I have a calendar that has old english bulldogs on it.  I turned the page to 'May' on saturday, and this month's picture is of brindle bulldog puppies playing with a garden hose.  They're all fat and squirmy...looking at them I can almost smell that milky smell puppies have.  We're getting a bulldog pup when we get to England.  I've always, always wanted a bulldog, and so has Dave.  We looked at breeder web sites in the UK and found a couple of what appear to be pretty r...

Martin has decided that he wants Jacques shell and will have it at any cost.  He has flipped Jacques over, has put his claw in Jacques shell, is rocking him back and forth and is chirping away like no-body's business.  I went to look up this behaviour on the internet, and sure enough, its a shell fight.  The advice is to let them fight...we have spare shells around for the loser to move into and crabs usually don't die as a result of these battles. So, the fight is on. &nb...

Our cat Pixie is due to have kittens on Monday, but I think she's laboring already.  She hasn't eaten today, she's slept more than usual, when she is awake she's wandering around meowing and won't leave our sides. I laid down on my bed for a nap this afternoon and she came and laid right next to me...highly unusual.  The kittens have been really active as well; she laid on the living room floor this afternoon and we could see them writhing around in her belly.  I've helpe...

The following article was written by Davey, my almost-10-year-old-son. I got a new crab!  His name is Bob.  He is out-going,tough,and he loves to climb.  Bob makes my mom laugh.  Jacques and Bob are buddies.  Martin and Bob are "male-bonding".  We got them a new club where they party.  Bob is always on the wall,in the club,sleeping on the wall,or in my hand. Bob is now giving  Jacques climbing lessons.  Jacques make it about half-way up the...

Martin, my grumpy hermit crab, moved shells today. He had given up trying to intimidate Jacques into 'fessing up up his shell and had spent the last 3 days tucked up in his shell.  When we picked him up for any reason, he'd poke out his claw and try to pinch us.  He didn't even come out for his bath. When I was at the pet store today, I saw a shell that was about the same shape and size as Jacques, so I thought I'd buy it and see if Martin would find it acceptable. My plan wo...

I got me some hermit crabs today. 2 of them - Jacques (not named after the crab in finding nemo) and Martin.  I had to go to 2 pet stores to get them - the first one I went to was really not very nice.  The crabs were kept in a tank with gravel in the bottom (not the best environment for them) and the employees were cleaning the tank out and just tossing the poor little crabs around in there.  You're not supposed to do that, their little internal organs can rupture quite ea...

I think that I finally found a web host site that will work with me and my photos of the kittens.... This is Chester scrapping with Brad   This is Jill, who has long fur and looks like she's tangled with a hair dryer and lost most of the time: This is my daughter Shea and Bradley, her favorite kitty: And finally, this is Spot, the smallest, who appears to be finding something terribly interesting to look at on the bottom of our rocking chair: Hopefully ...

I got up this morning and found Jacques my crab naked and deceased at the bottome of the tank. Since he had moulted, he had kept getting naked and running aound out of his shell.  I had given him a variety of different shells to try on, and he kept going back to his old one.  So, I kept him in isolation. This morning, there he was.  I don't know what happened.  I'm sad...Jacques was my first crab. Oh, and I'm sure there will ne resurrection like what happened with Bo...

My son's friend and her mom came to the door just now.  They live all the way up the street.  Thay asked if we had lost a crab. They had found, in their yard, a huge hermit crab.  Where he came from, no-one knows.  How he survived, no-one knows. But we took him in.  We haven't got a name for him yet that we can agree on.  Anyone got any ideas?

Bob's not dead!!! I am such a dumb ass!  He had just moulted and had gone way inside his shell, so far in that I couldn't see him at all. I had put what I thought was his empty shell on the kitchen counter, and when I saw it on the floor earlier thought that one of the kids had knocked it down...until I picked it up and saw Bob's pale pink legs sticking out! Yay!  Bob's alive! 

Jacques moulted overnight. I got up this morning and found him, pink and naked, in the tank.  I've had to quarantine him in the travel tank so the Tud and Martin won't bother him...and I think that may have been what happened to Bob.  Crabs are soft, naked and incredibly vulnerable when they've just shed their old exoskeleton, and I'm prepared to bet that Bob got attacked whilst he was in that condition.  It's my fault, really...I should have been a bit more aware and moved him...

Bob the crab has died. He had buried himself a couple of days ago, and I thought that he was going to moult..I kept checking on him to see if he was still with us, and he was.  In fact, they got a bath on Tuesday and they were all fine then. This evening I noticed Martin picking at Bob's shell, and saw that all that was left of poor Bob was his big pincher.  The others had eaten the rest of him. Davey is going to be terribly upset.  He's asleep, and I don't want to wake h...

I got another crab for my birthday, and I named him Tudley.  It's a funny name, but there's a standing joke behind it...when my little boy (Jake) was small he had difficulty saying  'r'.  It would come out sounding like 'ahhhhh'.  One day he had been out in the yard and had stepped in some dog poo...and he said "I trod in a tud". So, ever since then, we've made a point of saying 'tud' not 'turd' in Jake's presence. When I picked up this crab out of the tank at the store to...

Well, I was right about my cat being in labor. At 3 am I awoke to the sound of 4 tiny kittens mewing.....I watched for a while to make sure everything was ok with mom and the babies, then went back to bed.  I got up 15 mins later to find another one crawling around, and then was priveleged enough to see number 6 be born. So far we have one totally black one and the rest area dark gray color...2 have white chins.  It makes me question paternity; the tom that I thought was the...

We live about 50ft away from a small creek at the end of our backyard.  It's provided us with a variety of wildlife, from herons to squirrels to snakes.... ....but this evening D came running in from his evening smoke telling me to look outside and get his Maglite. This is what I saw when I looked out of the backdoor: A red fox! (obviously it wasn't that exact fox, but one a lot like it.) I haven't seen one of those in years, and I do mean years....not since we left Englan...