signs you may have been sellingtoo much on eBay lately

While patting the cat:
“I love Fuzzle, Mum.
“That’s nice, dear.”
“I don’t want to sell him.”

friday catblogging:one mean cat on the telly

"So, who looks meanest, me or Mark Vaile?"

friday chicken blogging

Two kids wandered by this morning carrying a chicken. They were looking for a home for it, as their mother had refused to let them keep it and, they said, had threatened to take it down to the Mission and throw it to the dogs. So I called my parents. They already have about twenty fowl, but they said they were on their way. I fed Lucky the chicken some grapes, bread crusts and brown rice, but she turned up her beak at fresh coriander leaves. She complained a little between bites. I didn‘t blame her; she‘d had a tough time of it so far.
I hoped the fragrant herbs in her box would help mask the stench of the cat which watched with slitted eyes from a patch of shade beyond the screen door, far too lazy to investigate further.
I can’t help thinking how Lucky has no idea what kind of a wonderful life is in store for her, at the other end of her terrifying, but mercifully brief, journey in the back of Opa's silver van...

palpitations

I was folding the baby's clothes yesterday when I saw a small, spiky-looking black spider struggling to get out of a fold in the fabric. I thought it was just a common house spider at first but then I saw the almost fluorescent red stripe on its back: a redback. Far out, that was close!
Anyway, I just looked redback spiders up on the web...online, that is. As you might know, the female eats the male during sex:

The female begins to squirt digestive juices onto the male's abdomen while the first palp is inserted. If he is not too weak, he will manage to withdraw, and then insert the second palp. She will continue to 'digest' his abdomen. Most males do not survive this process, which seems to be unique to Latrodectus hasselti.

Surely a case of evolution gawn wrong...from the male's perspective anyway. And when you think about it, doesn't this mean each male can only ever mate once? Wonder how that affects their species?