I don’t make brownies very often and this was the first time I’d seen the warning.  I guess it’s there because the recipe calls for eggs and fresh eggs can harbor samonella.  Now if I get sick from eating raw dough, Betty Crocker can safely say “Well, we warned you on the box.”

It got me wondering just how far companies have gone with warning labels and signs to try and protect themselves from lawsuits and the stupidity of people who seem to have lost all common sense.  It’s amazing.  Here are just a few of the examples I found with a Google search.  While some might be examples from creative people with way too much time on their hands, most seem to be perfectly serious, which is scary. 

Found in a television set owner’s manual:  “Do not pour liquids into your television set.” 
On the handle of a hammer:  “Caution:  Do not use this hammer to strike any solid object.” 
On packaging for a Rowenta iron:  “Do not iron clothes on body.”
Printed on the bottom of a box of Tesco’s Tiramisu dessert:  “Do not turn upside down.”
On a hair dryer:  “Do not use while sleeping.”
On a Domino’s Pizza box:  “Caution! Contents hot.”
On a coffee cup:  “Caution!  Hot beverages are hot.”
On a butcher knife:  “Please keep out of children.”
On a birthday card for a 1 year old:  “Not suitable for children aged 36 months or less.”
On a box of Midol PMS Relief tablets:  “Warning:  Do not use if you have prostate problems.”
On child’s baby stroller:  “Remove occupants from the stroller before folding it.”
On a bottle of Nytol sleeping aid pills:  “Warning:  May cause drowsiness.”

And then there are the signs:

 And then there’s my personal favorite:  We viisited the Seward Wildlife Center several years ago and saw their Giant Pacific Octopus, who was napping in the back of her tank – until suddenly she was spread out on the front of the tank.  Talk about speedy!  That, combined with videos and stories of octopus who have crawled out of their tanks and gone wandering – or fishing in an adjacent fish tank – gives my writer’s imagination plenty of room to work on some interesting scenarios.

For those who aren’t owned by bull terriers, they like “swimming” on their backs, especially when they’re happy.  The process is usually very vocal as well.  Our bull terrier, Nimbus, could do an entire circuit of our house on his back, especially if he had encouragement.

Happy Birthday, Little Bit, and may you have many, many more!

I have a lot of cousins.  Last week we attended a family funeral for one of them and as we were arriving at the Church my husband said, “I suppose there’ll be some more cousins I haven’t met.”  After 37 years of marriage, he’s finally learning!  This time there were only two “new” cousins he hadn’t met, ones that I hadn’t seen for over 40 years.  Since my husband’s family was never very close, he’s still amazed at our family’s ability to pick up on 40 years of whatever we’ve missed, although chances are the family gossip grapevine has kept everyone mostly up to date.

Strictly speaking, most of my cousins really aren’t cousins – they’re 2nd, 3rd, 4th or whatever cousins and some are half-cousins.  A number of years ago several of us were trying to establish our relationship to the deceased at a funeral when another cousin, who’d been eavesdropping, said “I just always considered we’re all kissin’ cousins and let it go at that.”  Works for me.

Family genealogy gets more complicated since two of my great-great grandfathers on my Mother’s side were polygamists.  One had two wives and 22 children, the other two wives and 16 children.  Even though not all the children grew to adulthood and married, enough did to ensure even more complicated family relationships.  It wasn’t until I was grown and became interested in the details of our family history that I discovered that some of my cousins fell into the half-cousin category. 

Even family members sometimes have trouble sorting out the relationships.  When I was in college some 40 years ago, one of my classmates had the same last name as my grandfather.  One morning when we were both early to class I asked him about it.  We were amazed to discover, that in a campus of some 20,000 students, two cousins who’d never met turned up in the same class.  Our instructor came in while we were sorting out the family genealogy, listened for a moment and wanted to know what we were discussing.  We told him we’d just discovered we were cousins with the same great-grandfather but different great-grandmothers.  He said, “Oh, what happened?  Did the first wife die?”  “No.”  “Well, then they divorced and he remarried?”  “No, he was a polygamist.”  It took awhile for that to soak in, but for some reason, the professor found it fascinating, and for the rest of the semester kept asking us about our families.  I finally had to get my Mother to send me a genealogy chart so I could sort it all out.

