The whys of Blogathon

So why the hell am I doing Blogathon?

I’ve read along as others have done this fundraising drive in the past. I’ve cheered them on and I’ve donated to their causes. I never had an interest in doing this myself, though.

But you see, there’s this woman. contrary74.

I love her a lot. A lot a lot. She is my eternal example of how powerful Love can be.

A while back, her sister in law was diagnosed with breast cancer. Toni did all the right things – even to the extent of having a double mastectomy *just* in case.

And then the cancer came back last spring.

So I promised contrary74 I’d go do the Philadelphia LiveStrong Challenge with her for Toni. And I decided to do the event in Pittsburgh as well. And I’ve had to cancel on both because of scheduling conflicts.

I really hate not doing something I’ve said I’ll do. I may be LATE doing it, but it’s a point of pride for me to follow through on a promise. (Case in point: It took me 2 years or so to finally jump out of a perfectly good airplane because Shadesong couldn’t..but dang it, I followed through.)

So. I didn’t want to just cancel on contrary74. And I decided, therefore, I’d sign up for Blogathon this year.

It’s not the first fundraiser for cancer I’ve done. Which is..sorta a surprise to me, because cancer is not in fact my personal boogeyman. Alzheimer’s is. But cancer is as insidious in our lives as it is in our bodies. Generally, it starts small. Easy to miss or ignore. And then it seems like it’s everywhere.

My fundraising for LiveStrong is a pro-active way of raging against that which I do not wish to accept as a reality, I suppose.

For the next 24 hours, I will be posting a brand-new-something every half hour. 49 posts total. My goal is to give y'all interesting, original content to read on a day that is traditionally pretty slow, LJ-wise. Like what you read? I’d love it if you’d toss a bit of money into the tip jar. Have a request or a question? I’d love to hear from you.


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RAWR!

Zookeeper Tales: Gecko

contrary74 asked for a gecko story.

I lived for a while in a household of many colours – er, a household with many roommates. One day, I walked in on one of said housemates setting up a cage for his girlfriend, who was coming home with a lizard given to her by a customer at the bar where she worked. Not, of course, that she’d wanted a lizard; it had been handed to her in a shoebox with no history or story given.

And so did Duck enter our lives.

Duck was a Tokay gecko – about two feet long, blue skinned with orange spots. Geckos can grow their tails back, and Duck had done so. Sorta badly. Blind in one eye, obviously malnourished, he was weak and cranky and in need of much TLC.

Duck was plopped into his new glass home, climbed the walls trying to escape (oh yes, Tokays can climb glass), and hoped for much food to be dropped his way. Sadly, his new owner wasn’t comfortable with his food of choice: crickets. After walking in a few times to find a bag of crickets set on top of his cage like a bug-filled piñata, I finally asked if I could pretty please adopt him myself.

I was given this, um, honour.

Not having a bloody clue what I was doing, I tried to hand tame the little darling. Which at first wasn’t so bad – as I’ve said, he was malnourished and weak. But after chowing down on regular meals of crickets and pinkies, this didn’t last too long, leading to the exciting day when my now-ex-husband asked if he could pick up Duck.

I said, “Sure!”

Duck said, “OM NOM NOM NOM!”

Jason said, “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUGH GET IT OFF GET IT OFF GET IT OFF!!!”

I rescued his finger from the hungry gecko’s mouth.

…Eventually. After some laughter. Because - oh, you had to be there.

Imagine my surprise, much later, when I found an article in “Reptile” magazine that described the Tokay gecko as “having a personality of pure evil.”

My experience does not negate this opinion.

Duck taught me valuable lessons such as, “Don’t expect your reptilian pet to ever appreciate you or show you any gratitude,” and “If they can escape..boy howdy, will they,” and my personal favourite, “Even if you can’t SEE my teeth, I assure you I HAVE them…OM NOM NOM NOM!”

