Trimming Annie's Mile Long Nails

Annie, much to her dismay, had to get her nails trimmed today. She absolutely hates it. Of course, I'm sure she likes it better than getting a bath. She shivered and kept trying to squirm away. Will had to hold her to keep her still. Here are some pictures below.

Can you tell she's nervous?

Oh...PLEASE DON'T!

Attempting to squirm away.

Uh-oh here it comes!

Not my back feet!

Ahhh! Torture! Lemme GO!

How embarrassing... No pictures!

NOOOOO!

Annie managed to knock Will over and escape to....

The couch! I'm on base; you can't get me now!

...Or maybe you can....

I'm done. To the kitchen for my treat!

Excited! (she gets like this after a bath too)

This isn't a squat; I'm running!

Treat please!

-Courtney-

Annie's Smile

Today I managed to get some pictures of Annie 'smiling.' She was laying down in my room, the quilt on the back of my couch had fallen on top of her much to her delight. She was just laying there with her top lip stuck up, so that all her teeth were showing. It looked as if she were smiling! I've posted some of the pics below.




Ok this one is a little freaky!

Oh yeah, almost forgot! Here're some pictures of Annie and her elf ears. Lol, kind of funny! At first it was an accident, but then we saw how funny she looked, so I took some pics.

-Courtney-

Caught

Today Little One, one of my 3 lovebirds, got her beak caught in between the bars of her cage. She (and even the other birds, her parents) started freaking out. Mom, Jaime, and I took off for my room as soon as we heard her screeching. She must have stuck her beak through the bars of her cage and then twisted it, so that it was stuck fast.

She, Little One (her real name is Faithful if you care to know. I nicknamed her Little One when she was a baby) was flapping her wings everywhere and screeching bloody murder! We pulled the cage over in order to get to where she was stuck and in the process knocked my lava lamp to the floor on top of my radio. When that happened the button to open it was clicked and the top opened. Luckily nothing was broken during all this.

We were all too worried about Little One to notice any of this. Finally Mom bent one of the bars back, and Little One was freed. What a relief! Little One was a little bruised and bled a bit above her beak, but other than that, she's fine. We just hope she doesn't get an infection or anything.

-Courtney-

Cool Virtual Sea Creatures Game

Hey guys, check this cool virtual sea creatures game!

Click here to get more mini-SharkBreak widgets - www.SharkBreak.com

-Courtney-

Chocolate Critters

Ever heard of people making chocolate ants for treats? How about chocolate meal worms? Crickets? Grossed out yet? Just tonight after we'd all finished eating our dinner, the subject of chocolate ants came up. Mom then decided to look it up and found some pretty gruesome stuff about it on the internet. Here's a picture of packaged chocolate crickets and meal worms. Yuck!


If you're interested, these can be purchased at InsectCandy.com for only $4.50! What a deal! Kidding.


Below I'm going to list some pretty buggy recipes, so if your totally grossed out already, you might want to stop reading.

Mealworm Chocolate Chip Cookies

• 1/2 cup butter
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 1 egg
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 cup all purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 cup oats
• 1/2 cup chocolate chips
• 1/4 cup mealworm flour

Cream butter well, then mix in sugar, egg, vanilla flour, salt, baking soda, chocolate chips, oats, and mealworm flour. Drop batter by the teaspoonful on a greased cookie sheet. Bake for 10 minutes at 375 degrees farenheit. This recipe doesn't have much in the way of palpable insect content, but is an excellent way to introduce others (or yourself!) to entomophagy. Even many rather squeamish people will try mealworm cookies, since the cookie format doesn't look "gross" to most people, and since it is rather difficult to actually taste the mealworms, though they enrich the cookie with a somewhat nutty flavor and extra protein.

To make insect flour:

Spread your cleaned insects out on a lightly greased cookie sheet. Set your oven 200 degrees and dry insects for approximately 1-3 hours. When the insects are done, they should be fairly brittle and crush easily. Take your dried insects and put them into a blender or coffee grinder, and grind them till they are about consistency of wheat germ. Use in practically any recipe! Try sprinkling insect flour on salads, add it to soups, your favorite bread recipe, on a boat, with a goat, etc.

Chocolate Covered Crickets

• 25 adult crickets
• Several squares of semisweet chocolate

Prepare the crickets as described above. Bake at 250 degrees until crunchy (the time needed varies from oven to oven). Heat the squares of semi sweet chocolate in a double boiler until melted. Dip the dry roasted crickets in the melted chocolate one by one, and then set the chocolate covered crickets out to dry on a piece of wax paper. Enjoy! This is a little time consuming to make, but definitely worth it...the crickets are deliciously crunchy!

