Happy Thanksgiving!

Here, have a drawing of a turkey:

Owl and squid

Owl:

Hm. Not a happy owl. Jealous, I think, that he's black and white, and not in color like...

Squiddy!

Squiddy is my very favorite Drawmo drawing of mine yet. If you'd told me at the beginning of November that I could draw that, I would never have believed you. (Drawn in pencil, inked, then colored in Photoshop, if you're curious).

You really get my ...

Stitched-up bunny says rabbits are not disposable pets

Kind of a freaky bunny

It was kind of a weird tutorial which I just took a little further to make it a stitched-up bunny. Had a little trouble with making the belly a little big, but it worked out. It's from one of the Draw 50 series books, but I'm too lazy to find the name right now. But I kind of like the bun!

So tired. But drew anyway.

The top is a quick pictorial representation of my day, and the bottom is a freaky big-eared mouse. I do like the mouse's ears. Everything else about today's drawing? ... Not so much.

Bunny drawing for Lando

My bunny pal, Orlando, isn't feeling so hot, so I thought I would try to draw a bunny today:

The top is my first try ... not so great. The bottom is my second try and a little better. (I found a tutorial for the bun here)

I scanned in the buns and colored the second one in Photoshop:

Get better soon, Lando!

Edited to add: I've made the bunny a new t-shirt in my store.

Chicken ponderings

I've been wanting chickens for a while, but I was under the impression that they were near impossible to get permission to keep in Columbus, Ohio.

Turns out that's not true.

It's fairly easy to get a chicken permit in Columbus, though it's not particularly easy to find that out. Basically, the health code (not the city code) applies and doesn't make it too difficult to get one.

I was quiet this weekend since I was researching chickens, coops, and other chicken-y things. What I have discovered is this:

• I want to keep Buckeye hens (no roosters, no thank you!)
• I want 4-6 hens, which should get us at least a dozen eggs a week (giving us extras to keep the neighbors happy with)
• I want a coop/tractor that is cold-weather-proof and able to be moved about the yard by two people
• I want to get my pullets or chicks in the spring so we have all fall and early spring to build and prepare the yard

Does anyone out there keep urban chickens? If so, let me know how it works for you.

My resources:

• 2Silos (where we buy our eggs)
• mypetchicken.com
• backyardchickens.com
• urbanchickens.org
• Plus a bunch of books from the library
  

A batty houseguest

I was shocked to discover yesterday that a little bat had wedged itself between the screen and upper storm window to spend the day.

He was gone by evening and didn't come back this morning, but Jeff is going to look into make a bat house to prevent such freeloading in the future.

Another trip to the zoo

(I'm just going to stop apologizing for not blogging so much. We're just busy. I know you are, too, so you understand. :)

Now that we have our zoo membership, we don't feel bad for just quickly stopping by, seeing a few animals, and leaving when it starts to get busy.

We always stop at the petting zoo. I like goats, as you may remember. This time, the sheep were being more interesting. Out of the blue, one just head-butted a goat, then stood there and glared at another sheep for a minute before it went and laid down. Weird sheep.

Since it was early and cold, all the wolves were out, both the timber wolves and the Mexican wolves. This male Mexican wolf was listening to the keepers behind the scenes. Look like a Siberian husky, doesn't it?

We always stop at the penguins, too. We haven't seen them swimming for a while, but I don't think they like to get in the water first thing in the morning. The one on the right looked like it was going to go in, but it never did. And the one behind it didn't push it in as it waddled past. I was so very disappointed.

We also saw a peacock and his two peahens. I haven't seen or heard them at the zoo in a very long time. I wasn't even sure they had them anymore. But they were preening in the sun outside of the manatee house, being quiet and picturesque. They weren't very afraid of me and let me get pretty close to take pictures.

Mystery mini-parade

I don't know why, but there was a mystery mini-parade down my street today.

I was just coming back from the farmer's market, so I didn't get a chance to see if there was any sort of banner at the front or anything.

We let the dogs out on the front porch to see, and it was apparently the single most exciting thing they've ever seen. And ever since then, Cordy has been inconsolable. She wants a pony. Just like Mommy. :)

Bears just wanna have fun...

(Yes, still more zoo pictures. I took a lot. :)

We saw lots of animals at the zoo who aren't normally awake when we're there, even though we almost always go first thing in the morning, as soon as the zoo opens. This time, though, almost everybody was awake! Must have been the nice low-ish temperatures.

One of the animals we're only seen once or twice in five or six years are the grizzly bears. This time, not only were both of them out, but one of them was playing with a toy in the water. He (or she, I suppose) was pushing it under water and trying to get it to stay down, but it would inevitably pop back up.

This photos is a series that I took. He looked like he was having a lot of fun!

The third one is probably my favorite. He was so surprised when it exploded out of the water!

The friendly beasts

One of the things I like best about the Columbus Zoo is the goats. Yes, the kind in the petting zoo. They have pygmy goats and regular-sized goats, but the regular-sized goats are the friendliest.

I started to pet the goat and he didn't want me to stop.

Jeff made some friends, too. The lorikeet aviary lets you feed nectar to the birds for a dollar.

They approve of this arrangement. There are some who aren't really even in it for the nectar, just the attention.

And then there were those who had better things to do.

And Chris will never speak to me again

Watch the video and see...



If you can't see the video above, click here to see it.

Lions and tigers and bears

Oh my!

Jeff and I headed out to the Columbus Zoo this morning, where we bought a membership and proceeded to see as many animals in an hour and a half as we have in probably all the other times we've been there.

Here's the lion:

We were about four feet from him.

Here's the tiger:

And here's a sunbear:

We saw lots of other animals, too, and even got to pet some of them. Look for more pictures later this week. We've been having a busy few weeks, so this was a nice, fun zoo visit.