What's That Noise?

Let me preface this by saying that I am afraid of tornadoes. Really afraid.

I'm visiting my friend, V, for a few days in Blooming Grove, Texas, which is somewhere in between Hillsboro and Corsicana, (the part of Texas where it actually rains). We have had great fun so far. We stayed up late last night watching Fast and Furious, the fourth one, and eating Chili's left overs. Yum. So we go to bed at 2 in the morning, I think, with thoughts of getting to sleep in until late. Yay.

Yeah, not so much. V's mom comes in the room to wake us up at 6 in the morning and tells her that there's a tornado warning in Navarro County and that she should probably turn her computer off so it doesn't get zapped by lightning. Okay.
I'm waking up and I ask V, "Where's Navarro County?"
She replies, "This is Navarro County..."
Lovely. So she turns her computer off, and we're laying there letting that information simmer. I see lightning, hear thunder, and my blood pressure is rising by the second because the word "tornado" was mentioned. I also hear this faint distant low rumbling noise that doesn't seem to quit.
Not thunder.
I say, "Do you hear that?"
"Yes..."
We get up to see what's going on, I'm starting to get into full panic mode, the house is dark, rain is falling on the tin roof. I walk down the hallway to go see what it looks like outside from the living room window and freeze. I barely hear it over the airconditioning vent that I'm standing next to. A tornado siren.
Vanessa came up behind me and I said, "Do you HEAR that?!"
The siren had just quit.
She says, "What? The airconditioning?"
The siren starts up again.
"No, THAT!"
We hear it loud and clear, now, and look at each other and our eyes get real wide and my heart feels like it wants to jump out of my chest and I don't know what to do. Yes, the thought of hiding in the bath tub crossed my mind, but I looked outside and it didn't seem too ominous...besides the purple lightning, loud thunder and sheets of rain.
I go to her mom's room where the weatherman is on the TV going on about the thunderstorms in Dallas county, but admits, yes, there is a tornado warning in Navarro County and briefly shows the weather map that is full of red, yellow and green colors. And then we lost satellite. But only for a few minutes.
Her aunt and mom are sitting on the covered front porch watching it rain, because they had the informed impression that the worst of it had already passed us. Which it had, thank God. But I wasn't convinced yet and proceeded to let my heart beat really fast and my entire body to shake uncontrollably. Really scared, I tell you. At one point I thought I was going to be sick. As I said before, I really don't like tornadoes.
I called my mommy long distance so she could look up a weathermap on the internet and assure me that the storm had passed through the area. And to tell me that it would be okay. Which it was. All ended well. The storm went away and I layed back down and was able to fall back asleep eventually to the sound of falling rain on a tin roof.

It wasn't the worst experience ever. The wind wasn't even blowing that hard and the thunder wasn't that loud. But hearing that tornado siren in the dark of night really scared the heck out of me. If by some miracle you've never heard a tornado siren before (the movie Twister? come on) I invite to listen to one here. Tornado Siren

R.I.P.

I killed a bird today. I don't think it's murder, because I didn't intentionally set out to kill the thing...I swear. So would it be manslaughter? Birdslaughter, rather? If they had court hearings for roadkill I might be convicted of vehicular birdslaughter.

I was driving at 10 in the morning, which is a rarity. I wasn't entirely awake yet. I'm driving along, minding my own business, when I see this bird flying. It lands in the road in front of me. It hops into my lane to grab something, a bug, something to build a nest, I don't know. The distance between us is getting shorter and shorter. It turns and looks right at me. Our eyes meet. I think he was entranced by my Gucci knock-off sunglasses because he just sat there staring at me wasting precious seconds. My right front wheel hit him right when he decided it would be a fantastic idea to take the heck off.

This all happened in a matter of 3-4 seconds. Yes, I cringed when it hit my wheel. No, it never occurred to me to swerve. There wasn't a whole lot of room anyway. I wonder if it was grabbing food for some babies? Did I just orphan a nest of baby birds? Did I just rack up a child endangerment charge? Hopefully the baby mama bird will be able to be a single parent. Oh, Jesus! Do they mate for life?! Did I kill her one true love?! I need to quit thinking about this.

I forgot to check if there were feathers stuck in my wheel. Hmm.

Zoology

I went to the Fort Worth Zoo a couple of weeks ago with the fam...

Blue and Yellow Macaw "love birds"...

A young adult lion who was looking at me like I was dinner...

A giraffe that looked like he had a serious pain in the neck...

I can't tell you how much I would love to be this hippo.
To be fat and happy sitting in a cool clear pool of water avoiding the 100+ degree Texas heat all day...priceless!

The Turtle and the Hound

Babe and I found a turtle in the yard. He/She didn't want to come out to play.

Swallowtail butterflies and a possible tornado...

I found this Swallowtail butterfly in my yard the other afternoon...

This was yesterday. I could have sworn a tornado was going to pop out of it,
but that never happened. Thank God.

chasing rats

Babe was chasing rats again. In our dirty storage room. I thought I'd share how this goes down:

Babe enters the store room. Babe catches scent of a rat. Babe pin points rat's location. Babe shrieks (barks) for rat to come out. Woofer and Sophie stare at Babe wondering what's going on. Babe continues her sad excuse for a bark. The rat sits in it's hiding spot refusing to come out. Babe shrieks some more. Babe hyperventilates.

Sometimes the rat wins. Sometimes she does.

Today the rat eluded her, but only because I dragged her away from it so she wouldn't have a doggy heart attack.

Sophie was only hunting a rabbit...

She was sniffing around in the woodpile trying to force out the rabbit that resides there, but she found a poisonous snake instead. Her snout is puffy and there's this drainage stuff collecting around her neck. I took her to the vet, he gave her a shot, she seems to be in good spirits, so I suppose she will be fine. The size of her swelling makes me nervous, though. The picture doesn't do it justice. See the two prick marks to the left of her nose? Snake bite, baby.