Archive for the ‘Uncommon’ Category

Not a Valentine’s Day Post

Wednesday, February 13th, 2008

There, my title is also my disclaimer. I don’t like Valentine’s Day but I do love pigs. I just had to share these pictures of Valentine, an Old Spot piglet born with a heart-shaped mark on his body.

Valentine
Photo source: Daily Mail

What a cutie, eh? You can read the original news article here. (¬_¬ at the last sentence, though.)

I Smell Like the Sun

Saturday, January 26th, 2008

No, I haven’t been tanning. I prefer being fair-skinned, thankyouverymuch.

On our way home from the doctor’s this afternoon we had to make a pit stop when the car was suddenly making funny sounds. We also noticed that one side seemed to be abnormally lower than the other. When we pulled over to check we saw that the front left tire had become a pathetic-looking piece of wounded rubber that had gone askew on the rim. See for yourself:

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Fortunately home was already nearby and my cousin’s store was just on the next street, so he had a couple of workers sent over to help replace the shredded tire. We spent a good while standing in the sun, and that is why I smell like it.

What exactly happened to the tire? We don’t know, either.

Strange Green Visitor

Saturday, December 1st, 2007

Last Thursday night, we had a strange green visitor. No, not an alien. A katydid. It had perched on the window screen outside the kitchen sink. My mom spotted it and called me over to take a look at it. It was pretty cool - we had never seen a katydid in real life before. I’m pretty sure it ended up at our house because of the rain - the rain always seems to bring insects out of their hiding places.

Anyway, since we had some things lying outside that window, my mom was thinking of getting rid of the katydid - permanently. I told her that we should just leave it alone. Then she gave me a look, the same as the one she gave me a few years back when she told me I was taking animal rights too seriously. But she didn’t do anything to the katydid, and the next morning, it had gone away.

Or so we thought. The next night, as I was slicing some bananas, I looked up and saw the katydid staring back down at me from the ceiling. This time I freaked out a bit. Insects are just not my thing. And now that it’s inside the house, well, that means I’m going to have to take it outside. Oh by the way, of course I can’t be sure if it’s the same katydid, but it looked the same, though it seemed a little bigger. Heh.

So I called my brother to grab a stool and plastic bag while I put the bananas away to a safer place. My brother saw the katydid and freaked out, too. Then I got on the stool, plastic bag over my hand. I just looked at the katydid for several moments, trying to figure out how to do things. I didn’t want to be too rough - then I might squish it, but I didn’t want to be to gentle as it might get away.

Then I reached out - and the katydid flew off! I pretty much panicked. But then I saw that it had landed on the window screen. I quickly grabbed a small plastic tub and put it over the katydid, while asking my brother to get a piece of cardboard. Then I scooped the katydid up with the cardboard (while still holding the tub over it), ran outside, and set it free.