Birds of a feather

My cockatiel (quarrion), Chookie, with his toy Tweety bird.

Rats!

Some friends on Facebook were reminiscing about the old television show, "Fawlty Towers". My favourite scenes included: the moose head snagging Sybil's cardie; Basil the rat - or Syberian hamster - in the ratatouille; the fire in the kitchen; the cat eating the poisoned meat and coughing up a furball; the deaf woman complaining about the view from a Torquay window... So many funny things in that classic series.

Which had me remembering:

I raised rats as pets during the early 90s. When I started at a new school as the teacher-librarian, several of the teachers were excited about the idea having one or two baby rats in their classrooms. The principal didn't like the sound of the idea, though, so we kept calling them Siberian Hamsters. The joke went on for weeks.

The principal went on leave and suddenly everyone had their cages ready! A few weeks went by, the kids were all abuzz, and everything was very positive. One teacher even made herself a sign for her pet corner that read "Our Siberian Hamsters".

I said, "Won't it be funny when the boss realises they're rats" and the teacher looked at me, surprised, and asked, "RATS?????"

Oooops.

Sunday's still too-high number: 96.4. Sigh...

A fishy story

Sometimes I think it would be great to have a fish tank in the school library where I work. Fish tanks are so... calming. Well, that's the theory. Usually, I manage to talk myself out of such a whimsy.

I had a large aquarium in my old library. The principal bought it, on a whim, from a casual relief janitor - and it functioned quite adequately for about a year. The students loved searching for the little "Where's Wally?" toy (in his swimming ring, snorkle and goggles) which decorated the bottom of the tank. (That's "Where's Waldo?" for my US readers.)

We eventually lost the last of our first batch of goldfish, so I cleaned out the tank one Friday and had the new water circulating all weekend, ready to buy more fish.

Of course, when we came in on the Monday morning the tank was bone dry: the water had leaked through a faulty seam (weakened during my strenuous cleaning?), and saturated the carpet! We had a special event (visiting children's author, Libby Gleeson) occurring in the library later in the week and we had to hire special air blowers to dry out the carpet in time. What a mess!

One six-week holiday, I put in a four-week food block to keep the fish happy for the time we'd be away from school. Someone said, "But what happens when the fish get hungry in the fifth week?"

I joked that "Of course, Survival of the Fittest" would be played out - and boy, did I feel bad when one poor goggle-eyed black moor got skeletonised.

Now we are two

Well, today I chalk up my second year of blogging.

As I said this time last year, it is so satisfying to put my various inner thoughts (and Internet responses) somewhere more permanent that just letting them drop off the menu at some online bulletin board.

Thanks everyone for the continued support, even if so few of you leave messages. I check Sitemeter almost every day, and my stats tell me I continue to get about 50 visitors a day, who read more than one post per visit, and these numbers have been consistent for many months, whether I'm posting every day or being slack. A great many newcomers stumble across this blog via Google Images. I continue to be a more visual medium than the quality of my written entries, so I won't be giving up on putting lots of images on Flickr. There are still plenty Star Trek, pet and naked Abigail fans out there, even if you don't always tell me in person that you've dropped by.