Sounds in the House

When I entered the house this evening, somehow more tired than I have been for a very long time, I guess I really listened for the first time in a long time.....I noticed things, that I haven't really even paid a lot of attention to. Gurglings, smooshings, whinings, purrings, thumps and bumps, creaks and even the slight sound of burrowing.

My house is a menagerie, it has been for years, especially the during the spring and summer.

This summer's visitor is an abandoned kitten, crying to be fed. He is about 3 weeks, old if that, it seems we always have a large bag of multi-purpose milk replacer for the wee ones around this place. Last summer it was 3 baby opossums that we fed until they were old enough to wander about on their own....very cool animal the opossum...and very difficult to find a healthy balance of food for, but we managed, once I found out their proper nutritional requirments....yes opossums do have a special diet, one that has to be followed or they will grow malformed...and they are soft, not bristely (sp?) like they look.

We still have the stray Jack Russell visiting, though we all keep hoping he will wander to a new home.....smart little thing...except no matter how hard we tried, he just could not seem to be able to understand that dogs potty OUTSIDE! So he is now an outside dog, who hates cats, of which we have many, too many.

There is the leopard gecko anxiously awaiting his daily fat black wild cricket....he is 10 years old, and even though his little glass and sand world never changes, I think he knows the season, by his food....in the winter and spring they are the skinny brown nothing crickets you buy at the pet store....but in the summer he dines well.
A singing cricket around my house, is lizard food!


Above the lizard cage is a turtle aquarium, I have no idea what kind of turtle, we have had him/her for a number of years, it was rescued from a flea market. He was a tiny thing in the beginning, a little bigger than a quarter, now he is the size of a 6 month old baby's fist, occasionally he will be joined in the winter by a forgotten goldfish that was left in the garden pond, one that is too little to reside in the cichlid/koi aquarium.

The burrowing sounds come from the guinea pig, with an occasional squeal when it hears a sound that sounds like food is coming.

Then there is the inside dog....a lab of course...a big fat lazy, whiney, adorable old lab, and the outside lab/mutley who also hates cats....seeing a pattern here.

But anyway, all these sounds really hit me tonight...and I thought what if they were all gone....how silent our home would be...with a teen on the phone all the time, and only the background noise of whoever happens to be watching tv, it would not be the same at all...

I think even if I lived alone, I would end up having animals of many sorts around the house.

Oh and sometime I will have to tell you about the frozen rats...but not tonight, cause the wine I am drinking is effecting my fingers..