Alice, Bee, + Mr Tumnus

¡Hola mis amores! How are you this gorgeous Tuesday? The sun is shining, I'm listening to Spanish music, I'm dreaming about going to Spain, and last night I spent my free time with my sister pretending to be a famous Spanish watercolor painter person, spouting agitated Spanish as if my life were a Telanova. I still need a lot of practice. Life is starting to take a turn away from the deep dark depression of January, and I'm so thankful for that. Life is pretty good.

Since the beginning of February, I've for some reason been interacting a lot more with animals. Not my animals, of course, but I've realized that animals are the only things around to photograph that aren't my backyard. I've begun to take that as really good practice, not just for the actual photography, but also with editing, because I seem to always over-edit. Ugh.

Anyways, I have a job now! Not an official job, but I get to walk my neighbors' little dog Zoey every day after school. She's still a little stubborn to me but she's the smallest, cutest dog. I've not yet had the chance to take pictures of her, though. I'll try to get those soon!

Last Friday, one of our good friends was visiting the state (and dropping off his old car for Jonathan!!) and another good friend dropped by to say hi with his dog, Bee. Bee is so sweet, and really loves to love people. Although for some reason she wouldn't stop barking at our visitor on Friday, and we couldn't figure out why. That's never happened before, though, and she eventually stopped, so I got a few pictures. They're not super good - the camera was very low on battery and so it wouldn't focus properly. :/

I especially like this last one :D What do you think?

Two weeks ago, we had a super warm Sunday, so we came home to our neighbor's cat lounging on our back patio. Alice isn't our cat, but she likes to act like it sometimes! She always tries to get into our house and leaves us dead birds and chipmunks. Not super nice to clean up, but she's so affectionate and loving. I got several pictures of her that day. Most of them are very pretty; I tried to edit some, but that didn't necessarily work out. I'll let you see if you can spot my favorite thing about her :D

This one is perhaps too edited...

Isn't she gorgeous? We love her so much. Oh, and did you spot her special feature? Yes, it's her eyes! She has one blue and one brown eye, which is (I'm guessing, I don't know this for sure) due to something called heterochromia. That's when the brown/other color melanin doesn't reach both eyes and the cat is left with one normal eye and one blue. Sometimes this condition even makes the cat deaf in one ear, so Alice meows extra loudly.

Moving on, (last animal I promise!!!!) we have the surprise animal: Mr Tumnus! To tell this story I need to tell another story. Two years ago, I was in English class. We were reading the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. All of a sudden I hear a scratching noise from the corner of the classroom - I looked over, and a little baby mole waddles out from under the filing cabinets!!! Yes, I know, adult moles are quite possibly the ugliest things ever, but the baby ones are SO cute. And you never know, it could have been a baby vole, and voles are way cuter. We christened that little guy Mr Tumnus, and let him outside.

Getting to the point, on Sunday night we were going about our night as usual, when from the basement we hear Lizzie shout, "THERE'S A MOUSE IN THIS WEGMANS BAG!!" She brings up a reusable Wegmans bag clamped shut, and we hear some movement in the bag. As it survived our mouse traps, we couldn't just kill it (I don't know why anyone would do that) but we also couldn't just let it go next to our house, It would get inside. So my dad and I drove to a large grassy area a ways away from my house and let the little guy go. That's when we realized it was another mole (or vole)!!!!!! We tried to get pictures, but it was quite dark, and they got very blurry. I thought I'd share those pictures anyways! We named this guy Mr. Tumnus as well, and let him go. Live happily ever after!!! :D