Yep, my new video is of a fly. But flies are more interesting than you might think. It’s fascinating to watch when them clean themselves. When this little guy cleans his head it looks like he’s about to pop it off, and just take a look at his proboscis!
Here’s a bonus picture. 🙂
Look at those big compound eyes and delicate wings!
***Allison***
Here comes another photoshoot of the adorable flufferpuff! I absolutely love Willow, but I must say she is harder to photograph than Lily because she is so fluffy and dark. But oh well! I couldn’t just leave her un-photographed, now could I?
Willow is getting more gray instead of black, for some reason. She must be getting old! 😉
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Willow and I, swinging on the porch swing…
And now she is left all alone –
Hooray! Some playmates!
Isn’t she adorable with a bow in her hair – er, ears?!
Now we take her to the deck, where she is fondled by a small human,
And becomes a ball of fluff with ears.
Willow wishes to escape being a model. She looks longingly over the side of the deck rail, but decides it is too much of a risk to jump.
And for the final humiliation, she is wrapped in a damp cloth to “cool her down,” or so the humans say.
Good girl, Willow!
I hope you enjoyed Willow as much as I did!
***Allison***
We currently have two kittens named Joy and Coffee Bean. (Coffee Bean is black and fluffy like Willow, but he has a bad eye, so I just took pictures of Joy.)
Joy is very energetic and playful. She was trying to capture my dangling camera lens-cover while I was taking pictures of her. Her prowess was all in vain though, because the lens-cover is attached to my camera, and I was NOT going to give my camera up as a kitten toy. 🙂
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Joy is – hmmm… tasting the air?
“Relaxing in the bunnies cage, just lettin’ off steam….”
Daydreaming again!
I love this close-up picture of her fuzzy little paw!
Oh! I have a snippet of news – I sold Honeybunny! The man who bought her is going to breed her, so someday she will become a proud mama rabbit. Goodbye, Honeybunny – *sniff, sniff*. Although I’m kind of sad that she had to go, at least she will have a more interesting life than staying penned up in a small cage so she won’t nip and fight with our other rabbits. Have a good life, Honeybunny!
***Allison***
“One bunny salad coming up!”
Yumm. I, Lily, love a good bunny salad. Our mistresses always make them with the freshest and most delicious ingredients: crisp parsley, fresh dandelions, sunny marigold petals… As I joined Mango and Willow at the bowl, I sniffed in all the delicious smells.
Mango and Willow were already scarfing down the salad. Diamond joined us briefly, and then hopped off in search of… I don’t know. A piece of straw or something. She’s a strange bunny.
“Awww, look at Willow! She’s such a cute little flufferpuff!”
Grrr. They’re always talking about Willow. Ever since I got back from the fair it’s been the same story: Willow is the star of the show, the life of the party, and I’m always just in the background. I once had a good life – I was a model, a cherished pet… but now, that life is gone. I don’t even see what’s so cute about a rabbit so fluffy you can hardly see her face. And another thing: my mistress always goes on about how Willow is so easy to hold, where as I, on the other hand, always scratch when she picks me up. What’s wrong about a rabbit that has a little spirit? It disgusts me how Willow just lets herself be taken over by humans. Speaking of humans…
“Hey, let’s give Willow a willow branch!”
Look. Willow is eating her namesake. How cute… NOT! I couldn’t take this any more. I huffed over to a corner where I could think about the troubles in life in privacy. Joy the cat was snarling and growling over a piece of Willow fluff. Suddenly she turned and looked at me.
“What’s wrong with you, Lily? You seem to be in a foul mood lately.”
“Humph. I’m not in a foul mood.”
“Yes you are. Really, what’s eating you?”
“Uh… mosquitos? Nothing, Joy, it’s nothing.” I hesitated. “It’s just… it’s just that Willow gets so much attention and I don’t get any.”
“Ahhh,” purred Joy wisely. “Well, think ahead – someday you will be a mother of a fine litter of baby bunnies, and think how much attention you’ll get then.”
Hmmm, that was so. After all, I am a purebred New Zealand, and Willow is only a mixed breed. Someday I would be a proud mother rabbit, and she would still just be a pet.
