Is real. I know! It looks fake!

It is not a small little bird like you might think. He (she?) is about the size of a small cat.
His feathers are actually quite beautiful.
Not sure what type of bird it is… a crow? blackbird? raven? I am no bird aficionado.
But the huge story about this bird is that…
It is dead.

This little fellow landed on the flower box outside of my parents home….and promptly froze to death in this position.

Facing their house.

They now have a new lawn ornament

Several weeks ago, early November, Breanna lost her snake. She had left a clip off of his cage. We tore the house apart looking for him…we tore it apart again. We had to stop looking. She has been heartbroken over it ever since. The slightest mention of him would bring a scowl to her face and you could tell it made her sad to think of him. She loved that snake. She covered his cage with a black cloth. Over time she believed him to be dead. She mourned him.
(My belief had always been that he got out of the house and was living a happy life in the cornfields nearby. Dave believed he would show up sooner or later)

Last night I had a really weird dream in which every roof in our house was just springing leaks left and right and rivers of water were coming from our ceilings. Same dream, I was laying in bed and looked up and spot Akuji and grab him and run to put him in his cage but it is filled with mud and a big intruder snake is there so I grab it and I have a snake in both hands and I start yelling for Dave to come help me get the cage cleaned out…I don’t remember anything after that.

This morning I read the pets section in the classified ads and there was an ad for a snake similar to Breanna’s…there are rarely EVER ads for that snake in the paper. I was going to tell Breanna my dream but then decided not to since it would probably depress her.

Dave and I were doing laundry and when I went downstairs to put in a load of whites, I noticed that there was a white sock by the sub pump so just as I bend down to grab it I spot something odd near the sub pump well and I was in awe. It was Akuji. My heart starting beating like mad, but I remember moving real slow and saying Dave’s name. I was certain that if I touched him he would move so fast I would never catch him, or that…he would not move at all. So I gently placed my hand on his “back” and wrapped my hand around his body. He was SOOOO cold. I thought he was dead. I picked him up and as soon as I lifted him off the ground, he turned around and looked at me with those cute little red eyes and stuck his tongue out as if the say….oh, it’s you.

Dave had not quite figured out what was going on until I turned around with my hands full of our scaley, beautiful friend. He looked stunned! The first thing we both do is start screaming Breanna’s name and I run for the stairs. She gets to the top of the steps seconds before me and I am just saying her name and she is saying “What? What?” because she is not thinking to look for a snake she does not see it until I shove my hands in her face. She now has the stunned look, grabs him up and “hugs” him saying “OH MY GOD! OH MY GOD” and she just goes and sits down and is crying and hugging her snake all at the same time and saying thank you to me over and over again.

It has been a grand reunion. Breanna has not put him down. I know some of you may find this silly, but we really love our animals here…even the no legged ones. It was a very emotional moment for us.

Let me tell you this: I don’t know that I would have SEEN Akuji if it had not been for the dream, and the newspaper ad keeping him on my mind today. To be quite honest, my laundry room is not particularly the cleanest and right next to the sub pump well, and where most of Akuji was laying next to, were two red tool boxes…for those who don’t know him, Akuji has quite a bit of red in him.

Godwink?

Has anyone ever read The Devil’s Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce?
I had never heard of it before.

You can read it for free HERE

This is what I found online regarding this work:

Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?) was one of nineteenth-century America’s most renowned satirists. The author of short stories, essays, fables, poems, and sketches, he was a popular columnist and wrote for several San Francisco and London newspapers during his forty-year journalism career.

The Devil’s Dictionary was begun in a weekly paper in 1881, and was continued in a desultory way at long intervals until 1906. In that year a large part of it was published in covers with the title The Cynic’s Word Book, a name which the author had not the power to reject or happiness to approve. To quote the publishers of the present work:

“This more reverent title had previously been forced upon him by the religious scruples of the last newspaper in which a part of the work had appeared, with the natural consequence that when it came out in covers the country already had been flooded by its imitators with a score of ‘cynic’ books — The Cynic’s This, The Cynic’s That, and The Cynic’s t’Other. Most of these books were merely stupid, though some of them added the distinction of silliness. Among them, they brought the word ‘cynic’ into disfavor so deep that any book bearing it was discredited in advance of publication.”

Here are some excerpts from the dictionary that I felt you (my loyal readers) might find interesting. Please take no offense…I did not personally create these definitions…I did get some amusement from them. Others may be insulted, I was not…more fascinated than anything. Makes me wonder what kind of person Ambrose was.

ACHIEVEMENT, n. The death of endeavor and the birth of disgust.

ACKNOWLEDGE, v. t. To confess. Acknowledgement of one another’s faults is the highest duty imposed by our love of truth.

ACQUAINTANCE, n. A person whom we know well enough to borrow from, but not well enough to lend to. A degree of friendship called slight when its object is poor or obscure, and intimate when he is rich or famous.

ADMIRATION, n. Our polite recognition of another’s resemblance to ourselves.

ADMONITION, n. Gentle reproof, as with a meat-axe. Friendly warning.

ALONE, adj. In bad company.

