Gobi

Today I'd like to introduce the newest member of our family. Her name is Gobi and she is a leopard gecko! She's awesome! I am fighting the urge to hold her, but I should probably let her get acclimated to her new home for a couple weeks first.

The first thing we saw her do at the pet store was devour a couple of crickets. She struck so fast, those crickets didn't stand a chance. I asked the worker if I could hold her, but I was a bit nervous because I wasn't sure what to expect. My reptile handling experience is limited. And by limited, I mean that I'm fairly sure that was the first time I've ever held a reptile that wasn't a turtle.

Will I drop her? Will I crush her little tiny bones with my clumsy hands? What will it feel like if she bites me? WHAT IF SHE HATES ME?!??! At the pet store she was friendly; she sat in my hand for a bit and then decided to crawl up my shirt to sit on my collarbone. I loved her instantly. Jimmy did too. He admitted it.

One of the workers was really awesome and owns a couple of geckos himself. He showed us everything that we'd need to take care of her. Then we went home and did a lot of research online on leopard gecko care. This morning, we were ready to go for it. We went to the pet store, bought all of the stuff for the terrarium, came home, put it together, made sure the temperature was ok, then went back to the pet store to get Gobi.

She seems to like her new home! The cat is obsessed with watching her and meowing at her. Gobi actually seems to enjoy the cat too. Watching a cat and a gecko stare at each other is a lot more entertaining than it sounds.

Gobi Anderson

High five!

"I'm chillin' on my cactus y'all!"

Spoiled

And it feels so good!

A little something for me from Tiffany & Co.




Looking at ridiculously expensive cars at the Bentley/Lamborghini dealership:




Room service for Zorro. A burger with a nice bread bun from their pet menu! He ate it so fast he didn't even have time to savor it!



He also tried to eat the orchid.

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Zorro's new friends

We got him a stuffed beluga whale from the aquarium. He has been dragging it around everywhere!








There are lots of horse-drawn carriages around here. Zorro is very confused by horses. He grumbles, but wants to try to get closer. Maybe he thinks they are just very very big dogs?




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City Pup

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Zorro loves hotels

It is super stormy! Good thing we already took Zorro for a poo before bed! He is having a lot of fun at the hotel. He has his choice of armchairs, sofa, the bed, chaise, and his own personal bed that the hotel brought up for him. I have seen him sitting everywhere, but I think he favors the chaise.

Stormy weather, watching tv, and relaxing!







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Bailey is potty trained!

Bailey Bunnyface is potty trained! After living with us for 4 years and having the ability to go potty anywhere in his old cage, he is committed to using his litterbox in his new cage. No, I didn't have to do anything. He just naturally did it. But that doesn't make me any less proud! My bun is so awesome!

Bunny Condo AKA Bundo

We got Bailey a new cage! We ordered it from Leith Petworks. It's just a tad bigger than what he has now, but it's two stories! So he has double the space. Not to mention that he spends the majority of his time running free around the house. It's a super awesome  cage  condo and he loves it!

EGGS EVERYWHERE!!!

Congrats to two of my zebrafish. There are eggs all over the tank. And I found a few babies that look to be around 33-48 hours old. Wonderful.  I really really really don't want to have to deal with tons of babies. I hope the fish eat them as they hatch! Sounds mean, but I don't want to catch them and flush them.

And today we went out and got a new Snelly (she died a week or so ago), and we got two of these lovely little guys:

Ghost shrimp! Pretty cute, and only 33 cents each!

I think I see a trend here...

We are getting ditched for the new bed! Instead of keeping Jimmy and I company, Zorro was relaxing in bed alone. Weird.



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New bed is here!

Looks great, and feels great too! Don't believe me? Take Beeblur's word for it:



She rejected couch time with us last night so she could try out the new bed. The pets seem to love it!

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Father's Day

Happy father's day to all the dads out there. I am so lucky that Jimmy lets me keep so many critters, and am happy that he loves them just as much as I do! He's a great pet-dad! Here are some pet and dad weekend snuggle photos!












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Polar Bear Head

Polar Bear Head is one of the many nicknames of our lovely cat, Pepper. Actually, we never call her Pepper.

The name we call her 95% of the time is Beeblur. I know it's weird, so I'll describe how it came about.
It went from Pepper to Peppler to Pebbler to Bebblur to Beeblur. She answers to Beeblur, and she seems to like it. Beeblur has spawned gems like Beeb, Beebs, and Shbeeb.

At one point in time I started calling her Meemaw. Then Meemler, then Meemalah, then Mammy, then Mammily, then Mammily my Family.

We also call her Gummy because she always rubs her cheeks on things, but sometimes she leaves her mouth kinda open and rubs her gums too. I've also thrown in Gumz, Gumita, and Gumlaut (pronounced Goomlout), and Goomer.

