There’s sure to be something for everybody in this video. I don’t know which is my favorite–the tiny baby chameleons, the hamster laboriously making his way up stairs designed for humans, or the dog trying to be Tarzan. The leaping guinea pigs are pretty cool, too.
We had a local character on our block, Gracie, who was, shall we say, flamboyant. She drove a pink Cadillac. She decorated her house to look like something in a fairy tale. And her outdoor Christmas decorations were indescribable.
She also used to go to Times Square in New York City every New Year’s Eve, and to the Roosevelt Hotel where Guy Lombardo played. She always hunted for the cameras, and several times succeeded in getting on TV. Most of the people in our town saw her on TV on New Year’s Eve.
After several decades of this, one of the local newspapers got interested and did a feature story on her. In it, Gracie’s age was given as 60-something.
When my Aunt Gertie read that, she almost fell out of her chair. “Why, that old so-and-so!” she cried (and a lot more than once). “Sixty? Sixty? Why, she was in my class in high school!” Aunt Gertie was in her mid-80s at the time, and somehow Gracie’s reported youth really rankled with her.
Ah, well. So what are some of you guys doing for New Year’s Eve tonight? We’re staying here, way too bloody cold outside for anything else. We have lots of fun movies to watch, our Christmas tree is here, and I have very nice Christmas cookies. Plus we have the “Feed me, feed me!” Twins, aka our cats, to keep us hopping.
We’ll understand if your plans are so wild, you don’t dare tell us about them.
Remember that sickly little kitten my stepdaughter adopted, not yet a year ago, who needed a rare blood transfusion to stay alive? We all prayed for him, the rare blood was discovered to be readily available, and he was fine. She named him Jax.
Here he is with his big sister Boo, a pit bull who foster-mothered him; and if he keeps growing, he’ll be as big as she is! I mean, this cat is huge! And not done growing yet, he’s not yet a year old. Just eight months, in fact.
I wonder if he’s part liger.
In Chapter CX of Violet Crepuscular’s epic romance, Oy, Rodney, the author takes a break from storytelling to wax petulant to her readers, denouncing “certain brusque persons who keep demanding to know when the title character, Rodney, is going to appear in the story. Clearly these are persons who know nothing of the craft of the novelist. One must work up to these things gradually!” Well, gee, she’s already spent some 400 pages working up to it, and still no Rodney.
Chapter CXI finds us in St. Pablum’s Church for the wedding of Lady Margo Cargo and Lord Jeremy Coldsore, whom she thinks is the American adventurer, Willis Twombley, who thinks he is Sargon of Akkad. Twombley, in fact, is serving as best man. He has assured Lady Margo that he and Lord Jeremy are one and the same man, made to appear as two different individuals simultaneously by his secret Akkadian power of illusion. In fact, Lady Margo has fallen asleep on her feet and is swaying gently back and forth. Lord Jeremy is worried. If this wedding doesn’t come off, the creditors grab Coldsore Hall. And there is Queen Victoria herself sitting in the front pew and whispering harshly to the vicar, “Get on with it, man!”
The vicar grins and says, “If there is anyone here who knows of any reason why these two should not be wed, let him speak now or forever hold his peace.”
Up from a middle pew rises a tall man with doom in his face. He has been eating something not so good for him.
But before he can speak, in through the door bursts the village idiot, Jasper. The prose does not leave us with any certainty that the door was open at the time.
“Stop! Stop!” he cries. All eyes turn to him. “It is I, Jasper, the village idiot!” Everybody knows that already. “Oh, lamentable tragedy! Come, come, quickly–it may not be too late to save him!”
“Oh, now what?” mutters Queen Victoria.
“I notice that no one here has said, ‘Save who?'” continues Jasper. “Indeed, it is none other than our esteemed public servant, Constable Chumley. With my own eyes I saw him dragged under the vicar’s backyard wading pool, leaving nothing behind but his helmet–ah, that was a sight to daunt the soul! I implore you, good people–”
But he gets no farther, because at this point the vicar relapses into the most awful conniptions, and it is quite a spectacle. The Queen is not amused, and lets out a loud, impatient sigh.
The chapter ends with some brief reminisces of Violet’s days as a Girl Guide in Greenland.
When I wrote this post in 2015, I had no idea Donald Trump was going to come along and throw a yuuuuge monkey wrench into the works. He’s really making it hard for leftids to Transform America, and oh, brother, how they hate it!
Thank you for that, O Lord!
Here it is, the very last day of a year that went by like it was shot out of a cannon, and I’m late. Sorry, couldn’t help it! Tired: moving very slowly this morning. Well, these last two weeks have been kind of on the hard side–and also deadly cold. After a while it gets to you.
But yesterday, calloo, callay, we got our first-ever month with 7,000 views–didn’t need the extra day. I thank everyone who’s been a part of this, and I hope this blog will grow throughout the coming year–not just in viewer numbers, but also as a means for some of us to fellowship in Jesus Christ Our Lord. I think it still counts if you’re doing it online.
I wish I could invite some of you over for tea and Mille Bornes.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote these words in 1864. His wife had just died in a fire that burned down their house, and the nation was in the third year of the Civil War–to this day, the bloodiest war ever for America. That any man could write such a hymn as this, still sung 150 years later, displays the image of God in us.
And nobody sang it like Burl ives…
I envy these cats. I can’t remember my first experience of snow, but it must’ve been a good one because I still love snow.
Not all cats love it. My cat Henry blamed me for it when it snowed, especially if he got it on his feet. Then I’d get a lot of angry yapping at me.
“Unknowable” has pointed out that there is a cat even bigger than the American lion was: the liger, the offspring of a male lion and a female tiger. These hybrids are sterile, which is probably a very good thing. We wouldn’t want them devouring all the elephants.
I, Mr. Nature, stand corrected. I knew about these critters but wasn’t counting them because they can’t reproduce themselves. There’s also a tiglon, with a tiger father and a lion mother: not quite so big, but somewhat more aggressive.
Nature sure is full of surprises.
It’s snowing today, and we still have our Christmas tree–hooray!
Hi, Mr. Nature here, with another one of those cool Ice Age mammals that aren’t here anymore–the American Lion, Panthera leo atrox, the biggest member of the cat family ever to walk the earth. It was very similar to today’s African and Indian lions, only bigger. A lot bigger.
Why did it go extinct? Nobody knows, really. You’d think it could’ve gotten by, preying on elk and bison and other big game. God does things with His creation that we still don’t understand. Maybe He has stored them somewhere else. Maybe, when He restores all things, He’ll bring back the American lion.