With his bizarre quacking sound from hell, Duck was one of the more interesting additions to our household and spent the last five years or so of his life yelling a reptilian version of, “HEY YOU KIDS! Get off my lawn!”

And so, my darling contrary74, no I do not recommend Tokays as pets. Ever ever ever.


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Holy poop!

Thanks to adelheid_p we're now up to $160 raised!

The next post will be inspired by a prompt from her. Thank you, honey! <3


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Haunting Tales: Characters

adelheid_p asked me to talk about the back stories to my haunt characters.

I shamefully confess that I don’t actually have histories. I wrote something up for my Grisly Gothic Gables character several years ago, but I only have a vague recollection of what that story was. So instead, I’ll just talk about how my two main characters came into being.

At Grisly, I went by the name of “Minion.” I didn’t start out at Grisly as an actor. All I ever really wanted to do was help build things, but there was a need for someone to work in the costume room and manage the actors, so that’s where I ended up. I didn’t have a costume or a character, but I did have a long black lace slip dress that I work so I could be somewhat neutral but look like I fit in so I could jump in to cover just about any role or scare when needed.

One night, I showed up at the haunt on a night I was scheduled to be off. The owner, Allan – the man I wish was my father – looked over at me, extended a hand, and said, “Come to me, my minion!”

And thusly was Minion Grisly named.

(Trivia: There is, somewhere in annachria’s artistic creations, a painting called “Minion’s Minions,” wherein Minion calls in the monsters and beasties that populated the manse.)
When I started working for Castle Blood, I was determined to not have Minion be assimilated into the MacCabre clan. I played a witch my second year at the Castle and was asked to name the character.

Being a writer, I decided to use the name of my at-the-time-favourite font, Charme. I assumed it would be pronounced “charm;” Ricky assumed it would be “Sharm-ay.”

Which quickly led to, “Don’t squeeze the Charmay.” Which was not-so-happy-making.

I’m not sure that the witchiness of my character was ever really understood by my fellow cast mates. Most of the characters in that particular haunt are vampires, but the one time I tried wearing fangs while dressed as Charme just didn’t feel right to me. Conversely, I rather enjoyed joining my friend Peachey in the very tiny ranks of the non-vampiric.


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Zookeeper Tales: Losing a Tortoise

There are some animals you would think would be hard to misplace in a room.

Tortoises are high on the list.

And yet, gentle Readers, I have managed it.

I was working at the zoo later than I should have been, so I can perhaps blame this story on exhaustion rather that stupidity. Yeah, let’s go with that.

The zoo, which contained about 120 exotic critters, had a policy of letting certain animals wander on the floor to give them a chance to exercise outside of their enclosures. Our tortoises spent their days in our kitchen, walking laps around the room and eyeing each other’s sexy carapaces with lustful thoughts. At the time, we had three tortoises – two male African leopard tortoises, and a female yellow footed tortoise.

Though female, her name was Burt, and Burt had a hard life as a young tortoiseling. A poor diet left her sickly and deformed, but she was a genius with her poop. If she didn’t want to be used for an education program? Bam! Instant diarrhea. She possessed a truly amazing digestive tract. What I experienced more was her amazing ability to blow bubbles out of her nose as a result of some recurring, possibly alien, respiratory illness.

However, on the evening in question, I experienced a new ability...that of invisibility.

As I was putting critters away for the night and checking to make sure everyone was fed, watered, and in their cage, I realized I was short a tortoise.

Where the hell was Burt??

I looked under every cage, in every corner. The animal center was in the basement of a natural history museum, so I ran around the hallways outside the zoo, terrified that I might find Burt chewing happily on some arsenic-ridden bone.

How the heck do you lose a frigging TORTOISE??

In near-hysterics, I called my boss. “I don’t know what to do!” I wailed.
“It’s ok. Just go home..I’ll come in.”

“Are you SURE?!?!”

“Yup. I’ll find her.”

And indeed, Jacquie did just that. Within a few minutes, in fact.

