In Which We Find Things In The Yard

The posts this week will be quick and easy since I'm on a "staycation" this week and so will mostly be checked out of the interwebs.

So, as the title says, we've found some things in the yard recently.

The first is another shrew in the egress window. I got pictures this time so you can see how strangely innocent they look. But they aren't. They aren't.










The second thing we had in our yard was this AWESOME mushroom. Check this baby out.






The yard was even mowed around the mushroom, so as not to disturb it. But alas, one of the dogs stepped on it and took a chunk out, so we pulled it up. Here's a picture so you can get an idea of the awesome size of this.









Anyone else get awesome mushrooms in their yards?

In Which We Hit The Fair

Happy Labor Day to all my pals in the states! I hope you are having a good time!

As Hannah and Matthew already mentioned, late August running through Labor Day is the Great Minnesota Get Together (aka the MN State Fair)!

Excitement! Drama! Food!!!

The MN State Fair is the second largest in the country, trailing only a bit behind Texas. It is the sauce that covers our awesome (well one of many sauces)

The State fair was first held in 1859, a year after MN was granted statehood. It spans over 320 acres and has been held every year except 1861,1862 due to the Civil War and Dakota Indian Conflict, 1945 due to war time fuel shortages and 1946 due to a polio epidemic.

2009 set an attendance record (last record was 2001) with 1,790,497 attendees. So far this year the attendance is at 1,211,031 attendees (not yet counting Sat, Sun on Mon) so as you can see, it's a big deal in our state.

Here's a fun timelapse video of one of the corners in the state fair (Jusdson and Nelson Sts) from open to close so you can get an idea of the crowds:



Judson and Nelson - Minnesota State Fair from Ochen K. on Vimeo.

Onto the pictures!

Most everyone in MN knows the real reason you go to the fair is to eat.
OR, maybe to check out the strange fashion and hair choices of many of the attendees:



BUT it's still primarily an agriculture fair.

Every year you can see baby pigs:



And every year one boar gets the honor of being known as the biggest boar.

this is reggie. He's 2 years old and weighs 1450 lbs

And giant pumpkins? You betcha we have them:

First place pumpkin: 1100 lbs

Also crop art. Art made from crops (mostly seeds and corn)

Depending on which day you go you can see chickens and rabbits and goats. But there are always cattle, horses, sheep and pigs.




Also you can hit the MN DNR area and check out the fish we can find in our lakes and rivers.



But, as said above, the real reason most Minnesotans attend is so we can stuff our faces with food, most of it on a stick.
It's always good to attend with a few friends or family members, so you share the food and therefore try as many different food option as possible.

Australian Battered Potatoes

Dole Ice Cream

Deep fried candy bar on a stick. Snickers

Big fat bacon (on a stick) (one of my all time favorite things to eat. EVAH)

Turkey samich

Deep fried Banana split

Corn on the cob

Spiral potato chips


Chicken fried bacon (new this year and already a fav of mine)

CORN DOGS!!!

Friday Fun Words

Hi pals! It's me, Yvie, here to provide you with your weekly dose of new words.

A lot has been going on this week. An electrician came to fix the lights in the rooms, I got sick, George's one lip is acting funny and everyone is preparing to go camping.

BUT last weekend, on of the most bestest things happened. All the people went outside in the yard and left all us dogs inside. Which is a jerk move of course, they bought the yard just for us anyway. Well after a bit of time around the corner of the house, they came back, following the MOST AMAZING THING EVER as it walked across the patio in front of them:



LOOK AT THIS THING!!!! Right? Right. Needless to say I wanted it immediately. It was definitely bigger than any of the guinea pigs. If I ate that thing, I could be the most supreme dog ever, for sure.

But then Mommy scared him out the fence into the park. Stupid Mommy, throwing away my glory. Anyway, then they let us outside. We sniffed around a bit, but the best thing by far was the bucket. Oh did it smell.



The creature smelled like musk and also like a rat. So I decided to call it a Stinkpig. And one day, I'm going to eat one...

ONTO THE WORDS

(Mommy would like me to say that she's been so super busy this week that she really didn't have time to collect too many, but she found a few for me)

ENTAL - when you're not quite entish, but you're definitely rocking some sort of ent-like behavior



JOALS - jewel goals. This word is typically only used by jewel thieves. Hmmm, do jewel thieves even still exist?



LAIRRAYE - when you make your lair in a ray of sunlight. I know, it does seem to be a touch oxymoronic, but what can you do?





And that's all, Ape-friends! I hope you have a fun week while I'm out

In Which We Find More Critters

I don't know if I've mentioned this before (I thought I had, but I couldn't find the post in a cursory looksee through the blog) that we have an egressed window that animals like to get trapped in

Typically it's just voles that get stuck down there. (actually we always assumed they were voles, but after some research I've come to the conclusion that they're probably Northern Grasshopper mice)

(UPDATE: turns out, after more research, they're actually short-tailed shrews. but all the details are the same)

They're awesome because they looks so cute and soft with their velvet grey fur, but they're take no prisoner carnivores and will EFF YOU UP if you give them a chance.

Once we had three mice (shrews) in there at once, 2 alive, 1 dead. We got one out and released it but the other one was NOT LEAVING. At one point he turned and looked at twin and opened his tiny mouth to issue the highest pitched little shriek you've ever heard. Freaked us out.

Turns out northern grasshopper mice howl and eat other mice (as do shrews).

Also turns out the way to get them out of windows is by putting the other dead mouse (shrew) in the bucket, and live, crazy mouse (shrew) will panic that you're stealing his food and will run into said bucket to try and get the dead mouse body back. Then you can just scoop him up and let him go in the park with his precious dead mouse meal.

Anyway, aside from shrews we also once had a baby bunny. Which was clearly the cutest thing we've gotten down there.

The egress window leads to Brother's bedroom in the basement and he's the one who lets us know when something is trapped in there because they scratch at his window and make a racket.

Saturday morning, Brother came upstairs and told us we had one guess as to what was in the window, and it wasn't something that had been down there before.

Our guesses of squirrel and bird were not correct.

No. It was a Muskrat!

He was kinda cute looking. We grabbed our usual bucket and twin climbed down thinking we could just scoop him up (she always does the animal wrangling since she helped with the wild animal SOPs at her shelter. And in case you're wondering, muskrats can't carry rabies)

Turns out muskrats hate buckets. A lot. He kept attacking the bucket, which was kinda scary since he filled it.

Finally he attacked the bucket, landing inside, and didn't jump back out. Twin lifted the bucket up and he hopped into the yard.

Then there was a tense few moments where the muskrat glared at Brother and I and we glared back. It was totes a "it's up to you what happens now, muskrat" but instead of attacking us he decided to go on his way.

right here he was deciding if he should rush us or not...

Of course his way meant he'd calmly walk across the patio and contemplate the weather.

We finally managed to shoo him out into the park. There's a pond about 6 houses down and I'm sure that's where he came from (though why he came all the way down to our house and all its doggy smells is a mystery)