Evening at the races

I went from under water yesterday to above ground this evening, for an evening at the race course with my colleagues. Running horses in bad lighting are nearly as difficult to photograph as fish! I placed a few cheap bets for fun, but won nothing. Oh well! I love the names of some of the horses: my favourite name tonight was Fajita (who I didn't place a bet on, but didn't win).

Happy Easter!

Veggie Hubby knows that while I am vegetarian, I enjoy eating animals when made out of chocolate. From left to right meet: Baby Basil the duck, Lucy the lamb, the white rabbit, Molly Moo (my present to him) and chick. I haven't started any of them yet, and will try and eat them very slowly.

Hope you are having a nice Easter. I am enjoying my five-day weekend, even although it is a quiet one.

By the river

When we are not doing anything out of the ordinary on Sundays, and the weather is nice enough, VH like to go for a stroll in the park and along the river Thames, looking at/feeding the ducks, geese and swans. The way they beg for food reminds me a little of my dog Sky. The Canadian goose above was particularly vocal today; whereas the other birds didn't make any sounds, this particular goose knew how to shout! Nevertheless, the other birds were good at asking for food in quieter ways.
I always like the birds that are a bit different. Last week, there was a small very strange looking brown bird with big eyes, and I hoped to see it again today. Although we didn't, we saw a bird which I later identified as a tufted duck. It stayed away from the other birds, and the food.

Temporary inhabitants

We have some new temporary inhabitants in our flat, Horace and Hermes. Here is Horace (I think!). Even rodent-hating Veggie Hubby is starting to warm to them, he suggested that we feed them frozen peas tonight, and told me to take some pictures of the "little ones."

Travelling

I'm travelling a lot at the moment. Tomorrow for instance, I am off to Portsmouth for the day for work, and at the weekend I went to visit family. I've got lots more UK trips planned for work in the next few weeks. Not to forget my daily travel to work. I'm feeling quite exhausted, so my blogging isn't very frequent at the moment.

Here is a cute little kitten that sneaked (snuck?) into my brother's house. Unfortunately, his cat, whilst happy to play with the kitten outside, is too territorial and chased this poor kitten under the car. Talking about animals under cars, I nearly killed a squirrel whilst driving along a country road this evening, it is the third kamikaze squirrel in as many months, they just come out of no-where. Luckily it managed to run across the road in time.

The weather here is really too hot, and we haven't put on the heating for months. Our flat is on the top floor, and the heat rises from the floors below, making it like an oven. We can't open the window much as VH and I both have hay-fever. This is a small downside of the summer. Anyway, I'm going to not write much now as I have to be up at 6am tomorrow :-(

The female of the species is more deadly than the male

Here is the spider specimin of the day, who was found in the bathroom, a popular spider location. YUK I hate spiders. I have to say this spider isn't as bad as most, it wasn't too big. House spiders are far worse. I prefer female spiders to male ones, as they eat the male ones therefore reducing the spider population. (Having said that, VH reminded me that they give birth to thousands of babies, making them even worse than their weaker counterparts).

However, I won't personally kill a spider, or get a hitman to kill it on my behalf. So my poor husband has to capture them for me, and release them into an indoor plant just outside our flat so we don't need to even go outside. Veggie Hubby believes they will all probably eat each other anyway. Possibly they might come back in again, I hope not, ugggh. I think they are more likely to pay a visit to our neighbour, as the plant is just outside her door.

Prickly Pets

Veggie Hubby wants a cat. A basil plant doesn't quite cut it! He keeps bringing back adverts from the local paper for rescue cats, and searching on local cat rescue websites. I find his love for cats really sweet. When we went to baby-sit for my cousins a month ago, he loved their cat, and my cousin diagnosed that he needs a cat! One of his housemates had one when he lived in Liverpool, it was her only redeeming feature actually as she refused to pay her share of the bills or to wash her dishes. She named her lovely black cat...Cat! She was undeserving of such a lovely pet, Veggie Hubby often ended up taking care of Cat, and now misses Cat a lot as he will never see her again. He took some photos of Cat on his disposable camera, but when we took them to be developed they weren't there. My cousin is right, Veggie Hubby does need a Cat replacement. The problem is that we move around too much, and when renting it is difficult to find somewhere that will accept pets. I grew up with lots of weird and wonderful pets. Tabby the cat; Indy, Pip and Thursday the jirds; Nessy, Daisy, Sugar and Spice the guinea pigs; Merlin the chinchilla; Trojan the rat; Sky the dog; degus and countless fish. Veggie Hubby never had his own pet.

On BBC breakfast this morning, I saw that people now want to keep hedgehogs as pets. I do find this a bit strange, hedgehogs are cute but not exactly cuddly, who would want to stroke one? However, I don't really understand why people would want to keep reptiles either. Animal welfare groups are apparently in uproar, but I don't think that keeping tame hedgehogs is any worse than keeping any other pet. I believe that a lot of people aren't responsible enough to keep pets whatever the pet is. They are usually looked after by children who aren't the best owners. My niece has got a new badly behaved dog Gus, who I have yet to meet. Veggie Hubby pointed out that a dog can't be well behaved if it is being raised by her! Even as a child I wasn't the best pet keeper... I nearly drowned my pet jird Thursday in the bath once, managed to rescue him, and then tried to dry him off with a hairdryer but it was too hot and made his eyes bleed. I still feel guiltly about that to this day.