Every Day Is Christmas Around Here
This week I will post a new wintery song each day through New Year’s Day 2023.
Today’s song was written in 1986 or 87 and revised a bit a few years later, after seeing a Doyle Dykes show with my friend George Dubrish when we both worked at the Wyatt Company in Southfield Michigan.
Every Day Is Christmas Around Here – Recorded 12/22
What Is Christmas Without Little Kooklers?
My wife has observed that I like creatures better than people. This is true. The critters do not lie, cheat or steal and we understand each other perfectly.I cannot say the same for animals that walk erect on 2 legs.
Here is my version of the family newsletter that is tucked into Aunt Sabini’s holiday card.
Bloob Bloob Bloob…
The Koi & Tinfoil Barbs are the current denizens of a 150 gallon tank in my workshop.
They spend their time bulldozing big rocks and uprooting the plants looking for snacks.
This is Butterscotch (in warmer weather in the yard this past summer). Butterscotch is a hand me down who came to live with us 6 years ago with her pal Hershey when an acquaintance’s daughter went off to college and could no longer take care of her.
Butterscotch doesn’t like to be handled, but likes carrots and the better sorts of lettuce.
And Hershey, more of the same.
This is the aquarium in the family room. It was what Lenny came in originally (see below) and my colleagues at Truven Health upgraded it with new filter, etc. about 9 years ago.
This tank is home to Papa Loach, a 10 year old Kuhli Loach who lives under the rock the Plecostomus catfish at left is perched on. I know this because the only time he is seen is when I check in with him and lift the rock up and disturb him once a year.
3 Favorite catfish, from left to right, a plecostomus, a hoplo and a Horabagrus brachysoma. the spotted catfish, know as Bloathar, passed away after an extended and inexplicable decline a week or so ago. Good bye, Mr. Bloathar.
This is Snappy, a thoroughly disagreeable snapping turtle that my sons obtained as a hatchling back in middle school and for whom I am still taking care of 20+ years later. She lives to take a bite our of me when I try to clean up her tank.
George the cat passed away this past June and is sorely missed. Here he is greeting me at the top stair up from my workshop to my office.
Here is Miss Kitka, aka Mitzy the Cat, sitting with Ted and Newton the Owl. Miss Kitka is the house cat and NEVER goes to the barn where my workshop and office are.
She lives the Villa Villa life and spends much of her time by the wood stove when that is going, otherwise in a sunbeam in the living room.
Hello Lenny!
Lenny is a roughly 25 year old box turtle that came to live with us back when #1 Son was an undergraduate at Wayne State. Lenny was living with my son’s classmate, the nephew of a prominent GOP politician. I offered to give him (Lenny, not the politician or his nephew for that matter) a home when it was no longer an option for him to keep him.
Lenny has a pen behind the barn where he lumbers around during the warm months and he otherwise lives in a big hutch I built for him that is in my office near my desk.
He likes egg salad, slugs, worms, good cuts of steak done rare and strawberries to eat.
Lucy is my beloved Cairn Terrier who broke my heart when she passed away this August. I still miss her every day.
Now there is no one to shadow me in the kitchen now and snorfle up the mess I make cooking.
Marcy was my office cat for 12 years after she materialized as a kitten on the kitchen window ledge one very cold December day in 2010. I was not a cat person at all before she came to our house but have been one ever since.
She passed away this July. She also took another piece of my heart when she left us.
From the sublime to the ridiculous.
This is Ferdinand, a Florida softshell turtle. Like Snappy, he was a hatchling that my sons outgrew the care of and 20 odd years later I am importuned each morning to feed him on my way through the workshop up to my office, before doing ANYTHING else.
Last, but not least of the Kooklers is our newest friend Archie, the big orange cat. I am taking him off my friend Kim’s hands as she had been fostering him and loved him to death as the saying goes, but he had worn out his welcome. Archie’s MO was to get along happily with her dogs but to try to torment her two cats.
He has the run of my workshop and office in the barn, so he is king of that domain.