tall. This would be an amazing experience!


5) Jury Duty

This may not seem like the most glamorous thing to add to a bucket list but I’d really like to experience jury duty. But not just any type. I want it to be a notorious case, one that everyone is talking about. I want a lot of courtroom drama, interesting witnesses and exciting evidence. Of course, I wouldn’t want it to last too long (I do have a life, you know) and I wouldn’t want it to be a gory type case where I’d have to see really disturbing evidence that would totally freak me out. I’m being a little picky, I know, but it is my list and I can add whatever I want to it.


6) Meet Some Of My Favourite Writers

Since I am such a voracious reader, it would be really exciting to meet some writers whose books I’ve read, such as John Grisham, Dean Koontz, Stephen King, Jodi Picoult, Nicholas Sparks, Anne Rice, Mary Higgins Clark, Joy Fielding, Wally Lamb, Janet Evanovich, Jeffrey Archer, Robin Cook and James Siegel, just to name a few. And if each writer would show up with a copy for me of all the books they’ve ever written when we’d meet, well, that would be nice.


7) Build A Pond In My Backyard

Okay, this is probably the first thing so far on this list that is possible to do both from a time and financial perspective. It’s fairly affordable and not too difficult to build, especially when you have as handy a husband as I do. We have discussed adding a pond to our backyard, but only after we’ve taken care of certain priorities around the home. This may happen one day, although not for awhile.


8) Publish A Magazine Article

I don’t see myself ever sitting down to write a novel since I just don’t have the discipline for it, but I do see myself pursuing some type of writing, with magazine articles being at the top of the list. Perhaps I’ll look into this at some point.


9) Add A Solarium To My Home

This is a little more expensive than the pond, but certainly something I’d love added to our home. I can just imagine how wonderful it would be to sit in a room surrounded by glass and an assortment of houseplant that would thrive in a room with abundant light. I don’t know if we’ll ever get to this project – mostly because of the financial expense – but one can certainly dream about it.

10) Adopt A Child

This is the big one, and something that’s been on my mind since my early adult years. I have a blessed life and would love to share all this with a child (maybe even 2 or 3) starving for a home and a family, something no child should ever be deprived of. I never got around to this earlier in my life because my first marriage (husband included) was not exactly what you’d want to write home about. But my second marriage (and definitely the husband included) is a match made in heaven. Sharing what we have with children that are searching for the type of love and stability we have to offer would surely be one of my greatest accomplishments in life. This is something that is attainable and definitely worth pursuing.


Okay, so there you have it. My list is not as extraordinary as some that I’ve seen on the internet, but it suits me. There are other things I’ve thought of like swimming with dolphins, whale watching, camping, horseback riding, learning to play an instrument, volunteering in an old age home, volunteering in a women’s shelter; some easily attainable, some less so. Hopefully I’ll get to experience some of the things I’ve included above. We’ll see.

So, what’s on your bucket list?

Photo from SXC

Ferrety Friday

It’s Friday folks. Do you know what that means?

“It’s the weekend?”

No, it’s ferrety Friday!

“Ferrety Friday? What the heck is that?”

It’s the day of the week that I dedicate to writing about ferrets, so my readers can become better informed about these absolutely adorable creatures. As many of you know, my daughter has a pet ferret by the name of Bailey who joined our family about 3 months ago. Since Bailey’s arrival, I’ve learned a lot about these unusual yet adorable animals that I would like to share with my readers. This means you.

“Lucky me...” [yawn]

Oh, cut it out!

Okay, dear readers (anybody there?), today’s post will introduce this furry critter because I suspect there’s a collective question of: “What in the world is a ferret?”

Shall we?

First of all, ferrets are not rodents in any way, shape or form, and they are in no way related to rodents. They are small, carnivorous mammals belonging to the Mustelidae family, which includes weasels, polecats, ferrets, minks, fishers, otters, badgers, wolverines, stoats, martens, tayras and grisons (most of which I have no clue what they are)

Photo from MorgueFile

Second, there are two types of animals that go by the name of ferret: 1) black-footed ferrets and 2) domestic ferrets.

