What in the hell is THAT?!

For the last couple of weeks, I've had a game cam on the ground out by the birdfeeder.  Mostly what it captures is sneaky sneaky deer in the middle of the night:

And in the daytime it does capture birds:

And sometimes there's a whole lot of nothing:

Except ... what's this?  Is that someone cutting through my backyard?:

Hmmm ... let's take a closer look:

It looks like ... a man?  With a hood on? And an ... apron?  But where are his FEET?

I have my theories as to what this actually is - but what do YOU think it is?  Enquiring minds want to know.

Christmas at State Park

No words, just pictures.  Merry Christmas!

fmcetc. strikes again!

Every year, fmcetc. sends me a musical Christmas card.  This year, the card featured kittens:

When you open the card, the kittens meow-sing-yowl "O Christmas Tree". 

Awesome!, I thought.  Let's show it to the cats.  This outta be GREAT.

I wish I had some photos of the perma-cats reacting to the card, but I don't, because as soon as the card-kittens started yowling, the perma-cats started fighting amongst themselves.  I had to shut the card and separate the cats before bloodshed ensued.

Oh, fmcetc., what have you WROUGHT?!  :)

I guess the perma-cats, who are admittedly not the sharpest tools in the shed, thought that the card-kittens were real?  And fighting?  And thus, the perma-cats had to ... fight each other?

Yeah, I had no idea.

EXCEPT,  that it would be awesome to show it to the foster kittens.

What's that? Why, yes. Yes, I *am* evil, thank you for asking.

Okay, kittens, here we go!   (I had to weigh the card down with a remote at one point to get it to keep playing):

The fosters were ... perplexed.

They wanted to know where the other kittens were:

But in the end decided, meh, nbd:

And thus ends the experiment, and now all I have to do is decide which cats to FedEx to fmcetc.:  The fighting ones, or the confused ones.  (KIDDING I AM KIDDING)

Merry Christmas, everyone!

(and keep sending those cards, fmcetc.!  They always make me smile.)

The Rest of the Crew

Yes, I *do* have cats other than the Foster Campers in the house.

This time of year, there's a lot of snoozing going on:

And some wrestling.  Oh good lord these cats drive me CRAZY with the wrestling:

Bath time:

All three cats in one pic!  (Sodapop's under the fabric - he LOVES to ambush the other cats (and me)):

Hey laydee, you ever CLEAN dis thing?:

In addition to being the Tub Inspector, Sodapop's also my favorite placeholder:

While Tinks has visions of sugarplums dancing in his head:

Don't worry, Tinks, Christmas is almost here.

Love is love is love, indeed

Some of you may remember Bam Bam, the Foster Camper with a heart murmur who was taken home by another rescue volunteer.  I see the volunteer every Saturday when I go in to clean, and she says Bam Bam is doing great and is spoiled rotten.  She was kind enough to send me some pics:

 The dog here, Eko, has seizures and will be on medication for the rest of his life.  Evidently he and Bammer are kindred spirits, because they have taken quite a shine to each other.

GOSH, I love a happy ending!

ala Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon

So, the memory card pics!  I told the story on Facebook, and a friend (well, a Facebook friend, you know what I mean) shared that she bought a house that was previously owned by a well-known musician and found some undeveloped rolls of film, which she sent to the musician rather than selling them on ebay or something, which I thought was really nice of her.  But I was DYING to know who the musician was, so she messaged me with it, and I don't think he'd mind if I told my single-digits of readers here that it was

Ben Folds!

I like Ben Folds!  He does some great stuff!  And now I've got this song of his stuck in my head:

And there you have it.  Your earworm of the day.  You're welcome!

Whoooooo are you? Who, who? Who, who?

I bought a refurbished Nikon camera on Amazon a couple of weeks ago to replace my Fuji, which bit the dust.  While I was at it, I went on ebay and bought a couple of older, cheaper Nikons to have as back-ups the next time my "main" camera bit the dust.

And let me tell ya, ebay has some GREAT deals on little point-and-shoot cameras.  I picked up TWO Nikon Coolpix 5600s, one for seven bucks and one for fifteen bucks, including shipping.  Both of them came with memory cards, and one came with all the accessories, including the original box!  AND they both work fine!  GOD, I love ebay.

ANYhoo, the memory cards.  I tried out one camera and it worked fine, so I set it aside and grabbed the other one, and as I started snapping test photos, I noticed that the photo count was up to, like, 196.  The heck?

I hooked the camera up to the PC, accessed the card, and viewed ... someone else's life.

I contacted the seller and asked if he wanted the memory card back.  Of course, I have no idea if it was his own camera he had sold me, or one he picked up at a thrift store or an estate sale, or one he found in a drawer he was cleaning out.   He said to go ahead and delete the photos, but I looked through them first.  Because I'm nosy.

There were lots of selfies:

and an adorable little girl:

And what I'm guessing were vacation photos:

All of the photos were taken in late 2008 or 2009.  And now I'm thinking about how old the kids are today, and where they are, and how they're doing.

You can buy the darndest things on ebay!