Puppy Things

You know how puppies have a nasty habit of chewing on their humans' slippers?  Well, Wild Republican puppies turn out to be no different.  Look:

Alfredo appears to be pretending not to have noticed. Fortunately these are AJD's old slippers and not his new ones. 

We didn't alert Beppe to the presence of the slippers in any way; we just looked over and there he was. 

Spots

Khamsin has spent the better part of the last month on top of AJD's printer, mesmerised.

It took us quite a while to figure out what he finds so fascinating.  At first we thought he might be looking at the solution to one of AJD's crossword puzzles.  AJD always has a crossword-of-the-day desk calendar, and that paper bag to the right of the printer has some of the old ones in it (that's his paper recycling bag).  Khamsin rather likes crosswords.  

It turns out, though, that he's not staring at the bag at all.  He's staring at those tacks. We finally gave in and asked him what he found so fascinating in the thumbtacks, and he informed us solemnly that he's trying to work out whether there are more tacks in that box than he has spots.  This is giving him great trouble because he can't see all of himself to know how many spots he has.  

At some point we may need to distract him with some new activity (and he'll have to return to lessons, surely?), but for the moment Khamsin swears he's perfectly content.

Lynxes Appreciate Great Literature

AJD recently decided to read Italo Calvino's If on a winter's night a traveler.  He happened to mention this to Sir Theo in conversation, and Sir Theo told him, with great excitement, that he'd been wanting to read it himself for years.  Being of a generous nature, AJD agreed to share it with him.  They worked out an arrangement whereby AJD would read a chapter and then pass the book along to Sir Theo - although AJD quietly confided that Sir Theo was unable to resist reading ahead a little.  Apparently Sir Theo really, really liked it.

Plouie's Reactions to Stimuli Are Inherently Unpredictable

Yesterday afternoon I spent several hours happily rearranging my books.  This had some unanticipated consequences: a terrified chupacabra and a religiously inspired penguin.

Submitting my dissertation a few weeks ago necessitated returning all of my library books.  We're talking about sixty, seventy-odd books; an entire bookcase was devoted to holding them.  I acquire new books faster than I can read them, and I read very fast (as in, I've had complete strangers come up to me and comment on how fast I read), so that extra shelf space was sorely needed, let me tell you.  Now I actually have five empty shelves, which is a dangerous thing.

Since I had so many empty shelves, I decided to let the chupacabra have one.  It had been sitting with the books on mythology, but it had to be on the very edge, and I thought it might prefer a bit more space.  Plus, there are more people for it to talk to on the other side of the room.  We still can't communicate with it, but I'm hoping that if it's closer to a larger number of potential conversation partners, it might start picking up bits of English or Common.  So the chupacabra now shares a shelf with the Calling Cat and the Elegant Elephant.  You have not previously heard of the Calling Cat or the Elegant Elephant because neither of them is plush.

Seleucus, Rusty, Magick, and Plouie had been hanging out in the south room last week, but it was time for Seleucus and Rusty to go back to the north room, so AJD came to get them.  (This is just as well, because I don't really have capacity for more than two visitors.)  Seleucus was ready to go back of his own accord, but Rusty wanted to stay, especially with Magick in here.  He didn't have a choice in the matter, though: Alfredo was insistent that his brief vacation from lessons was over.  Rusty was only persuaded to go without being forcibly dragged when it was pointed out to him that he wouldn't have to put up with Plouie any more.  After that he was rather eager to leave.

Before they headed out, AJD asked how Plouie had reacted to the chupacabra, and I realised that he probably wasn't aware of it yet.  Plouie's observational skills are predictably minimal.  He wouldn't have noticed it from across the room, and the chupacabra's new shelf isn't particularly near the floor.  AJD admitted he was very curious to see what would happen when Plouie finally noticed the chupacabra, and pointed out that there's no telling how Plouie will react to anything.

We looked at each other.  The temptation became too strong to resist.  We had to introduce Plouie to the chupacabra immediately.

I moved the Calling Cat a bit so that there was room for Plouie to roost on the shelf.  The moment I plunked him down, Plouie all but pounced on the chupacabra and started hugging it.  I had to pull him off.  The chupacabra tried to disappear into its corner.  It was terrified, poor thing.  It's usually so inscrutable, too; I think this was the first identifiable reaction we've seen from it.  (We apologised, but I'm not sure it understood.)