I also randomly came up with Mitty. I still sometimes call her Mitty, but that has also evolved into names like: Mitta, Mitts, Mrs. Mitts, Mitty-Moo, Mitty-Mooter, and Muddy.

She also has a weird meow that just sounds like "MEHHHHH!" So after watching one of the seasons of Next Iron Chef, I started calling her Mehta (one of the contestants). I have since graduated from calling her Mehta to the full title of Chef Mehta.

So there you have it. The many nicknames of Pepper Anderson. Oh, and let's not forget "Fat Disgusting Pig Monster" aka FDPM. I won't even bother trying to explain that one, Jimmy came up with it!


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Lame cat

The rabbit has been pretty frisky lately. He has actually been chasing the cat around. She usually cries and runs away which is hilarious. I caught them spending some time together in this photo. They were actually laying together, but when I came back with my phone they had moved. So cute!



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Snails!

We have two new tank friends: Gary and Snelly. Yes, I got the names from Spongebob. I am a completely well adjusted adult. Just thought you should know that.

Gary! He's a naughty one. He hides really well in the rocks.

Snelly! She's pretty active!

Snail bffs.

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More pet pics, as always!

I can't help it. I love them!

Beeblur hates her harness and leash!

Forbidden love.

Bailey loves his hamburger.

Beeblur napping with me.

Idiots.

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First blog on my iPhone!

I feel so tech savvy! Now that I have this app I will probably blog a lot more often. I don't think that anyone really reads this blog, but one day when Jimmy and I are like 70 we will look back on all these posts and remember our animals, school, work, and how much fun we had!

In Jimmy/Ashley news: we still have no car. They said it would be delivered this week. I am happy to get the car, but the better business bereau will definitely be hearing about Freedom Motors. We have been passed off to 4 different people and we are still waiting on the car. This is ridiculous!

In pet news, Bailey has finally ventured into the living room! It took him from late November until now! He came in and hung out with all of us (but mostly his bff Zorro). Here are some pics:










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RIP Orange, and Introducing the others!

Our orange glo fish died on Thursday.  I'm not really that sad. He was an idiot. He perpetually liked to swim into the filter and get himself stuck. And he never ate. He would go up to the fish food flakes and then just swim away while the others gladly ate. The others grew and seemed happy, but Orange was super skinny and didn't really swim in a school with the other two. He was a fail fish. Today I replaced him with a long-finned zebra fish. Believe it or not, he is the same species as the glo fish, but he hasn't been genetically modified to glow. Jimmy named him Stripey. Anyway, here are some tank photos of our little fish friends.

Here is a photo of the tank. I used to have a really pretty long plant that reached the surface of the water, but when we got the danios I decided to get a short plant so they wouldn't be so crowded. The beta loved the long plant because he could be lazy and rest in the long leaves. The danios have a lot of energy and like to swim fast circles around this tank. You can see our pink glo fish on the left. We just call her Pink. Or Pinky. I'm not even sure that it's a girl. I just think it's a girl because pink is a girly color. 

Here is a photo of Pink and Stripey. Yellow was being shy behind the plant. They move so quickly this was the best I could do! Right now I have their day-light turned on. 

And here is a nice picture of them with their new moonlight turned on. You are supposed to watch them glow under a black light, but when I shined a black light on them they TOTALLY FREAKED OUT. They also seemed to freak out when it got dark and when we turned out all the lights in the apartment to go to bed. I decided to get online and buy them a moon light. The nice thing about the moon light is that it has a sensor so the blue light only gets turned on when the apartment is dark. Pretty nifty! They glow pretty well under the moon light. You can see Yellow (who glows green) and Pink. They're so pretty!

I love my fishy babies! They are so fun to watch. The cat seemed to lose interest for a while, but while I was introducing Stripey this morning and had the lid off the tank, I caught her reaching in to get at Stripey while he was still floating in the bag from the pet store. Bad kitty! I yelled at her, then she yelled back and walked away. I just love it when she's sassy! :)

New video

No names for the fish. We will wait for the tank to finish cycling before we name them. It seems pointless to name them before the tank is properly cycled because they could die during this period of time. For now we just call them Pink, Orange, and Yellow. I think Pink is pregnant. Either that or she's just getting really really fat. We definitely don't have room in the tank for these fish to reproduce, so hopefully they'll just eat the babies. That sounds really mean.

No car. Still waiting on delivery. It's paid for and the paperwork is all done. Literally just needs to be put on a truck and brought to Madison. We are so tired of waiting!