Because Burt – perhaps in an effort to avoid her horny little friends – had managed to open a cabinet in the kitchen, climb inside, and settle in for the night.

*sigh*

Another critter-lesson learned. Never underestimate an animal’s creativity.


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So why LiveStrong?

So why LiveStrong?

It’s an organization I’ve heard of but never really paid a lot of attention to until these past few months. I admit that shamefacedly, because contrary74 has done the walkathon more than once, and..well, money is often tight, and you get that email saying, “Hey, I’m doing this thing,” and you lose track of the date and the email and..before you know it, you’ve forgotten all about it.

Well. If you have the attention span of a gnat, as I do.

ysobelle is never without her LiveStrong bracelet. The wide bit of yellow rubber that encircles her wrist may not match what she’s wearing, may not be “period” at Ren Faire, but that doesn’t matter. It’s such a part of her that you both see it and don’t.

My point is that I have no one to blame but myself for not having LiveStrong on my radar long before right now.

Its mission is pretty simple:
We fight to improve the lives of those affected by cancer.
The organization reports on ways to stay healthy, where and how to get one-on-one support, information about treatment options, and more.

And something else that impresses the heck outta me? 81% of the money raised goes into LiveStrong programs. This is a remarkable percentage - MDA, which is one of the best charities going, puts 76% of each dollar donated towards their varied programs.

LiveStrong evolved out of The Lance Armstrong Foundation, which was created by bicyclist Lance Armstrong after he was diagnosed with testicular cancer which had spread to his abdomen, lungs, and brain.

(Lance Armstrong is an inspiration on many levels. If you don’t know his story, go ye and read.)

I hope like hell that you, Gentle Readers, and I, and our asundry loved ones never need information such as what LiveStrong provides. But. It’s a pretty amazing organization, I’m glad as heck that it exists as a resource, and I am so very proud of each and every penny we are raising together to support LiveStrong.

Thanks much, y’all, for your donations.


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RAWR!

And another thank you!

Much thanks to the apparently mysterrrrious elfowls_nest for her donation! <3

Not only are you a fabulous (and tolerant!) (and supportive!!) housemate, you are also a MUCH better cook than you give yourself credit for and the kind of person I'm incredibly lucky to have in my life.

Thank you. *POUNCEHUG*

Zookeeper Tales: No love for the bunny

elfowls_nest asked to hear the story about Bella and the bunny.

In the household with many roommates, we also had many pets – enough so that we set up an animal room on the first floor to keep the tracking of fur and wood chips throughout the house to a minimum.

The cage that contained my beloved chinchilla, Bella, ended up on top of an enclosure where two male rabbits lived.

In nature, I’m pretty sure bunnies and chinchillas don’t have close encounters of the furry kind. What I learned, after forcing these unlikely roommates to share space, is that the separation of rodent and lagomorph is a pretty dang good idea.

In short: Bella hated bunnies.

Oh, did she ever.

I didn’t realize that Bella would be able to fit between the bars of the rabbits’ cage, and so had decided to let her run around the room while I cleaned her cage.

Instead of frolicking merrily about the space, Bella chose to squeeze herself through said bars, leap onto the back of the smaller bunny, and create a new sport: Bronco Bunny Riding.

Fur flew. Bella wrapped her paws around the rabbit’s ears and hung on for dear life as her steed kicked and fussed and tried unsuccessfully to free himself from his rider.

It was terrifying and potentially dangerous and damn I wish I had that s*** on Youtube.


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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
State of the Owl's Nest:

elfowls_nest went out and procured donuts for us. Yay!

sealgair is a most excellent house guest. I'm very very pleased to have an excuse to spend time with her! It's been too long.

Lurk is very confused by the fact that she, and not I, was in my bed last night. He's sulking somewhere-not-here right now. :( Both he and JT seem to be suffering from a possible respiratory infection. JT has been sneezing his fool head off for a few days now; Lurk has started doing what I'm told is a reverse sneeze.