I was close enough to three cousins who really were cousins and one 2nd cousin when we were growing up that we were – and still are – as close as brothers and sisters.  I must admit, sometimes it was probably like being a grandparent – sure is nice to have the grandkids visit, but then they go home when they get cranky.  Same with cousins, and I’m sure they felt the same way at times.  Maybe that’s why we were so close.  Besides, if I stayed overnight with my one cousin, she invariably begged me to tell her ghost stories, which then gave her nightmares for a week, which then kept her Mother awake.

Now, since we don’t have kids of our own, my husband and I are thoroughly enjoying the latest addition to “our” family, an adorable little boy who just turned a year old.  Of course, he’s the brightest, cutest and funniest kid on the planet, and we thoroughly enjoy spoiling him.  For those who count (and we don’t) he’s something like a fourth cousin, but in this case he most definitely fits the “kissing cousin” handle.

At any rate, I obviously hadn’t intended to take two weeks between posts, of course.  But combine the suddenly shortened deadlines for two articles which required research before being written along with an unexpected death in the family, as well as a hubby who gets cranky when I don’t surface from my computer to talk to him at least periodically, and…well, you fellow procrastinators out there know what I mean.  I promise to to better.  Not, perhaps, that I always will, but my intentions will always be good.

  One of the blogs I follow has been having a discussion about spiders http://shayfabbro.com/2012/01/20/my-fear-of-spiders/ complete with pictures of awesome, and nasty looking, spiders.  I’m not a fan of spiders.  The only ones I don’t mind are daddy long-legs and the little bitty “jumpy” spiders that occasionally inhabit our kitchen.  They hide under the soapdish and if you startle them, they seem to actually jump and dart back into hiding.

But I was reminded recently of what I really hate even more than spiders:  wood ticks.  Spiders at least have some redeeming values since they eat even more disgusting crawly critters.  So far as I can tell, wood ticks seem to exist for the purpose of being disgusting.  Fossilized tick remains have been found as far back as the Cretaceous Period, where they probably snacked on dinosaur blood.  Their only diet is blood – the original vampire.

I hadn’t thought about ticks for a long time, until a friend, who has the same kind of quirky sense of humor I do, sent me this link to a Brad Paisley song, called “Ticks.”

I’d not heard much Brad Paisley before, and was thoroughly enjoying this quirky song, until he got to the part about “I’d love to check you for ticks.”  Whoops, whoa right there!   I know he said in an interview about the song that it was meant to be romantic, not about ticks.   “Now, if a young guy who lives in the country were to take a girl into the woods for any reason, it would totally cross his mind that she’s going to have to check for ticks when they come back out. So it seems that an enterprising guy would at least consider that he could offer to check for her.”

I don’t know about any other country girls, but the discovery of a tick on this body would wipe out any romantic notions on my part.  In case you’ve never had the pleasure of seeing a wood tick, here’s what a typical Rocky Mountain Wood tick pair look like before dinner:

As you can see, they aren’t very big, and they’re very flat.  And they’re speedy little critters as well.  Here’s what they look like as they progress from empty to full (and yes, that’s all blood inside): 

I don’t know about you, but one look at one of those little blood suckers on me and I immediately get a case of the full blown wood tick heebie-jeebies.  And somehow, a date with someone who’s jumping up and down shouting “Get it off!  Get it off!” takes a bit of the romance out of the evening.