Although the black-footed ferrets and the domestic ferrets look very similar and are in fact distant cousins (same genus but different subgenus and species), the two are poles apart. The black-footed ferrets, which are an endangered species, may look just as cute and cuddly as the domestic ferrets, but they will easily bite off a finger if you try to pick them up and kiss their little noses and scratch their little heads and tickle their little toes like you would with domestic ferrets. The reason for this is that the black-footed ferrets live in the wild, not in your home. Don’t attempt to play with these animals, kids, they’re wild. And I don’t mean party type wild but teeth-chopping-off-fingers wild.


On the other hand, domestic ferrets are adorable little balls of fur that you see in pets shops. They are the ones whose pictures you see splattered all over the internet; pictures of them playing, pictures of them acting like clowns, pictures of their little noses being kissed, their little heads being scratched and their little toes being tickled by ferret-obsessed pet owners (like me). These are not wild ferrets; on the contrary, they are sweet, good-natured – extremely domesticated - little creatures that bond strongly with humans and others creatures (like a cat or dog that they may share a home with).

In fact, they are so domesticated that they cannot survive out in the wild. They don’t know how to hunt for food, search for water or find shelter. Domestic ferrets released into the wild will most likely die. They’ve been tame for so long that they have lost their natural instincts and depend on us for all their needs. Also, because their instincts are not fully developed, they don’t have a natural fear of humans or other animals.

“How could this be? Ferrets haven’t been pets for that long. Or around humans for that matter”

Ah, but that’s where you’re wrong.

After a substantial amount of research, I learned that domestic ferrets have been domesticated from the European polecat ferret (mustela putorius furo ) since ancient times (even before the cat ), most likely by the Egyptians. Domesticated ferrets were once working animals, used for hunting rabbits and for controlling pests, such as rodent extermination. They’ve also been used (and apparently still are in the U.K.) to rid barns of rodents, and even used on ships during the eighteenth century to help control the rodents that were so prevalent onboard.

Furthermore, because of their popularity as “vermin exterminators”, ferrets were being imported by the tens of thousands in the United States by the early 1900s to be used to destroy rabbits, raccoons, gophers, rats and mice, and to protect barns, warehouses and granaries from these pests. This was such an accepted practice that the USDA promoted the use of ferrets for rodent control. So if your farm was infested by some pesky critter, you could call the ferret meister to come and release ferrets on your property.

(I’m not making this up. Unless I’ve run across some bogus information during my research, I’d say this is pretty interesting – and quite amusing. My little Bailey might have ancestors that were, you know, “verminators”. Yuk, yuk, yuk...sorry, I just couldn’t resist. Anyway, rodenticides eventually became available and the – here I go again - “verminators” were out of a job. Sure, why not replace natural extermination with poisonous chemicals?).

“So what’s going on with ferrets now?”

Well now they’re just kept indoors as pets.

“What are they like?”

They are extremely friendly and often very cuddly; they make excellent pets. Other words that define domestic ferrets include: curious, docile, enterprising, intelligent, persistent, playful, fastidious, energetic (when they’re awake) and highly entertaining (downright clownish). They crave human interaction and form strong bonds with their owners. They also become very attached to other ferrets that they may share a home (and often cage) with. They can be trained to do tricks, to use a litter box and to come when called. But although they are in between a dog and a cat, similar to both of these popular pets in many ways, they are unique in their own special way and have their own special needs.

“They sound kind of neat”

They are.

“What else can you tell me about them?”

Well, well, well...look who’s suddenly interested in my ferrety information. You’re just going to have to wait until the next ‘Ferrety Friday’ for more information about these unique little critters.

Until then, Bailey says:


Oh, did I mention they sleep a lot? We’ll get to that.

Garter Sssssnakes...

The first time I saw a snake in my backyard, I froze in place and thought to myself: “This is either a worm on steroids or a snake...” I’ve already written about that experience in a previous post, so I won’t bother you all with it again.

Anyway.

What I failed to mention in that post is that I had no idea at the time what type of snake I’d encountered. After all, having lived in a big city until recently, on a second floor apartment, with no outdoor garden to putter around in, I didn’t have that many opportunities to run into that type of snake. Or any type of snake, for that matter. Which, now that I think about it, isn’t such a bad thing.

Okay.

