Happy Birthday Sister!

July 17, 2013 at 12:24 pm (Birthday Wishes, Day to Day, Family, For Amanda, Getting Old, Stevie Pics, Summer) (, , , , , , )

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It’s hard to follow a gripping snake and bunny story, but here you go. Since you don’t get your own party, ever(!), I will give you your own post. I like this picture and it will be a permanent record of your youth, which is slowly slipping away, as you painfully crawl, another year, towards 40. Hee hee. I went to the beach with the kids on Monday, and I found that orange bikini I wore to Las Vegas, with you, and our 30-year-old asses. Such a painful memory. Such a long time we had to stay in the pool waiting for those shmoes to move away from us. Such rockin’ bodies we had. Ha ha. Anyhow, I vowed this new day to wear that bikini again. And in Vegas. What’s your ETA on bikini body ready? Or are you just like, whatevs, let the flabs fly, now that you are approaching middle age? Hardy har. Morghan took a nice beach shot of me and the kids. It’s good because you can’t really see me. My favorite kind of picture. I’ll post it later though, so this can be all about you. Let’s make another memory shall we? Only this time it will be with 40-year-old asses. And our faces. Have a fab day doing whatever you are doing. I hope the air is warm, the pool is cool, the hubby is hot and the kids are somewhere else. I even have an awesome present for you this year! See you in a few days. XO.

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Classic Bunny Pose. Right Before We Fed Him To Our New Pet, The Snake.

July 17, 2013 at 11:48 am (Animal Deaths, Babies, Big Animals, Day to Day, Heat, Nature, Picture Posts, Posts In Pictures, Snakes, Summer) (, , , , , , , , , , , , )

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Just kidding. However, we do actually have 2 little baby bunnies that seemed to survive the nest we found a few weeks back. Looked like 4 inside, but we only see 2 every day now. Oh? You don’t want to hear about these bunnies? What happened to the snake? Well, I’ll tell ya.

The snake survived fine, overnight, in the pillowcase, the first night into Sunday. We had discussions with family about who to call, what to do, where the snake should go, blah blah blah. We had some nature preserve ideas, natural habitat locations, and I did more research on the internet to find a decent solution we could all live with. We had a pretty good plan in place, but when we woke up Monday morning, it seemed that nature was going to decide for us. The pillowcase was wet, but only in a certain spot, as if something tried to attack it and either the snake was now dead, or it defended itself and released liquids of some defensive sort. I don’t really know enough so I thought, dead. I got gloves, cause, ewww, and when I picked up the bag to untie the cord the snake was rattling and angry. But alive. So we let it out nice and slow like they say to, and it calmed right down. I was able to hold it and inspect it and it looked OK. But, it definitely could not stay in a pillowcase, inside of a plastic tub, in a backyard, for anymore days or nights. Based on more research and a few phone calls, the best course was to let it go in its closest natural habitat. The snake is one of our Illinois snakes, and it is considered mostly passive as far as wild snakes go. And they move around at night in the summer. So, maybe it just got really lost. We have, well, let me say, we had, a wild, wooded area right at the end of our block-set mere weeks ago. But after several episodes of flooding, the town, or county, or whoever, leveled all the trees, bushes, grass, etc., and created a retention/detention pond-type area. It was quite dense and wild. It had coyotes. We saw them over the winter. At any rate, they’re all gone now. The land is flat and I’m sure the animals that didn’t get killed outright, moved themselves out asap. And maybe our little friend finally worked her way over to our backyard looking for shelter. Or she was just passing through and just wasn’t fast enough. OR. She’s been hanging out in our backyard for god knows how long because of all the wood we had piled around and since we moved some of it in our clean-up attempt she had to move too, but we just never saw her until the other day. Eck. We could have been sitting and standing near her for days. Or weeks. Eeesh. Let’s not think about that though. Let’s think about this instead: The nice thing about living in the suburbs is we live very close to, “the end of the suburbs”, which is basically open land and fields and forest preserves. We picked the best one that had everything: Prairie-like land, woods, marshy swamp area, and water. And not visited or populated by many people. Some areas see lots of traffic, the one we picked has very little, in general and by comparison. We drove over there Monday, nice and early. No people. took a walk deep into the back, a nicely wooded and flat area, where the secondary, smaller pond is, and let her go along the tree line. It’s a good spot. Lots of space for a young snake. (We have been thinking juvenile, totally based on color and patches, via the internet again. I could be completely wrong of course. Male. Old. Dying. Who knows.) Anyway this is her new home:

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We let her out of the pillowcase, onto the ground, behind where we took the picture. Thick woods, away from the roads or parking areas, with that view across. She layed for a minute in the grass and the sun. And slowly slid into the trees. Then she was gone.

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