Mmmmmmmm...cat snot for everyone!

And Katelyn, the matriarch of the Owl's Nest, is full of grumpy fussing.

I am a bit intimidated by the amount of storytelling this Blogathon will contain. I think it's good for me, and heaven KNOWS I can babble out stories, but...yeah. A bit intimidated. Your feedback is good. Thank you! :)

Zookeeper Tales: The exhibit that tried to kill me

Part of my job at the zoo involved dealing with temporary exhibits that included live animals. The exhibit that taught me – and scarred me – the most was one that was centered around the critters used by Chuck Jones in Warner Brothers cartoons. And so we had a coyote, a roadrunner, rabbits, and skunks, and each grouping of animals brought with it its own unique set of experiences for the keepers.

This particular exhibit space utilized pre-existing structures such as a three dimensional sphere that had, once up on a time, illustrated the varied strata of the Earth. It was creatively transformed into a display area and enclosures for the rabbits and skunks, which were swapped out each day so that no one animal was on display for more than a day at a time.

Well, in record time, the rabbits had figured out a way to chew an escape hatch into the back wall of their enclosure, and the skunks were discovered to be epileptic. So all those tourists taking flash photography pictures of these real-life Pepe Le Pews? Not such a good idea.

To get into these rounded enclosures, we had to remember to duck before entering and leaving, lest we smack our heads against the low wooden doorframe. One night, I was a little too tired to remember to duck as I left, and – bunny cuddled up in my arms – I managed to knock myself to the floor.

Lying there, bunny sitting contently on my chest, I admit it…I started crying. This exhibit was clearly trying to kill me, and coming damn close to succeeding, and I just didn’t want to be an adult, *sniffle* *sniffle*, why couldn’t someone come pick me up and put me in a nice safe cage with a bowl of food and a hide box?

Nose to nose with the bunny – who was by now happily chewing on a bit of food from earlier in the day – it took a great deal of self-control to not insist on lying there, on my back, waiting for security or maintenance to find us.

Really. Could being a zookeeper be any more glamorous than this?


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Zookeeper Tales: Star crossed lovers

My beloved chinchilla, Bella, proved to be a very fertile rodent. I’m not proud to admit that she had 4 to 5 litters of babies, back to back, before I finally – reluctantly – separated her from Gomez, the male chin who loved her long time. Over and over.

irisl adopted one of Bella’s first offspring, named him Scooter, and thought the little fella was a girl. In vain, I tried to change her opinion.

Eventually, Scooter did just fine convincing her of his true gender all by himself.

*ring*

“Hello?”

“Ok. Scooter’s a boy. And I need to get him fixed.”

“Why’s that?”

“He keeps trying to f*** my cat.”

Yes indeedy, Scooter was a Philly boy, afeared of nothing and in mad passionate love with a tiny fluffy Siamese kitty named Rhiannon.

Rhiannon had been raised around chinchillas, to the point where I’m not entirely sure she understood she was not, in fact, a rodent from South America. As a kitten, she would sit in Tash’s dust bath looking vaguely confused.

“Do I roll in this, or do I pee?”

“AAAAAAAAAUGH NEITHER JUST GET OUT OF THERE!”

Now an adult, Rhiannon had gotten past her childhood identity issues, only to exchange them for a set of sexuality issues. I’m not sure there’s enough therapy in the world for having a relatively small prey animal attempt to make a predator his bi – er, his girlfriend.

But man, I wish I had that, too, on video.


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Donation thank yous!

MUCH thanks to webdeva, australian_joe, and - I'm not sure if she has a LJ, but...Stephanie! - for the latest round of donations!

You are all incredibly awesome.

We're up to $250, which is twice what contrary74 set up as our goal. At this rate, we may indeed do as well as pengylady predicted! :D

Thanks, y'all, for being supportive, for reading, and for caring enough to throw some money into the pot. <3

Zookeeper Tales: Pornchilla

As Scooter started to demonstrate his male virility more and more to anyone that would pay attention, I received an unexpected email from my mother. Attached was a photograph of not-so-little Scooter enthusiastically…ummm…let’s say he was overgrooming his manhood.