Our first thought was that Plouie was in love with the chupacabra.  This was a reasonable conclusion, given the data.  ('Poor chupacabra,' AJD said.  'An amorous Plouie would scare anyone.')  But this turned out to be incorrect.  After I'd removed him from the shelf, Plouie turned around, looked up at the chupacabra, and started repeatedly bowing to it.  He was venerating it.

Naturally this confused us immensely.  After all, Plouie's thoughts on religion are very well-known around here, and the chupacabra is very clearly not a blue penguin.  

The only way to unravel this conundrum, unfortunately, was to ask Plouie himself, and this took a very long time, because Plouie is Plouie.  There wasn't an obvious way to ask him about his religion without mentioning the Blue Penguin of Happiness, and whenever you do that he gets very excited and starts jumping all over the place exclaiming 'The Blue Penguin of Happiness!' over and over and basically becomes even less coherent than he usually is.  But we were finally able to get an answer out of him: Plouie has concluded that the chupacabra is the Footman of the Blue Penguin of Happiness and therefore to be adored and venerated.

Apparently the Blue Penguin of Happiness has both a Footman and a Handmaiden.  Who knew Plouie was capable of such complicated cosmology?

Anyway, so Plouie thinks the chupacabra is some sort of divine avatar.  We need to explain this to the poor chupacabra (and also assure it that we're never going to let Plouie get that close to it again), which probably means we need to bring in Pedro.

Gilly's Secret Life

A few months back, I mentioned that Sir Theo had started playing online Dominion, using AJD's username.  Yesterday we discovered that he's not the only member of the menagerie to have been sucked into the Dominion community.

That's right: Gilly and the Izit are playing it too.  AJD caught them checking out their rankings.  Turns out that the Izit isn't very high-ranked, but Gilly is ranked 30: the higher the number, the higher the rank.  We're not that surprised that Gilly's good at this; he did, after all, practically cut his teeth at a house party with lots of gamers and then at a puzzle hunt.

 

Possibly we should have already known that they've become involved - AJD says he's seen the Izit and Gilly in the isotrobby before (presumably when he was playing at work), but he didn't realise they were our Gilly and Izit.

An Epidemic of Falling Ungulates

For some reason there's been a recent trend of ungulates falling down the stairs.

It started when AJD and I watched Dirty Dancing with Parsley.  Parsley was really taken by the scene where Baby and Johnny are practising dancing on a log, and he wanted to try it too.  Having four legs made this a tricky proposition, so he settled for hanging out on the upstairs railing on his stomach, with his feet on either side, and wiggling around.  He seemed pretty happy there like that, so we let him stay there for a few days.  But Parsley's foray into dancing was cut short when he fell off the railing and tumbled all the way down the stairs.

I have fallen down these stairs myself, twice in fact, and I can attest that it is not a particularly pleasant experience.  Parsley insists that he's fine, and he did return to his usual self quite quickly, despite being banged up.  Pedro agreed that he is essentially fine, but ordered him to rest for a while just in case.  Gilly stayed with him.  His tail is a great boon to an invalid.

Then this morning Nicodemus, who had fainted on the bar (as displayed in my previous post), also took a tumble.  Nicky was luckier, in that he only fell to the ground on the second floor; he didn't really fall down the stairs.  He was very stoic about the whole thing.  Pedro says that Nicodemus is also fine, but he prescribed the same treatment (complete with Gilly and his marvelous tail) just in case.

Parsley has been energetically advocating falling completely down the stairs ever since.  He claims that the inexperience is just not complete if you don't tumble down the stairs and that it's great fun and worth trying.  AJD and I think Pedro should re-evaluate Parsley for a possible head injury.

Fainting Goats

Did you know that they make fainting goats?  Apparently there's a sub-species of goat that has the interesting property of fainting when excited.  It's remarkably adorable.  Here's a video, courtesy of my friend IS, who alerted me to the phenomenon.

Amazing Fainting Goats

AJD showed the video to Nicodemus, who had never heard of fainting goats before.  Nicky was so shocked that he... fainted.