I grew up in southeastern Idaho, where my cousins and I played and rode horses through lots of sagebrush and grass – perfect tick country.  We always had tick inspection when we were through playing for the day.  Fortunately, we usually found any before they had a chance to become attached, and certainly before they’d had a chance to get too full.  An attached tick is not fun to remove, especially when the child it’s attached to is jumping up and down shouting “Get it off!  Get it off!”  My grandmother usually never bothered to find a pair of tweezers, she just grabbed and pulled. 

Even today, if I find a wood tick on me any idea of dignity goes right out the door.  My elder version of the wood tick heebie-jeebies dance might not be as vigorous as it once was, but I still have the moves.  Sorry, Brad Paisley, but you’ll just have to find someone else to accompany you into those fields of wildflowers.

The love of reading is in my genes.  My great-grandmother, who came from New York to Idaho in 1888, brought with her books and a love of reading.  She raised nine children and, in addition to the duties of wife and mother, made rug runners on a loom in the living room which she sold to commercial carpet companies so she could purchase books to supplement their education.  They ranged from Gibbons’ Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, through the complete works of Charles Dickens, Shakespeare, Robert Louis Stevenson, and many more, some of which are still in the family.  One of her daughters, my grandmother, taught me for the first 6 years of school.

I don’t ever remember actually learning how to read, but I do have a vivid memory of being about 3, holding a child’s story book and being totally and completely frustrated because I didn’t want to just look at the pictures, I wanted to read those words.  I went to a small country school which didn’t have a very big library, but it had a variety, from Grimm’s Fairy Tales, which I almost wore out, to Dr. Seuss’ Horton Hatches An Egg.  It was 10 miles to the nearest library, but we went often enough to stock up on books, and with Tom Sawyer, the Bobbsey Twins, Long John Silver and a whole host of other characters to keep me company I was never bored.

Reading was serious business at our house.  My Mother could successfully navigate the whole house with a coffee cup in one hand while reading a book.  I do, however, remember one day she came from the living room into the kitchen to get a coffee refill, automatically stepped over our pit bull (who always slept in doorways and was supremely confident no one would step on him), filled her cup and started back for the living room.  For once she forgot about the dog, tripped and went sprawling – but she never dropped her book or spilled her coffee.

When our parakeet, who was never caged, wanted attention and everyone was reading, he’d land on the nearest book in use and promptly – and loudly – begin to scallop the pages, starting from the outside edge.  Have you ever tried to explain to the librarian why some of the pages in the books you’re returning look funny because the bird ate them?

Our hardback library has diminished over the years simply because my husband and I moved a lot in the early years of marriage, and hauling all those books got to be too much work – and took up too much space.  Today, we both have Kindles and are busy filling up our cloud libraries.  However, we still have special books we’ll keep forever.  I still have two of my favorite childhood books, Little Bunny Blue and The Littlest Angel, along with some books from my grandmother, including an 1889 edition of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Master of Ballantrye with a bullet hole through it.

I suppose it won’t be long before “real” books join dial phones and typewriters as anachronisms in our fast growing world of technology, but I hope they never, ever disappear.  Books are not defined solely by their content, but by the memories and feelings that are brought back when you hold and read them.  As marvelous as e-readers and cloud storage are becoming, they just can’t remind you that the cover of The Littlest Angel still displays sticky chocolate fingerprints on some of the pages because your Mother was making fudge for Christmas.

 I’ve been nominated by Liv Rancourt for the Versatile Blogger Award!  Wow!  Thanks, Liv, I do appreciate it.  Its always nice to know someone is not only reading my blog, but likes it. 

