Tuesday troublemakers

After reading pony girls post about how cats find her I was thinking about my own strange cat magnet I have along with a bunch of other strange creatures I find, or rather they find me.

I do not really consider myself a cat person. I guess I always thought about owning certain breeds of dogs, not cats. This probably comes from having seen and having to feed cats in the barn. They can quickly become more nuisance than they are help getting under the horses feet and even under my own. I can't count the times I have stepped on a cat and got clawed.


They seem to be drawn to me. Perhaps it is because I am the one who feeds them. No matter what barn I work at, if they have cats they will find me.

Much to my mothers surprise as she goes to leave one day in the truck and finds this.


I think I snuck up on him.

I totally expected him to run.

Nope. He came over for pets and sauntered off into the next yard.

He is my neighbors cat behind us. He is quite friendly.

I think my dad is a closet case cat lover because he always feeds and pets all the cats in the barn and after I showed him the pictures of as I have dubbed "pusskins"he tells me that cat comes right into the garage with him if the door is open. He then hops up on the bench and demands to be petted by loudly "MMRROOOWWW"-ing at him until he gets what he wants.

A fellow blogger and I Jo went on a "blogventure" on Friday night. We wanted to go to tim hortons and then see where the road lead us.

We decided to go to Jack miners bird sanctuary. Sometimes theres a huge field full of Canadian geese. With our cameras in hand we set out. I wanted a specifically posed night scene and Jo was gonna help me with the aid of a light post.

We started walking along the cages of birds in the darkness. It was probably around 9 pm at this time. All of a sudden I hear this noise.
I guess I could have kind of compared it to a single quack of a duck but hoarser. Kind of like it was trying to cough up a huge hairball. I pointed my camera towards it and looked through the lens. The focus light illuminated what I seen.

It's all quiet. Jo is behind me. All you hear from me is "holy sh*t! THAT ONE IS ON TOP OF THE CAGE!!!!" At this point it's pitch black, I just seen an unidentified large mass sitting on top of the cage and Jo is already running for the car. I turn around and run too having disturbed whatever it was. The birds were supposed to be inside the cages!

This reminds me of the time when Jo, a friend Michelle and I were at a beach at night and Michelle unintentionally cornered a possum. Now Michelle does not scream for any reason. Jo and I hear this "AAHHH!! POSSSSUUMMM!!!" and Michelle starts to haul butt back to the car. Well I had no clue what she was hollering about but I knew it was for a good reason. I turn around and had to make it to the other side of the car. Jo happened to be in my way. I practically vaulted over the hood of Jo's car, shoving her in the process as she ran for her door. Jo is thinking this whole time "Syd pushed me!? She actually pushed me!" wile I was already in the car and shutting the door. Here goes the saying "I don't have to outrun the bear(angry possum that is drooling and running towards you with intent to cause bodily harm in this case), I just have to outrun you". That story always makes me laugh.

Anyway. I wander on back. I want a picture of our mystery hairball quacking thing. I had to use manual focus but I think I got it. The flash goes off, the verdict is in.
It's a turkey vulture. They are very common around here. A really upset vulture that is. It starts making that noise even more.

Now this is when I remember my moms best friend, Souix telling me how vultures defence mechanism is to vomit at you... very accurarely from several feet away. It stands up and starts making a fuss. At this point Jo and I run back to the car again. Ewgh, what an ugly bird. Eventually after attempting to get some other pictures we left the disgruntled wild vulture that was trying to become domestcated, alone and found an ammusing park where we ran around like little kids on the equipment for an hour or so.
You know parks are so different from when I was a kid. You seriously can't hurt yourself on these ones. I think when I was younger we lived by the motto that it just wasn't fun unless someone got hurt(quite literally I have the scars to show it). The ground was this suprisingly springy rubber cement around all the equipment. The swings had safety bars on them and everything. The slides were two feet off the ground. None the less they had this ammusing teeter totter thing that had three parts to it. We used to have to climb and use up energy to play on the park as a kid. I guess now you just walk up a step and slide the one foot drop back down.

I think we might really be big kids.