So all that to say that the first time I saw a snake in the backyard of my home was the first time I’d ever seen a snake. Any snake. And even though I didn’t know what type it was, the first thing that came to mind is that it ‘must be some kind of garden snake’. Because on some dilapidated shelf in the back of my (also at times dilapidated) mind, in a dust-covered, mold-laden box labeled ‘trivia that will probably prove to be totally useless’ I found something about it being normal to occasionally find snakes in the garden, typically referred to as garden snakes. This made me happy. Not the knowing-about-the-snake part – yes that made me happy too - but that all those hours of my life wasted on collecting worthless information finally paid off. So yay for that.

Watch out trivial pursuit opponents!

Another thing that I want you all to know is that I wasn’t frightened that day, since I’m not particularly bothered by snakes. Well, maybe if I suddenly found myself standing a couple of feet away from a rattlesnake or a cobra or a python, it would be scary. And terminal. But a cute, harmless, itsy bitsy snake like a garter? Pffft. Puh-lease.

“Oh come on, Water Roots lady. You expect us to believe that half-baked story? Aren’t you the one that runs away screaming when you find a millipede in the house? And yet here you are telling us that you’re not intimidated by this ‘itsy bitsy’ snake?”

[blush]

Okay, the experience was a little alarming. But certainly not frightening. In fact, it was more exciting than anything else.

“Exciting? That’s the highlight of your day? Seeing a snake in the garden? Wow, do you live an interesting life or what?”

[blush]

Alright, enough already...crazy voice in my head. Let’s move on.

So.

Being someone with an insatiable appetite for information, after I identified the ‘worm on steroids’, I needed to learn a little something about garter snakes. Here’s what I discovered:

- Garter snakes are the most widely distributed snakes in North America. They can be found throughout the continent, except in the dry southwestern states.

- They are called garter snakes because the patterning on their sides resembles that of garters once warn by men to hold up their socks. (I have no idea what men’s sock garters look like, so, you know, shrug)

Photo from SXC

- Garter snakes give birth to live young. Anywhere from 3 to 80 baby snakes are born in a single litter. (Can you imagine giving birth to 80 babies? Ack!) On average, though, litters usually consist of between 20 to 40 babies. (Still fairly high number of births, if you ask me)

- When they are born, baby garters are about 12.5 to 23 cm (4.9 to 9 inches) long.

- The babies are independent upon birth. (Talk about leaving the nest early. And they never return; unlike human babies that move back home when they’re like, I don’t know, about 35 or so)

Photo from SXC

- The first reaction of these snakes when faced with a predator (this means you) is to hide, so most of the time you won’t even know that these reptiles are in your garden. (This is probably a huge blessing for people that are terrified of them)

- Garter snakes are carnivorous, meaning they eat meat. Their diet consists of anything moving that they can overpower; this includes mosquito larvae, leeches, spiders, slugs, snails, crickets, lizards, rats, mice, voles, various other insects, other snakes that may be poisonous, birds, bird eggs, earthworms, frogs and even fish (if living near the water). Food is swallowed whole. (No chewing thoroughly for these critters)

- Garter snakes prove beneficial to the garden by eating a number of detrimental pests, but they’re also an important source of food for a number of birds and mammals. (The food chain, folks)

Photo from SXC

- If backed into a corner, garter snakes will try to scare their predator away through a show of temper. If picked up, they will release a foul-smelling liquid as a form of defense and attempt to bite their captor. But generally speaking, these snakes are not aggressive and they will more often than not try to hide or run away rather than confront the ‘enemy’.

- Although recent discoveries have revealed that garter snakes do produce venom, the amount is very mild making it quite harmless to humans. A bite may cause mild swelling and some itching, but not much else.

- Garter snakes hibernate from late October to about early April. (Something I wouldn’t mind doing – on a tropical island, of course)

- Because of the similarities in sound, garter snakes are also called garden snakes, gardener snakes, garder snakes, guarder snakes and gardner snakes. (I personally have always referred to them as ‘garden’ snakes)

My Photo – Taken On A Recent Walk

I think that’s pretty much enough data about a snake that most of you who have gardens have encountered at some point (and most of you honestly don’t really care about, right?). And why do I bother learning all this information, you ask? Well, aside from the fact that I have a very inquisitive mind and enjoy learning new things, I also find that the more I am informed, the more I understand what I can expect and what I’m dealing with. In this case, I’ve learned that these abundant little snakes are basically harmless to humans while being quite beneficial in the garden. They’re the good guys.

And just for the record, I do not run away screaming when I see millipedes.

Anymore.