I looked back at Willow. The humans had finally went away, leaving peaceful silence behind them. She looked, I don’t know, a little droopy. She hopped slowly over to me.
“Can I snuggle with you, Lily?” she asked wistfully. “I’m tired of being held.”
I didn’t answer. But Willow hopped over anyway, invading my space with her fluffiness.
She sighed, “I like snuggling with you. I love you, Lily.”
She looked up at me with her fluffy little face and my heart began to melt. She was awfully sweet. But how did I know she wasn’t just putting on a false front to get me under her paws? Finally, I sighed.
“You know Willow, I love you too. Even if you are cuter and cuddlier than me, and even though you do get more attention. I guess I don’t get much attention because I choose not to be cuddly. Maybe you could give me lessons sometime, how about it?” But Willow was already asleep, tired out from being cute and cuddly. “Sweet dreams, little flufferpuff,” I whispered, “sweet dreams.”
***Allison*** (With Lily and Willow)
School starts for us this week, only it didn’t really start: we don’t have much time for school, because we have to gather eggs. 😦 We recently got a new flock of chickens for our chicken houses, and we have to weigh almost every egg they lay. And there are thousands of eggs per day. I’m not kidding. We have about 24,000 chickens right now and we have to gather about 16,000 eggs a day. That’s A LOT OF EGGS! And it takes A VERY LONG TIME to pick them each off of the conveyor belt, weigh the ones that might be too heavy or too light, and put them in egg flats. Thankfully our family only has to do it for about 3 hours a day, because we aren’t the only ones working there. (Speaking of family, my sister Megan made a post about the actual chicken houses and chickens over on her blog. See it here.)
Anyway… during all those hours we find some pretty strange chicken eggs. I’ll bet you never even knew that chickens could lay eggs like the ones I’m gonna show you, but I assure you, they do. All of these eggs were found in one of our 3 chicken houses, from the same breed of boring ‘ol white chickens. Shall we begin the science lesson for today?
Let’s start with size. There are big eggs, and there are small eggs. And then there are HUGE eggs and tiny eggs. Here are the two latter sizes together for comparison.
The big ‘ol guy weighed in at a hefty 4 oz. (The eggs you buy at the store are about 2 oz.) The tiny egg is only 0.2 oz.!
Now for shape. Some eggs are almost round, some are pointy. Some eggs are short, and some are long. Here’s a long one.
Eggshells are also different textures. There are a few wrinkly ones, a few warty ones, but mainly smooth ones. There are mostly hard-shelled eggs, but once in awhile we get a softshell one (or two).
Another strange one:
Not only are the eggs strange on the outside, but they can also be strange on the inside. Remember the huge egg in the first picture? This is what was inside it:
two yolks and a tiny softshell egg! I have never seen this before. Two yolks are pretty common – we call eggs with two yolks “doubles,” and those are mostly the eggs we eat. (Sometimes this is problem, like when you make a recipe that calls for 3 eggs. Uhhh, one and a half doubles? ☺) But I have never seen an egg with two yolks AND a softshell!
Here is a picture of what’s inside a double.
Pretty boring, right? But here is an egg I found already cracked open on the belt:
A softshell with another softshell inside it!
And last but not least, we have the triple. A fairly rare egg that has – can you guess? – three yolks.
The list could go on and on, but those are the only kinds I took pictures of, so I guess I’ll stop there. 🙂
So are you surprised or what? It’s astounding what diversity there is in one kind of chicken egg, let alone in the whole world. What an amazing God it took to create everything!
***Allison***
I finally got around to posting some very exciting (and cute!) news – I got ANOTHER BUNNY! Yes, I know I already have two bunnies, but I saw this little gal at the fair and I just couldn’t resist. How could you resist such sweet fluffiness? I named her Willow. And here is her profile:
Breed: Mixed Breed (3/4 Jersey Wooly, 1/4 Mini Lop)
Color: Charcoal
Name: Willow
Gender: Female
Age when bought: ???? Maybe about 2 months?
