All Things Anne

Em has this Tiger Salamander named, guess! Tiger. Ben found it for her. He was on his way home from work, and he seen this salamander in the middle of road, and he tried running over it. When he couldn’t, he got out and took it home to us! Em looked it up, found out what it was, and named it Tiger.

Well, Tiger lives in this little terrarium made out of a Costco cream puffs box (minus the cream puffs) with some dirt, a little bowl of water, and some rocks. Tiger spends most of his time in the water dish, with just his nose and eyes out of the water.

Last night I had thawed some hamburger for dinner, and thought about seeing if Tiger would eat some of the raw meat, so I got a little bit of hamburger on my hand and lifted Tiger out of his water dish and put him on my hand with the meat. He poked his nose under the hamburger bit, and poked around it for a while, then started shoving his head down between my hand and my thumb. I moved my thumb a little bit, then he snapped at my thumb! It didn’t hurt, but it startled me and I yelped and dropped the salamander into the sink. He was pretty startled right about then, too! I was like “Good grief, dude, I try to feed you and this is the thanks I get??” and stuck him back in his terrarium on a rock and the meat on the other rock. He tried to snap at the hamburger again, but kept falling off the rock so I moved him to the dirt part and put the meat in front of him. When he realized it was there, he snapped at it and got a little bit of it in his mouth, then shook his head like a dog! He got that little bit off, and ate it, I guess.

Then I noticed there was a little beetle in there. I poked at it (I’m so nice) and got it around to in front of the salamander, and when he noticed it he snapped at it, but the beetle went under a rock. I moved the rock and poked the beetle around to in front of Tiger again. This time he snapped at it and got it! Just the back half. Tiger started shaking his head like a dog again, but when he stopped, the beetle started crawling out of his mouth! (Can you imagine what it would feel like to have a creepy crawly bug trying to creepily crawl out of your mouth? Anybody say YUCK??) He did another snap and got it all in, though, and we didn’t see the beetle again!

Abby loves to have me rock her and sing,

Rockaby baby, on the treetop
When the wind blows, the cradle will rock
When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall,
and down will go baby, cradle and all.

So I finished that, then she said “The Benjooman part!” So I sang,

Rockaby baby, the cradle is green
Father’s a nobleman and Mother’s a queen
Ben is the drummer who drums for the king,
And Abby’s the baby who wears the gold ring.

She looked up at me with this funny grin and goes “I’m not a baby!”
“What are you?” I asked.
“A big girl!”
So I did it all over again, with “big girl” instead of baby!

I do. Two, in fact. One was just bought today.

See, I had this .22 rifle, it was very cool-looking. It was an Old Henry, lever-action, and it always jammed. For me, at least. Eric loved it, but…anyway. The boys, Dad, and Beth went to a gun show yesterday, and they brought my .22. And they sold it for $135 to a guy who really wanted it. So today Dad and I (and Mom and Elle Jane) went out, and Elle Jane had to have blood drawn so while we were waiting, we went to Big R and bought my pistol! There was another one kind of like it but longer, and with a not-so-cool grip, and stainless steel barrel and stuff, for $20 less…but this one is cooler!

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