Besides having an entertaining blog, Liv is a published author (hooray, Liv!) of A Vampire’s Deady Delight, now available in both print and ebook editions.  You can check out Liv’s blog and more information about her book at http://liv-rancourt.blogspot.com/

The Versatile Blogger nomination comes with some rules:

15 Nominees:

1.  Margaret Miller Yarn.Spinning.In Tasmania

2. Jami Gold  Jami Gold, Paranormal Author

3.  Barbara Forte Abate  The Plot Thickens:  Writing Outside the Lines

4.  Kristy Lyseng  Kristy Lyseng:  Easily Distracted By Bookshelves

5.  Rebecca Stanfel  Chronic Town

6.  Sherry Isaac Romance And Beyond

7.  Dr. Shay Fabbro  Getting Out of Your Comfort Zone

8.  Diana Lesire Brandmeyer Diana Lesire Brandmeyer Pencildancer

9.  S. M. Nonnemacher  S.M. Nonnemacher

10.  Laird Sapir  Laird Sapir

11.  Linda Adams Linda Adam’s Blog – Breaking the Rules — and Loving It!

12.  Jennifer Price Notes From 1863

13.  Kat Jorgensen Yarns To Spin

14.  Nila E. White Nila E. White – delusions of grandeur

15.  Yvonne DiVita Scratchings and Sniffings: The Grumpy Old Lady & Friends

Seven Random Things About Myself

1. I was the first woman to attend the U.S. Park Police Law Enforcement Academy in Washington, D.C. – and the only woman in the class. And if I remember correctly, I was also the last woman to attend the academy. No, I really wasn’t THAT awful. I think ours was the last class before the Park Police integrated their training with the Federal Law Enforcement Training Academy in Georgia

2. I love bull terriers. Our family has had two pit bull terriers and my husband and I have had two bull terriers, one a rescue. I don’t have enough kind things to say for those individuals who give of their time, money and emotions to rescue bull terriers and other mistreated and abused animals.

3. I’m an avid reader, which often gets in the way of my getting writing done.  The Kindle has been a saving grace at our household.  We were running out of room for ourselves and print books.  Now I’m happily filling up my Amazon cloud space and have even converted my husband to Kindle reading.

4. I like to do French Flower Beading, and have several beaded flowers in a 9/11 memorial wreath that was made and assembled by members of a flower beading group I moderate on Yahoo.  It hangs in the 9/11 Memorial offices in New York now and will go on public display when the Memorial is completed.  There is also a wreath on display at the Pentagon and one honoring Flight 93 at the National Liberty Museum in Philadelphia.

5.  My husband and I have enough movies on DVD we could probably start our own video rental business. 

6.  I love helicopters.  I often claim my husband gave up flying for a living after we were married so he wouldn’t have to teach me how.  Marriages have been lost over less, and I’m a person who has trouble chewing gum and walking at the same time. 

7.  I like lizards and snakes.  Some day, I’d like to have an iguana.  My husband says that’s the same day he moves out.

For a long time I never really liked porcupines, probably because we had to pull porcupine quills out of our pit bull seven times when I was a kid.  Of course, it wasn’t really the fault of the porcupine – or porcupines, since I’m guessing the dog did manage to find more than one over the course of several years.  We were never sure why the dog developed such an obsession with porcupines, but he certainly never did learn that the porcupine always wins.  We did learn that pit bull terriers are decidedly stubborn and carry a grudge to extremes.

When I worked out of Lake Ranger Station in Yellowstone National Park, there was a porcupine living near Fishing Bridge who discovered that the easiest way across the river was via the Fishing Bridge – usually right down the middle of the bridge.  Since porcupines are usually nocturnal and not noted for setting any land speed records, these nighttime excursions could tend to be hazardous to his health.  Neither car headlights nor honking horns would make him move aside – he’d just stop and rattle his quills.  Getting out of the patrol car and trying to herd him out of the way wasn’t any more successful, he just added vocal mutterings to the quill rattling.  So, more than once, I escorted the slow-moving obstruction across the bridge, red lights flashing, bewildered late night tourists trying to figure out what on earth was in front of the patrol car that required protection. 

