We are celebrating a birthday today! Rooney is four years old. Each milestone with Rooney is special and we feel blessed to have her with us for another year. Happy Birthday, sweetheart! Here's to many more!
Food Skeptic:
On the off chance I am trying to trick him and serve filet mignon to his brothers while giving him tuna fish, Dash must check out each food bowl. He's sure one of these days he's going to catch me in deceit. His brothers are surprisingly patient as he pushes them out of the way and plunges his face into their bowls to taste what they got. I do get some looks, but I figure, hey - if you don't want him to eat your food, you stop him.
SNAKE!
There was big excitement here yesterday afternoon. The cats were outside and I kept noticing Finn, lying by the pool; dangling one leg over the side. He was focused on the water. Dash was right there with him - pacing back and forth like a kid waiting for a fireworks display. I did not connect the dots for awhile. When I did finally take note of this strange behavior, I went out to investigate. There, trying to stay afloat in the pool, was a snake.
Now, snakes are way up there on the creep-o-meter for me. While I do feel sorry for them - having to navigate through life with no arms or legs - I just wish they would respect my personal space. That would be a mile radius around wherever I happen to be. But there was the sorry guy, trying not to drown in my pool. Yikes.
My first thought was, oh dear! ---- Okay, my first thought was SNAKE!!! THERE'S A SNAKE IN THE POOL!!! HELP - SOMEBODY CALL 9-1-1!!!! Then I lowered the font size and turned my panic toward venom! Was this a deadly snake my two babies had been pawing at?? I grabbed Finn and Dash and declared, "party's over!" and took them inside where I inspected them for any signs of punctures or swelling.
Now, mind you, this snake was about the diameter of a drinking straw (Note to self: Inspect all straws before use; from now until the end of time) and maybe eight inches long. I did not measure it. I was trying to simultaneously take a picture of it and not drop my phone because my hands were shaking! Anyway, even if it had bitten somebody's paw, the puncture would be impossible to detect.
I then did what everybody does these days - I posted the picture on Facebook, hoping somebody out there could tell me what type of snake it was. Because most of my FB friends are smart asses like me, I got every response from, "It's a snake" to a picture of an even bigger, deadly snake crawling into someone's window!
I also did what I've been doing for 45 years - I called my husband so he could share in my panic, "Andy! There's a snake in the pool! I'm sending you a picture so maybe somebody can recognize it!" I then made pretty much the same phone call to our vet.
Meanwhile, Finn and Dash seemed none the worse for wear; just disappointed I took away their fun - again. I scooped the snake out of the pool with the thingy you use to scoop stuff out of the pool, and then I deposited it in a big glass container. I left the screen pool thingy on top so it couldn't escape but still had air. When Andy got home he was shocked at how tiny it was - because in the picture it looked like a Burmese Python! He then moved it to the front yard. As he was going through the gate I jokingly commented the black squiggly thing on the ground looked like another snake. It was! That's it - we're moving!!
Oh, and it was my cousin, Ryan, who saved the day by sending me a link to identifying Florida snakes. Through it we determined the snake was a harmless Southern Ringneck. I'm still moving...
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