Unfortunately, Honeybunny despises Willow, and she kept nipping her, so I had to pen Honeybunny up in a cage all by herself. 😦 And now Honeybunny is really mean to all of the other bunnies, so I am going to sell her. She really isn’t that bad when you hold her, she just does not do well with other rabbits.
This must be the time to buy bunnies, because my friend and her mom each got a Holland Lop Rabbit. SO CUTE! Don’t worry, I took pictures of them too. ☺ Now enough of me talking, let’s get to the pictures!
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♥♥♥ Willow ♥♥♥
She is absolutely adorable, and easy to hold. Unfortunately my camera doesn’t take superb pictures of her, maybe because it has a hard time focusing on all the black fluffiness. At least you can enjoy what’s here, but trust me, she is better in real life!
And now for Snickers and Yoshi (they’re both boys by the way), my friends’ bunnies. I took these pictures with my dad’s phone which has a really good camera.
~•~•~Snickers~•~•~
►◄►◄Yoshi►◄►◄ (I didn’t get as many pictures of him because he was mostly in hiding. ☺)
And here they are snuggling together.
I might make a slideshow of these pictures and put them on my YouTube channel. Are you overloaded with cuteness yet?
***Allison***
P.S. This is my 100th post! Hooray!
These are the pictures that I entered in the fair this year. Almost all of them won prizes! You might have already seen a few of these pictures on my blog, but here they are again!
Which is your favorite?
***Allison***
We are just home from a wonderful vacation at the beach. Well, it was partly at the beach – first we drove down, sightseeing on the way, then we stopped at the beach with our friends for a couple of days, and then we drove home. Of course I took my camera, but… IT STOPPED WORKING because first my brother accidentally dumped it onto the sand because he didn’t know I had put it in a towel, and then it got splashed with water. 😦 😦 Thankfully I had already gotten a bunch of pictures, so I can still show you some. (Oh, and I ordered a new camera that is hopefully coming by tomorrow!)
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On the way down we stopped at Mount Airy, the inspiration for the set of The Andy Griffith Show (which our family loves.) It wasn’t quite like we expected, and the places were kind of scattered around, but it was neat.
There was an Opie’s candy shop,
and of course the Mayberry Sherriff’s office and jail. The jail didn’t look quite like it does in the movie when you went inside, but it looks like you’re actually in the movie when you look at the pictures.
We also got some delicious ice cream. My sister and I shared this (huge!) banana split.
Next we dropped in at our cousin’s new house, where we found a big fat toad. We also went to look at their farm, but I didn’t bring my camera there.
Toad – meet kitten, kitten – meet toad.
And finally, Amelia Island! We saw some beautiful marshland there,
not to mention the many other beautiful spots, like this lake.
The trees in the Southeast are draped in Spanish moss and sometimes covered in ferns.
The beach house was a veritable reptile and amphibian collecting center! We saw and/or caught green anoles, geckos, toads, tree frogs, and a garter snake. (The snake, by the way, was in a closet in the house!)
Now for the beach. (Where, beside the fact that my camera stopped working, I lost my goggles. But it was really fun anyway!)
The beach there was not crowded at all, there were lots of shells, and the water was WARM, actually WARM! That’s amazing to me because we have never been to a warm beach, we always go to the northern beaches if we go at all.
Some of the shells were coquinas. We gathered about two cups of them one day, and made some delicious soup with them.
On our way home we didn’t do much sightseeing, but we did stop at Hilton Head. And that’s it!
Have you ever been to Amelia Island? What’s your favorite vacation spot?
***Allison***
Hey guys, I’m back from vacation! (The beach was AMAZING, in case you were wondering. But more about that in a later post.)
This week, right after we came home from vacation, the fair is going on. I am entering dear Miss Lily (!!) and my sister Carmen is entering her bunny Diamond. I am hoping they come home with ribbons!
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Have you ever wondered what it would feel like to be a blade of grass, or a flower, or a bug looking up at the big world above you? This is what it might look like to be a dandelion about to get eaten. What a frightening monster! Oh wait… it’s just Lily. ☻
***Allison***
Allison Marie 