Neighborhood Watch

Our front porch is one of our favorite aspects of this house. And by 'our', I mean all four of us. Not only do Scott and I love to sit out there and drink our coffee in the morning, or eat lunch together in the sun, or enjoy wine with the neighbors in the evening, but Lucy and Ariyah love that thing just as much as we do, and possibly more.  It runs the length of the front of our house and was very poorly built.  All of the rails are unequally spaced and the nails are rusting out of it.  The dogs know where the wider-spaced rails are and their favorite thing is to stick their head right through those and watch the world go by

This allows them to get as close as possible to all dogs walking by on the sidewalk, which of course makes them believe their obnoxious greetings are even better.  Every now and then they forget about the particularly narrow spacings when they're really excited, which causes momentary panic as they twist and turn, trying to free their big heads.  No worries - they've never been permanently stuck and I've stopped being concerned about that.
We put up a baby gate to when we first moved in here so that we could leave them on the porch unattended if we're home.

This way they can bask in the sun for hours at a time, wrestle noisily, and chew their rawhides to their hearts content, without getting my floors any dirtier than they already are.

This is their daily routine when we're around, and it hasn't changed much in the three months we've been living in this house.  Until this morning.  This morning Lucy decided that resting her chin on the lowest bar of the railing no longer provided a satisfying enough view of the neighborhood.  No, she needed to be even higher than an entire 8 feet off of the ground.  So, as I casually glanced out the window while walking by this morning, I had to do a rapid double-take, and then burst out laughing when I saw this:

Lucy sitting in our chair

No guilt. No shame.  Just enjoying the view like she's a human.

She is such a mess.

Kissy, kissy

Ah, HA!  Victory.  I finally caught this on video!  The girls will lay around and do this at least once a day.    

They love sharing leftovers.

The ears usually get included as well, but they must have be clean enough for today.  

New Arrivals

Hey everyone!  We are pleased to welcome TWO new members to the Mackey family!

Winston and Beatrice came in the mail last Thursday and have been settling in quite well.  They are just a few weeks old and much tinier than we anticipated.  They hold their own though and spend their days basking under their heat lamp and hiding from us in the leaves, while occasionally coming out to eat a bug or two.

This is Beatrice - hiding in the back of the cage

Winston pulled a sneaky trick two nights ago and we thought he was gone forever.  Scott left the doors to the terrarium open for a few hours while he went to watch a Soccer Game with some friends.  We've been leaving the doors open almost constantly because they normally hide out in the back of the cage.  Well, when he came home there was only one Chamelion in the cage.  He looked high and low.  All over the dining room and behind the cage, on top of it, underneath, but to no avail.  When I came home from work Scott was quite disappointed - the only thing we could think of was that Ariyah must have eaten him if he was near the opening.  We just couldn't imagine how he would crawl out, down the glass.  Unless he fell out, and if he survived that fall, Ariyah must have found him on the ground.

We decided to go for a quick bike ride before it got dark.  After riding along for a while we came to an area where we always let Ariyah off the leash so she can run back and forth freely for a while, to take care of her business.  When Scott stopped again to put her on the leash he let out a cry of shock and jumped off his bike faster than I think I have ever seen him move!  I stopped short panicked and for a split second couldn't figure out why he was reaching for the tire with such excitement, until I saw him.  Little Winston had somehow crawled (or fell, poor thing) out of the Terrarium and crawled across our whole dining room to where Scott's bike was parked.  He had been clinging to the spokes on the bike with his tail wrapped around several times, for over a mile!  We had sped and bumped along over curbs, cobblestones, and gravel, and he stayed on, just rolling round and round!  Scott carefully pried him off the spoke of the tire and put him in his hand and had to ride the rest of the way home one handed while Winston crawled around on his fingers.  We are SO happy Ariyah didn't eat him and that we found the little guy!  He's back wandering in the cage doing just fine, but we're keeping those doors shut now unless we're watching them or feeding them.