Recent Pet Pictures

Mixed Meters' Three Readers are saying "What? Three posts in four days?"

Yeah, I try to do three posts a month and if I put it off until the end I need to work fast. To prove to you that quality drops when the deadline looms, I'm offering some pictures of our pets.

You may remember that about this time last year we adopted a little black kitten who was stranded in the bushes near our home. We named him Dr. Pyewacket.  You can see his baby pictures here or some from last summer here.

Here are three recent pictures of Dr. Pyewacket on various couches.

Our other two cats Spackle Puss and her twin brother Crackle Pop came to us in the summer of 2006.  See their baby pictures here.  (I'm impressed that the video links in that post still work.)

I'm happy to report that The Ackles are in good health and have accepted Pyewacket into the family pretty much.  (Crackle is in the top photo.)

The remaining four-legged family member is Chowderhead, the big red dog.  Here's Leslie holding Chowder's legs up.  If you look closely you can see that he is erect in more ways than one.  (Click on any picture for enlargement.)

In the 2007 post Dog's Balls and Elizabethan Collars you can see Chowder's penis before he was "fixed".  Since Chowder was about a year old when we adopted him he too is about 10 years old.  He's doing pretty well for an old dog.  Maybe it's time to try teaching him a new trick.

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You can see all Mixed Meters posts labeled Dogs or Cats.
You can see all Mixed Meters posts labeled Last Day of the Month.

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Hooray - I've done three postings this month.  The deadline is my friend once again.

From The Danger Garden

Spring is a nice time in Southern California.  Like Springs everywhere plants here begin to grow again.  And so it is with Leslie's collection of carnivorous plants.  We call them CPs for short.  She has a lot of CPs in her garden.  It's a dangerous place to be if you're an insect.

(Click on any picture for better viewing.)

In the winter she cuts these little insect-meat eaters back and we wait for new shoots to sprout out in the brighter sun and higher temperatures.  Or maybe we wait for new sprouts to shoot out.  This year has not disappointed.  In fact it's been downright amazing.  I have taken many photographs.

Leslie grows multiple varieties of Saracennia, commonly known as Pitcher Plants.  These bad boys trap their unsuspecting little buggers in tall horn-like pitchers.  The pitchers have a cap on them giving them the profile of a large animal with its mouth open.

The different varieties are colored with combinations of green and red and white.  There are colored veins of great intricacy.  And little hairs that help ensnare dinner.

Before the pitchers form, they send out thin stalks with a round bulb on the end.  This becomes the flower with droopy petals.

The plants send out flat stalks which slowly open into the pitchers.  Then they just spend the rest of the year waiting for food to fly right in.

Leslie has many other varieties of CPs.  Here are a few pictures of Sundews.  This guys full name is Drosera capensis.  Sundews catch their food using little balls of stickum from which a hapless six-legger can't escape.  Clever.

Here's a drosera flower stalk with delicate purple flowers.  Apparently there's a good reason CPs have tall flower stalks.  They need to trick insects into pollinating them.  If the flowers are too close to the parts of the plant which catch the insects, pollination won't happen.  Once the plant sex is over, however, the insect is back on the menu.

Other Mixed Meters posts in which carnivorous plants play a role.
Freud Was Wrong About the Cigar
Carnivorous Plants (with pictures of many different types of CPs)

The Floating Minion

So I was walking down Fair Oaks Avenue in Pasadena one day and I noticed something floating aimlessly in the sky near a cellphone tower.  At first I thought it might be a distant helicopter.  Then I realized . . .

It was a balloon in the shape of a minion - those goggley-eyed yellow twinkie-shaped sidekicks from some heart-warming animated movie or other.  Because it was filled with helium it floated aimlessly on the air currents.  Helpless.  We can all relate to that.

Somewhere, I surmised, there was a small child who was disconsolate - bawling his or her little eyes out and being told by its parent that they had been told not to let go of the string and no I'm not going to buy you another one.  Easy to relate to that as well.

Google reveals that minions are not to be confused with minyans.  It would take 10 minions to have a minion minyan.  Try Googling "anti-semitic minion" and you'll find some people with strange ideas who are not amused by minions.  One has to wonder if every possible word is paired with the adjective "anti-semitic" somewhere on the Internet.

Anyway . . . as this particular mylar minion meandered past I captured it on video. You can see some trees and traffic lights and a few birds.  Those are the San Gabriel mountains in the distance.  After a minute and a half the poor thing passed out of sight for good.  No doubt it eventually was caught on some electrical lines and caused a power outage; one last bit of evil - and an honorable death - for the floating minion balloon..  I've added some aimless floating music to its aimless bobbing and weaving.  Enjoy.