my animal planet

Don't you love when your plans and schemes work out exactly the way you'd hoped they would? It doesn't happen nearly often enough, so I'm really enjoying this particular one while it lasts.

Last summer, when I dug up and created a new flower bed along the back of the house, I intentionally planted flowers that I hoped would grow really big and showy and attract pretty butterflies. And I planted the biggest and bestest of these plants right outside my bedroom window. I had high hopes that one day I'd be able to enjoy a front row (indoor, air conditioned) view of some really pretty wildlife. And one year later, I'm happy to say that it worked like a charm.

What? HOW DARE YOU COME TO MY WINDOW, butterfly?!! WATCH YO' BACK.

 Every afternoon when we get home from work, we open the curtains and blinds and plop down on the bed to watch the Butterfly Show on the lantana, roses, and canna lilies for a little while. It's beautiful and relaxing and altogether happy times.

iPhone photography on the left, dSLR on the right. Equally poorly focused, let's be honest.

We also see an occasional hummingbird. And lots of bumblebees. I'm telling you, it's straight up Animal Planet out there. Lola likes looking out the window too, but mostly she's looking for the cute little bunnies that hop over from the woods. Or the cat.

I couldn't care less about that giant black barking indoor THING. I rule the outside!!

 This morning the cat truly earned his keep. As I went out to feed him on the porch, I discovered he'd left us a little gift on the front door mat. RIP, mousie. And nicely done on the kill, cat. It looked like the mouse just laid down to take a nap and never woke up. Relatively un-traumatizing. For me, that is.

You feeble-minded humans can carry on with your lame butterfly watching. I'll just be out here taking care of business. And pooping on your sidewalk like a huge freak.

Do any of you have DirecTV? And a dog? Then you should be sure to be checking out your free trial of DogTV August 1-14. We flipped it on to make fun of it, basically. But then (after a few minutes of coaxing to get Lola to figure out how to LOOK at the TV) the joke was on us because actually it was pretty awesome and Lola totally loved it. 

Heeeeey sexy...I like long walks on the beach, too! Oh wait, no I don't. I'm terrified of water.

Weirdest thing ever. It was like dog reality TV. It's kinda blurry (to us) because it's made so that dogs can see it, but there's nice background music (along with the sound of dogs panting). Turns out Lola is just as scared of water on TV as she is in real life, so that was an interesting discovery! I'm pretty sure DogTV isn't awesome enough to merit actually paying $10/month for, but we may DVR a few episodes for Lola's future entertainment.

So things have been rather animal-centric around here lately. But they're all sorta lame animals. Dogs, cats, butterflies, bunnies, dead mice...not too exciting. That led me to some brief pondering about what could constitute a really exciting backyard animal invasion. Which led me to create a survey!! YAAAY!! You know, and also because it's Friday and on Fridays you need to be questioned.

So put on your thinking caps, ladies, because this is a really serious one. As always, vote for as many as you like, and feel free to justify your choices or suggest something better. I was going to give a prize to the first person who could guess what my answer would be, but then I decided that I'd rather just dole out a harsh punishment on the first person who DOESN'T know my answer, because seriously. This isn't even tricky.

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