One night at Lake, we received a panic call from a pair of campers that there was a bear in their tent.  Rangers gathered up the bear trap and headed to the campground.  The supposedly occupied tent was surrounded cautiously and rangers listened for any sounds of a bear rooting through camping equipment for food.  Mostly silence, except for the growing volume of noise from rudely awakened campers who were coming to see what was going on.  Finally, one ranger carefully approached the tent and came back to report all he could hear from within the tent was a strange gnawing noise.  “Oh, hell,” the area ranger muttered, putting his shotgun back in the patrol car and digging out a shovel.  He marched into the tent, there was a lot of shuffling and scuffling, and pretty soon out marched one very indignant porcupine, propelled at the end of a shovel.  Porcupines love salt, and salty sweat in leather straps makes a marvelous midnight feast.

But, as this delightful video shows, they’re bright, funny and perfectly capable of cooking up their own entertainment in a moment of boredom.

He even figures out when he tries to go down the other side that the ridge is in his way and switches back to his original ski run.  Scientists studying crows and ravens are “discovering” what observers of the birds could have told them all along:  these birds are bright and they can think and reason – or plot, depending on your point of view.  They know how to drop pebbles into a bottle of water to bring the water level up high enough they can get a drink and they can fashion a branch into a tool to root out grubs among other things.

At the West Entrance to Yellowstone Park, I watched from the station one day as two ravens landed in the middle of the snowmobile trail with their prize, a cheese sandwich in a plastic bag.  The’d probably swiped it from the saddlebags on a snowmobile – they’ve become quite adept at that feat, too.  This was one of those bags from pre-Zip-Lok days, which had a flap you folded over the sandwich, then a second flap you pulled down over the top.  The ravens obviously knew what they were dealing with, it was just a matter of their trying to figure out where the flap was and which way to pull to get it out. One raven would hold down the bag while the other would peck and pull at the other end.  Working together, it took them about 10 minutes to figure out the right combination and free the sandwich.  Then, of course, the fight began to see who got the reward.

Last summer, right after a rainstorm, I passed a field where a large puddle of water had gathered in a low spot.  It was full of a dozen or so crows. I wondered what they were after, but as I watched it was apparent they were simply playing in the water.  Several were sloshing back and forth, splashing water all over, and I could almost hear my mother yelling at me “get out of the puddle, look what you’re doing to your shoes.”  One crow was body surfing.  He’d start at one end of the puddle and hop as fast as he could, then throw his wings out and flop into the water, pushing himself as far as he could go.  Then he’d bob up, turn around and go back the other way.  I stopped to watch, and like a bunch of little kids caught doing something they shouldn’t, the crows all immediately stopped what they were doing and stared at me.

Has anyone else had any interesting experiences with crows, ravens or any other birds that they’d like to share?  I’d love to hear about them.

Here’s a YouTube of a baby elephant sneezing that I love.  Poor little guy startled himself silly.

The poor pit bull we had when I was a kid would sneeze so hard he’d bang his nose on the floor, which would then cause him to sneeze again and again, usually until someone would take pity on him and grab his head to keep his nose off the floor and interrupting the cycle.

My Dad would occasionally sneeze so loudly that he’d startle our Schipperke/cocker mix awake, and she’d growl in disgust at him before stalking off to a quieter room to finish her nap.

Search “Sneezes” on YouTube and you can come up with all kinds of sneezes from both animals and people.  The best kind are the ones where the sneeze sneaks up and catches the sneezer totally unaware.  Of course, in that case its always best not to be in the line of fire. 

When I get a sneezing spell, my husband invariably asks “sniffing pepper again?”  Sometimes the answer is “yes.”  My Mother, and probably my grandmother, did that for stuffy noses.  They’d sprinkle some pepper in their hand and take a deep breath, Kleenex in hand.  If that doesn’t make you start sneezing immediately, then your nose is really stuffed up!  I learned the hard way not to sneeze too enthusiastically.  Getting a grain of pepper up your nose is a guaranteed way to sneeze a whole lot more than you ever wanted to.