A few posts ago I wrote about Bailey and his fur mites. Everything seems to be going well! His fur is growing back! His vet says his medication does a great job of eliminating Cheyletiella parasitovorax. The cat and dog are also being treated just in case, but they aren't showing any symptoms of having mites. Jimmy and I have no bites, so we are pretty sure that the mites were just on Bailey. I went ahead and went crazy with a carpet/upholstery spray that kills fleas/eggs/larvae/ticks/mites/silverfish/earwigs/and lots of other terrible things that you don't want in your house anyway. It seemed like a good idea. Again, we have no bites so we are pretty sure that only Bailey is gross. I'm keeping a close eye on everyone to make sure that no one starts to lose fur, scratch excessively, sneeze excessively, gets flaky skin, or has little bites. It has made me so paranoid. Everytime I have an itch I'm like "OMG I HAVE MITES" but it's all psycho-somatic. As soon as I sprayed the house and had a shower I stopped freaking out. I'm crazy, I know. Takes me back to the good ol' days living in our apartment at CSUMB. Zorro got fleas at one point and it was so awful. Jimmy and I were covered in flea bites. We ended up treating Zorro, getting all the pets out of the house for a few hours, and setting off a flea bomb in the house. It worked like a charm. I haven't seen a flea on him since then, and that was probably 4 years ago. Hopefully our mite treatment for Bailey will work just as well!

Bailey has been in such a great mood lately. And by great, I mean frisky. See for yourself!

RIP Noodle

Noodle, our new betta fish has passed on. We had him for about a month. He was a pretty good boy. Jimmy says I shouldn't be sad because we gave him a huge tank and a really happy life until the day he died. My poor Nood. I miss him already!

I went out today and got 3 glo-fish. They are danios who are genetically modified to express fluorescent proteins. I got one of each color: green, red, and orange. I like them because I'm a geek and I like to think about the process of engineering these fish to glow. I haven't taken a picture yet, but this is what they look like.

I'll post a photo of ours when we decide on some names. It is unusual for us to let any pet go un-named for more than a few hours, but these guys are an exception. We need 3 names that work well together. Here are a few of our options in no particular order:

1. Snap, Crackle, and Pop
2. Ketchup, Mustard, Relish (red, orange, green)
3. Stop, Go, Yield (Red, green, orange)
4. Since they are Danios, we were thinking the names could be famous "Dan" names: Danny Zuko (from Grease),  Dani California (Red Hot Chili Peppers song), Danielle Rousseau (from Lost), Daniel Dae Kim (LOST, Hawaii Five-O), you get the picture.
5. Maybe something video game related?


We'll be thinking of the perfect names this weekend. I'll post whatever we come up with!


And we still have no car. All the paperwork is done and they just need to put it on a delivery truck. WHY CAN'T THEY JUST DO IT ALREADY?!

Vet Week

This week was vet week. I decided that everyone will be getting their checkups at the same time so I can just get it over with for the year. Here are the results:

Bailey (Tuesday evening): Has a mite infection. Easy to treat, not too worried about it. The vet said he's "far from skinny" and shouldn't gain anymore weight. She picked him up and said he has a gut. Whoops! He grunted the whole time, which was pretty funny. The vet also showed me how to check his boy bunny parts and keep an eye out for testicular cancer. Wonderful!

Pepper (Wednesday morning): Believe it or not, she is a healthy weight! I have been dreading taking her to the vet because I thought I'd get scolded for her fatness. YES! Anyway, she was a very good girl at the vet. They wished that all kitties could be like her.
-Side note: this vet visit almost didn't happen. She was lounging in bed all morning, and when she saw me grab the crate she disappeared. I looked all over for her and then I finally found her. She had ripped a hole in the cotton mesh that is underneath our box spring. She was literally IN THE BOX SPRING. I had to lure her out with Gravy Lovers' Fancy Feast. She loves her some gravy.

Zorro (Wendesday afternoon): Was super excited for a car ride. And super excited to arrive at the vet office. FLIPPED OUT when he had to step on the scale. He's gained a pound since December. Whoops! FLIPPED OUT when they tried to get an ear temperature. He let them get a rectal temperature, but he screamed at the end when it was over. It was like that one time when I got on the log ride at Six Flags. Completely silent for the drop and didn't start screaming until the ride was over... He must get that from me. Anyway, he nipped at the vet and the vet tech a bunch of times. He was horrible and had to be muzzled. He screamed for the blood draw for his heartworm test, and he yipped when he got his distemper booster. I've never seen him act so terribly and like such a weenie. His teeth are a bit gross, some tartar but no gingivitis. He is not a fan of getting his teeth brushed so he's scheduled for a cleaning in 2 weeks. He'll go under anesthesia and when he wakes up his teeth will be super clean. He had a bit of a slab fracture though and the vet will have to take a closer look when he's under. The tooth might need to be pulled (not that expensive), or he might need to go see a dental specialist for a filling (very expensive).


I love my beasts.