January 2009 Archives

I think it's interesting how different all dogs smell. Before I had dogs I always assumed dogs didn't smell or they just smelled "stinky."

T had fairly oily fur for a greyhound, so he did sort of smell "stinky" sometimes. Poor goofy T!

Chomps has the most perfect coat in the world and he never has a smell.

Brooke has always smelled like saw dust to me.

Mouse smells like fake turkey deli slices. Her feet smell like Fritos and I love them. Seriously.

Mouse has been sleeping with me nightly ever since I've lived alone and I've come to love her turkey face, it's very comforting for some reason. She's curled up right next to me now with her head on my pillow, which is what made me think to write this semi-weird post in the first place!

Another excerpt from Dark Banquet by Bill Schutt:

"Leeches are commonly employed in breast reconstruction, although in 1993, a leech went missing after such a surgery. Concerned physicians eventually determined that the wayward creature had entered the sutured wound. The wandering worm was later recovered from inside the patient's breast."

Wow. There are other lovely leech stories, but they contain words that this site will never see. (!)

My computer keeps locking up every five minutes or so. I don't even have enough time to upload a photo before it decides to freeze up on me. I'm posting from my phone now, so who knows how many typos there will be.

Other than that, everything is going fine. Mouse and Betsy absolutely love the snow, I might try to take them out to the park tomorrow.

I started reading a great book called Dark Banquet: Blood and the Curious Lives of Blood-Feeding Creatures by Bill Schutt. Unlike a lot of science books, this one is funny, creative and charming. I just finished the section on vampire bats and am now completely fascinated by these three amazing species. One of my favorite things so far is Schutt's wonderful choice of words. Instead of referring to the bats' victims as simply "cow" or "pig," he chooses words like "blood bag" and "feathered lunch wagon.". Up next is a section all about blood and then a section about other blood-feeding creatures like bed bugs and vampire finches. I will leave you with an excerpt from the prologue where Schutt describes his captive vampires feeding on a chicken. It's a little long, but I think it's amazing.

"One of the vampires stopped a couple of inches beyond pecking distance but the other crept even closer. Then, amazingly, the bat nuzzled against the hen's feathery breast. Instead of becoming alarmed, the bird seemed to relax a bit. The vampire responded by pushing itself deeper into what I would later learn was a sensitive section of feather-free skin called the brood patch. This was a region densely packed with surface blood vessels, where body heat could be efficiently transferred from the hen to her eggs. Later, the brood patch was where chicks snuggled up to warm themselves. As I watched, the hen reacted to the bat by fluffing her feathers, hunkering down, and finally - closing her eyes."

"My God, I thought, these bats have learned to mimic chicks!"