Ant Brood Tacos

• 2 tablespoons butter or peanut oil
?
• 1/2 pound ant larvae and pupae
• 3 serrano chilies, raw, finely chopped
• 1 tomato, finely chopped
• Pepper, to taste
• Cumin, to taste
• Oregano, to taste
• 1 handful cilantro, chopped
• Taco shells, to serve

Heat the butter or oil in a frying pan and fry the larvae or pupae. Add the chopped onions, chilies, and tomato, and season with salt. Sprinkle with ground pepper, cumin, and oregano, to taste. Serve in tacos and garnish with cilantro. (Not living in an area exceptionally prolific with ants, I have never been able to try this recipe. But it sounds perfectly delicious! I found it in 'Creepy Crawly Cuisine', an excellent recipe book.)

"Natural Style"

• As many mealworms as you can sanely eat

Open mouth. Insert live mealworms. Chew. Swallow.

You can eat almost every kind of edible insect raw; however, this method of eating insects should only be performed on insects that you keep yourself or know are free from pesticides. Do not snag passing cockroaches, ants, or termites in an urban area unless you have developed a natural immunity to pesticides. And don't forget to wash your insects before eating them!

What do you think? You ready to crunch down on some chocolate cockroaches, mealworms, or crickets? How 'bout an ant larvae taco? I know I'm not! And I'm definitely not trying the "natural style." How gross!


-Courtney-

Annie: The Lost Dog

Once upon a time, on a dark, stormy night when my family and I were having hotdogs for dinner, a banging sound was heard coming from the living room. When we came out to see what it was, we saw a muscular pitbull whining and throwing herself (and I do mean throwing herself) against the screen door.

Mom, believing that she was hungry, handed my little sister Jaime a hotdog to give to the dog. As soon as the door was opened, the dog burst into the house at full speed. We kids, being little at the time, ran for the bunk beds. Once we were all on the top bunk, the dog decided she wanted to join us, so she hopped right on up there. This of course led to our hopping down.

After a game of catch the kids, the dog finally settled down. I guess we'd worn her out. Well as she continued to live with us, we all grew quickly attached to her.

At first, I, being fascinated by the Disney movie, Anastasia, wanted to name her Anastasia. The others found this to be ridiculous, so after a bit of thinking, we eventually came up with the name Annie.

Annie was quite content to live with us; after all, she got to sleep on our furniture and get all the attention. My mom was babysitting some babies at the time, and Annie did wonderfully with them. The most harm she could do to them was drowning them with her kisses, lol. Wonderful pup as she was, Mom wasn't sure we should keep her. She was later given to the parents of one of the babies Mom babysat. Annie was tied to a tree and left there, even in the rain and thunderstorms. (Annie is terrified of thunderstorms.) The only shelter the poor pup could get was from under one of the trucks.

Some time later Mom changed her mind about getting rid of Annie, and she asked for her back. The family who had taken Annie in were kind enough to give her back to us, luckily. I can tell you how happy she was when she saw us again. As soon as she was let off that rope that tied her to the tree, she took off at full speed, racing all 'round the yard. From that point on, Annie's been living with us happy as she can be.

You know, there's a strange story to Annie's coming to us... When I was maybe 7 or 8, around that age, I prayed that one day I would get a dog. When Annie came to us, it was God's answer to my prayer. Even though we got Annie some years after I prayed for a dog, I knew that God works in His own time. Another strange thing: when Annie came to us, she seemed to have no owner. Annie seemed to come out of nowhere. I'm not saying God sent her to earth to come to us or anything like that. I'm saying Annie was God's gift to us.

Annie's done some pretty strange and funny things while she's been with us. One time, we had just come home from church and the phone started ringing. We couldn't find the phone and we all started shouting, "Where's the phone! Where's the phone!" Well Annie walked out of my parents bedroom calmly bringing the ringing phone to us!!! This was the strangest thing. If you want to know what the call was about, well, I don't remember. I sure would like to know though. Well this wouldn't be so strange if she'd been trained to do that, but later we had tried it and she never did it again. It was one of the weirdest things that's ever happened to us.

Another time, I had Annie on the leash outside. This was when she was really strong and muscular. (After living with us this long, she's gotten way overweight.) Anyway, I had her on the leash and Dad decided to call her. As soon as she heard her name called, she rushed over there with me flying (literally flying) through the air behind her. It was not a happy day for me I can tell you. It wasn't so much me getting hurt after an unsuccessful flight, it was just so embarrassing! Hmm, well, I can't think of anymore so I'm just going to publish this....


-Courtney Robinson-