Baby Animal Season

Okay....if you don't like baby animals then you'd better leave right now, because this post is chock full of them! Starting with a baby woodchuck, (groundhog) who was wandering around our yard a few days ago. I wasn't home to see the little guy, but Rich was and he snapped a few photos!

I really like this photo because you can see his bushy tail. I never thought groundhogs had bushy tails....I always thought they had a little stubby nub of a tail. This little guy looks like a wombat! I'm not a big fan of the adults, but, awwwwww, this little guy IS cute!

Next on the list we have the recently hatched baby Mallards living over by Roy Thompson Hall, across the street from where I work. I had to take these photos through the glass, but luckily they swam right by me!

There are a total of 10 ducklings...or at least there were a few days ago. I first saw them on Tuesday, and I took these photos Wednesday. When I passed by this morning I didn't see them, but they do have a couple of hiding places.

It's so cute to see the little fluffballs following their mother around the pool, but I can't help but wonder why they would choose such a busy spot in the city to nest. It must be that their natural habitats are getting paved up, or too polluted. This is the third or fourth year in a row these adults have chosen this location to raise their brood.

I'm still waiting for the baby squirrels to show themselves in our yard and we've seen many adult Cottontails. I've tried photographing them, but they usually appear around dusk and they scoot away too fast!

Little Green Monster

My son was tired of feeling left out when I made his sister little felt toys, so he drew a little monster/lizard creature that he asked me to make. I finally finished him yesterday.
Here he is standing on the sheet of paper with my son's original design.

I decided to joint him like a teddy bear, so he can be posed.

He was a labour of love. I need to rest now.

Some More Pets From The Past

Ever since I was around 20, I had owned rats. I didn't take photos of them because I didn't own a decent camera.
But here is a photo of Cinnamon, my female rat that I had in 1988. She was pregnant when I bought her and ended up giving birth to 8 babies. I had to keep the babies until they were old enough to be separated from their mother, then the pet shop assured me they'd take them. I found a home for two of the babies right away, and the other six went back to the shop.

Here are a couple of the males in their cage peeking out and being very curious little rascals. I separated them from their mother and sisters so there wouldn't be a repeat episode of pregnant females for sale.
Well wouldn't you know it....when I showed up at the pet shop with the separated siblings, they just went and plopped them all into the same cage anyway. I just gave a big sigh of "Oh well, they'll never learn."

Here's a male I had named "Bart" in 1991. Rats only live 2-3 years, so Cinnamon was gone.
Bart was the same colouration as Cinnamon had been, which is probably why I chose him. Bart was my first male rat and not only do they get bigger than females, but they give off a stronger odour. But he was a gentle, friendly little guy.
This photo of me holding a rabbit was taken in 1989, and I kept this rabbit for only a week before I gave him away, cage and all to a lady who said her nephew would just LOVE a pet bunny.
I find rabbits to be difficult pets and they like to chew on electrical wires. This guy chewed through my drafting lamp cord! I didn't get him from a pet shop, my old boyfriend found him running around in his parents' backyard so he caught the animal and offered him to me. Being pure white he was obviously a domestic rabbit, so we took him to the vet and learned that he had mites in his ears. After paying vet bills and buying a $50 cage, I was awoken many times a night to hear the rabbit banging around in his cage. He was a "poop factory" and I learned that rabbits eat their own droppings to reabsorb as much nutrients as possible from their food. They double digest their food in other words. Living in a bachelor apartment, I realized that between the smell of his cage and the noise at night, he had to find another home. Oh well, live and learn.
Don't get me wrong, rabbits are CUTE but you need a basement or a warm garage to keep them in at night.

Cakes From The Past

I love the blog "Cake Wrecks", and I felt like I should post a few cakes of my own that I made quite a few years ago. These images are from scanned photographs, so they aren't the greatest,
but here is the "Millenium Falcon" I made about 12 years ago:



I also made this "Storm Trooper" helmet cake. It's sitting on a wire rack in case you're wondering why there's a "mesh" behind it.

This was just a simple little Father's Day cake. Like most Fathers of people my age, mine is into golf, so it seemed the most appropriate subject matter. The "sand trap" was brown sugar.

This cake was made for a friend's daughter on her 6th birthday. She said, "Not only do your cakes look good Suzanne, they also taste good!"
This is very important to note, because when I was going to Sheridan College, I was invited to a birthday celebration where they covered the cake in little Barbie shoes and it looked so cute....but I swear it tasted like saw-dust! True story.

And here are the type of cakes that "Jen", the lady behind "Cake Wrecks" loves to hate. The "Torso" cake. It IS a strange idea now that I think about it, but it's interesting just how many of them are out there!

Here's a man's torso as a cake. It was the Sensei at our Dojo's birthday, and this seemed to be a good idea. Jokes were indeed made regarding things I should have added like red jelly inside the cake, and bloody stumps where the limbs and head should have been.
The only thing I regretted was adding the chest "hair" which ended up looking like little mouse poops!

Witchfinder General

Well I finally found and purchased "Witchfinder General" on DVD.
I discovered that Vincent Price isn't really on the screen that much, considering he has the title role, but.....
Ian Ogilvy as "Richard Marshall", a soldier in Cromwell's army, is really the main character of this film.
I grabbed a few images from the film featuring Mr. Price as Matthew Hopkins. I can see why it's not really classified as a "Vincent Price" movie, because he plays his character VERY seriously without any of the quirkiness or campiness sometimes known in his other characters.

Apparently on the first day of shooting, Mr. Price fell off his horse and retreated to his hotel room (he stayed in the "Dicken's Room") for the rest of the day where he rested wearing a white nightshirt and nightcap! He refused to see an English doctor saying they were all quacks!

Here's a great sinister facial expression:
The character to the left was Hopkin's assistant, and man was HE EVIL! He's the one that did all the torturing, while Hopkins said, "Carry on, you are doing God's work."
Here they have a little confrontation...it's the one part of the film that showed some of that "Vincent Priceness" that we all know and love.
I unfortunately couldn't get better images of this scene, which takes place in the dungeon of an old castle. There are a lot of camera moves and fairly fast cutting going on. The film deals with very disturbing subject matter....not so much the religious aspects but just what ignorance and anarchy can fuel.
It takes place during the civil war in England and there is no concrete government. The film reminded me a bit of a Western.....where there's no law and people are slaughtered unjustly and one man (Richard Marshall) tries to fight back. Everybody seems to be taking the law into their own hands and the ending of the film leaves you feeling very hollow and disturbed.

Ah Spring!

Ahhh! How I love daffodils! Last year I dug a new garden and moved some bulbs from the backyard into the front. I also planted a few daffodil bulbs and waited to see what would come up. Well I am delighted to have these little beauties growing in front of my house:



Here is a beautiful purple tulip that was once in the backyard.

And here's my "competition"....Rich's parents are Dutch and this is one of their front gardens.



All the neighbours remark on how beautiful these tulips are. Being right next door to us I get to see them every day, but they really don't bloom very long, so I decided to capture their splendor with my camera. I'm surprised the photos turned out so well, as there was quite a breeze causing the flowers to sway and not sit still!