The Bumble Bee Murder

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We all have our little habits that die hard. I tend to rub my nose when I am uncomfortable or bored or I just need to get out or move. I kind of whack my nose and have been doing that since childhood. Used to suck my thumb too but that habit had to be terminated.

But did you ever meet a dog with an unbreakable habit? I am still discovering little clues about Elsa’s personality.

Elsa is our not-so-little Rescue Dog. She used to be lift-able but no longer. Now she is well fed (maybe overfed?) as Bill and I continue to hand out halved dog treats plus plus plus. Like in the film/book Eat, Pray, Love, I have begun calling Elsa “Groceries.”

Back to bad habits that die hard.

Elsa thinks flying insects are fair game. When in the outside world she lurks, stalks, jumps, and snaps into midair and sometimes actually nabs a bumble bee! Oh Mighty Dog, Mighty Hunter!

The problem is last week she swallowed one live!

We tried to estimate how long a living bee in the system of a semi-small dog could survive but came to no conclusions.

Watching Elsa provided some explanation though.

• First, she plunged her nose in and out much like a harem dancer thrusting chin forward and back.
• Then she coughed a hollow kind of deep cough.
• Follow all that by an insane need to go out again
• Followed by a desperate need to eat grass.
• After consuming about 3 cups of grass, back inside for a restless nap filled with barking dreams,
• Then repeat all of the above plus
• Finally she began dropping her bottom to the ground again and again and again.

Can you trace the movement of the poor struggling bee trying to maneuver through a semi-small dog’s system?

I was beside myself with worry. Could it be something she ate? Like a live bumble bee? The vet was closed of course. I made up my mind to wait to the first open business day and I would take her to the vet.

After a bland dinner (chicken and rice) and a lot of in and out of the house, Elsa finally looked peaceful. Vet no longer necessary.

I have tried to tell Elsa (to no avail) that killing bumble bees is a terrible habit that has to stop. However, I now have a dog who is a serial bumble bee killer.

This morning she was on the deck on high alert. One of those great big flying predators was daring the mighty hunter.

I screamed, “NO! Don’t eat bugs!” and this time she listened but she is refreshed, happy, wagging and hungry.

And the world is full of bumble bees. Well one less after this eyewitness of the bumble bee murder.

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Hildegard and Esmerelda are Egg Eaters!

Amy and Hildegard

My friend Amy is always doing fascinating things.  She is the one who took up Contra Dancing.  And before that it was Jumpology.  She has taught piano and is a violinist, but is now taking cello lessons.  And she got a trucker’s license in order to drive preschoolers in a school bus.  And she is a marathon runner too.  There is more.

But Amy’s latest endeavor is raising chickens.

She and her sons built the perfect stable safe house for them, better known as a chicken coop.  She then bought four beautiful egg laying chickens and she gave them old fashioned names:

• Penelope
• Gertrude (Gertie)
• Esther, and
• Henrietta

And they all laid beautiful delicious eggs.  But sadly, Henrietta passed away.   They said it was from an inherited disease.  Amy was distraught, but soon went out and purchased two more cluckers:

• Esmerelda and
• Hildegard (Hildegard is now her favorite chicken!  She runs to greet Amy and rides on her shoulder).

Unfortunately, Amy just discovered

that Hildegard and Esmerelda are EGG EATERS!

Oh no!

This is not good.

This is a very bad thing because it teaches all the other chickens to eat eggs too.

It is a nasty habit, egg eating, and very hard to break.  But Amy is determined.

What to do.  What to do.

Amy thinks this blog post may help others of you out there who are raising chickens who turn out to be egg eaters.  After assiduous research and concentrated efforts to watch, wait and trick the ladies, things seem to be paying off.

Try these remedies:

1. Watch, wait and grab newly laid eggs of the “good girls” ASAP.
2. Replace real eggs in the nesting box with golf balls.  The chicken ladies will peck the hard golf balls and this will make their beaks hurt.  This is breaking a habit with negative suggestion…. like pain.
3. Replace real eggs with Mustard Eggs!  Ever hear of that one? To make a mustard egg you blow out a real egg so only the shell is left and then insert mustard.  Chickens HATE mustard and when they peck at such an egg the taste is awful.  More negative psychology.  It would cure me of eating eggs too!

Do you have an egg eater in your family besides of the human variety?