AMBITION, n. An overmastering desire to be vilified by enemies while living and made ridiculous by friends when dead.

APOLOGIZE, v. i. To lay the foundation for a future offence.

FAITH, n. Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel.

FEMALE, n. One of the opposing, or unfair, sex.

FORGIVE (this word was NOT in the dictionary, I just found that noteworthy – if the Devil had a dictionary, he would not be able to define this word)

LIFE, n. A spiritual pickle preserving the body from decay. We live in daily apprehension of its loss; yet when lost it is not missed. The question, “Is life worth living?” has been much discussed; particularly by those who think it is not, many of whom have written at great length in support of their view and by careful observance of the laws of health enjoyed for long terms of years the honors of successful controversy.

“Life’s not worth living, and that’s the truth,”
Carelessly caroled the golden youth.
In manhood still he maintained that view
And held it more strongly the older he grew.
When kicked by a jackass at eighty-three,
“Go fetch me a surgeon at once!” cried he.
Han Soper

LOVE, n. A temporary insanity curable by marriage or by removal of the patient from the influences under which he incurred the disorder. This disease, like caries and many other ailments, is prevalent only among civilized races living under artificial conditions; barbarous nations breathing pure air and eating simple food enjoy immunity from its ravages. It is sometimes fatal, but more frequently to the physician than to the patient.

MALE, n. A member of the unconsidered, or negligible sex. The male of the human race is commonly known (to the female) as Mere Man. The genus has two varieties: good providers and bad providers.

MAN, n. An animal so lost in rapturous contemplation of what he thinks he is as to overlook what he indubitably ought to be. His chief occupation is extermination of other animals and his own species, which, however, multiplies with such insistent rapidity as to infest the whole habitable earh and Canada.

PRAY, v. To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy.

WEDDING, n. A ceremony at which two persons undertake to become one, one undertakes to become nothing, and nothing undertakes to become supportable.

WOMAN, n. An animal usually living in the vicinity of Man, and having a rudimentary susceptibility to domestication. It is credited by many of the elder zoologists with a certain vestigial docility acquired in a former state of seclusion, but naturalists of the postsusananthony period, having no knowledge of the seclusion, deny the virtue and declare that such as creation’s dawn beheld, it roareth now. The species is the most widely distributed of all beasts of prey, infesting all habitable parts of the globe, from Greeland’s spicy mountains to India’s moral strand. The popular name (wolfman) is incorrect, for the creature is of the cat kind. The woman is lithe and graceful in its movement, especially the American variety (Felis pugnans), is omnivorous and can be taught not to talk.

I actually liked that last one. It made me giggle. (GIGGLE is another word not in The Devil’s Dictionary)

September 14, 2006

I just wanted someplace to make note of this.

Most people know about our dog Pity. I refer to her as the Dingo. She looks like one and at one time she was one step away from being a wild dog. Anyway, she is not known for being a social creature. Her favorite place to be is under our bed, unless there is a storm brewing then she prefers to be under someone’s legs. She greets us when we come home and when she comes in from playing in the yard and she likes to take walks but other than that…under the bed is where she spends her time. So yesterday when I got home, I found it very weird that she would not leave me alone. She did not want outside…she clung to me like velcro…like a well trained dog that was told to heel. She usually stays out of the kitchen but she stuck with me into there. She even stuck to my right leg perfectly as I walked in circles around the living room. She gave up when I went down the basement steps but she stood at the top and watched me and resumed her post when I came back up. I was in the bathroom sorting some laundry and she came in and stood behind me with her head under my arm…. Breanna had to shoo her outside so that I could use the facilities. It was freaky. She did not seem scared as she does when there is a storm coming. She seemed happy, tail wagging and all.

I guess what freaks me out is that I believe animals are very intuitive and can sense things that we can not. I have noticed over the years that whenever I am sick my animals are always on me, the cats and dogs (for Scarlet the doberman it is normal) are usually on top of me or at my feet during any minor illness – I guess they know that I don’t feel well and want to comfort me. So when Pity is sticking to me like glue it makes me wonder if there is something going on that she knows about but I don’t. It kept me awake last night…worrying that I would not wake up.

I know it’s irrational but I just wanted to put it out there…just in case.

According to www.anomalies-unlimited.com:

Convicted forger A. Schiller was serving his time in SingSing prison in the late 1800s when guards found him dead in his cell. On his body they found seven regular straight pins whose heads measured the typical 47/1000ths of an inch or1.17 millimeters in diameter. Under 500 magnification it was found that the tiny etchings seen on the heads of the pinswere the words to The Lord’s Prayer, which is 65 words and254 letters long. Of the seven pins, six were silver and onewas gold – the gold pin’s prayer was flawless and a true masterpiece. Schiller had spent the last 25 years of his life creating the pins, using a tool too small to be seen by the naked eye. It is estimated that it took 1,863 sepatate carving strokes to make it. Schiller went blind because of hisartwork.

I have been busy and to avoid being accused of ignoring my blog I give you these two little interestingly ODD things to ponder until I can blog something worthy of your attentions:

Oddity # 1

Oddity #2