Have you successfully convinced your chickens to stop egg eating?

Please share your remedies.

We are in search of a cure.

 

 

 

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Turning the Page on Habitual Habits

 

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I have suffered numerous bad habits over the years, beginning with Thumb Sucking.

My parents tried everything including rubbing something on that tasted bad.  Nothing worked.  Finally, on the first day of kindergarten the teacher announced, “Look around children.  We have a baby in the room.”  And there they were all looking at ME!  I do love commanding attention (still) but that was the last day of thumb sucking.

Then in the teen years there was the Nail Biting habit.

Would you say these habits were symptoms of an insecure personality?

In those days, long fingernails were a sign of beauty (but mostly a sign of control over one’s habitual impulses).  I proudly decided to stop nail biting and stopped.  Congrats to that determined young woman.

Smoking was another horrible habit which took hold for years until I stopped “cold turkey”.

I still feel rather smug and self-righteous about that and sincerely try not to lecture friends about the evils of smoking.

Oddly enough, Rubbing-it-In can become a habit too.

But now my latest habit involves Reading Books!

Image from http://www.the-bookworm.net

READING BOOKS?

Habitual reading maybe?

Habitual reading of special interest books?

Too much reading?

Too much of the same kind of reading?

No, No, No and No.

What happened the other night revealed  an entirely new habit to break.

The story goes like this:  I was reading a “real book.”

The definition of a real book is one you can hold in your hands and turn pages.  If you are destructive you can even write in it or turn down page corners (but this is a travesty and can be considered inhuman behavior).

Anyway, I was reading a real book for a change and suddenly found myself tapping the side of the page.

Nothing happened so I tapped again.

Then I tapped more aggressively.

Nothing happened.

Until it finally clicked in that I was not reading on my Kindle, and could not tap the margins of a real book to make it turn a page.

 I had to turn the page myself!

Talk about a strange habit in late life!

THE PAGE TAPPING HABIT!

THE KINDLE READING HABIT.

THE HABIT OF READING BACKLIT PAGES WITH NO PAPER CORNERS.

THE HABIT OF TAP TOUCHING THE MARGIN TO GET TO THE NEXT PAGE.

This habit of page tapping has become so ingrained I may need lessons on how to read a real book – the kind you can find in the library – or at least some libraries.

I hear some university libraries are doing away with real books and going fully digital.

Yikes!

Any suggestions for a cure though?

I am a Habitual Page Tapper and need help to break the habit.

 

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Big Girl Now But Still Hungry

Daily Prompt:  Can’t Get Enough

Have you ever been addicted to anything, or worried that you were?  Have you ever spent too much time and effort on something that was a distraction from your real goals?  Tell us about it.

The Shame Game

 I was 5 ½ years old.  It was the first day of kindergarten.  I was very proud to be a “big girl.”  The teacher called the roll and said, “Children, we have a little baby in the room.  Who do you think it is?  Please look around you.”

I looked around and soon realized that everyone was staring at ME!  I was sucking my thumb.  I had always sucked my thumb.  But I never did it again (unless you count the times now as an adult, when I am in deep thought).

Giving Up on Cream

I was on a diet to lose weight.  I have always been on a diet to lose weight.  Someone said that eliminating cream from your coffee would reduce your caloric intake by hundreds of calories a day.  I never drank cream in my coffee again, but I’m still on a diet to lose weight.

Gnawing Nails

I bit my nails.  I always did do that until I met the man of my dreams.  I stopped biting my nails (for looks) and married the man of my dreams, but started smoking instead.

Smoke Gets in Your Eyes

I smoked menthol cigarettes for nearly 40 years!  I tried the patch.  I bought candy cigarette substitutes.  I went to hypnosis but inhaled as I left the session.  One morning the act of lighting up made me feel deathly ill.  I never smoked again.

 I am over those addictions but you never know for sure.

Being an armchair psychiatrist, I concluded that all those bad habits could be blamed on Mother!

She freely accepted the accusations too.  Poor Mom!

You see, I was a bottle fed infant and she told me she lived by the sage advice of Dr. Spock.  If the book said to feed the baby every four hours and I cried in three (from gnawing hunger), she let me keep on crying for precisely four hours.  Have you noticed that most of my addictions seem to come from oral needs?

No wonder I am still always hungry!

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