I’ve never seen anything like this (though a quick look around the Intarwebz shows the practice has been rather thoroughly documented). And so of course I had to share the picture immediately with my then-husband and my housemate.

Jason’s reaction: “Why is there a pornchilla on my computer?”

David...well, he didn’t say much at the time. Later, however, he walked into the mini zoo where he also worked, and found a gaggle of women surrounding a chinchilla’s cage.

“What’s going on?”

“What the heck is he DOING?”

“Oh. He’s masturbating.”

“How do you KNOW that?”

“Well..I have this picture on my comp..u…ter…Oh, crap.”

And thusly did my attempt to educate my housemate and coworker result in my near-death.


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Zookeeper Tales: How Hades earned her name

chris_walsh wanted to hear the story about how Hades earned her name.

I had no intentions of coming home from the pet store with a kitten. No sir, don’t believe in buying pets, I already had a cat I loved very much – Maggie – and I’d never had a kitten.

But she totally played me..crying until I picked her up, licking me on the nose when I said, “Ok, fella, what do you think?” and apparently slipping the pet store employee a $20 to tell him that this kitten was most assuredly a boy.

This was the deciding factor for Jason, and so we went home with a teeny tiny black kitten who had the most evil eyes I’ve ever seen a cat possess.

I decided to name “him” Loki.

(Yes, I know. And slipjig? Yes, this is proof that the name does indeed belong on your list of 10 Karmically Unfit Pet Names. But really, those EYES..)

Within the first week of Loki joining our household, “he” had pooped on the bed – directly between Jason and me – and Jason had rolled over in his sleep into the mess; deftly removed Jason’s nipple ring with one amazingly non-injuring swipe of a paw; and – most terrifyingly – bitten Jason on his manhood.

After such a hell week, it’s perfectly understandable that Jason had had just about enough of this teeny tiny ball of fur that was terrorizing him and torturing my elderly Maggie. And so he decided to take Loki downstairs to our housemates brute-kitties, thinking they’d be quick to teach the kitten a lesson.

Loki settled down on “his” side.

Both Maine Coones walked away. Backwards.

“..Oh.” Our vet housemate walked over to Loki, picked him up, and looked under his tail. “Well, once we get him fixed, he should…OH.”

Jason returned upstairs, kitten in hand, fuming.

“THIS CAT IS A SHE!” he proclaimed. “And her name is now HADES!”

And so it came to pass that my demon-kitty earned her name. *nod*


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Zookeeper Tales: The kitty family expands

Since I've told the tale of how Hades joined my family, I should in all fairness also talk about Lurk's advent as well. )Because clearly y'all need to hear even MORE stories about Lurk.) :D

As I've said, I had no intention of bringing a kitten into the house. Hades clearly had no interest in anyone's agenda other than her own. I'm a big believer in the importance of a cat choosing its owner, which is in part why I didn't resist her desire to become my cat quite as much as perhaps I should have.

And with all the torture Hades was inflicting on Jason, there's no way in hell we should have adopted another cat.

..And then I got a call at the museum.

"Hi! Aren't you looking to adopt a black cat?"

"Well...I sorta was, maybe, but I just did." (Forgive me the lie.)

"But I work at a shelter and I have one I'm saving for you!"

0_o

Jason and I discussed it, and he was a trooper. He agreed that yes, we could bring one more kitty into the house was an acceptable idea, and we arranged to have this new bundle of furry joy dropped off to him at the museum.

"I'll bring him by this afternoon," my coworker said. "But he may need a bath. He won't leave the litterbox."

0_o

The kitten in question was delivered to Jason in a much-too-large carrier. Wide-eyed and terrified, the critter was indeed firmly planted within a small litterbox. Being a good guy and an animal lover (despite the torture inflicted on him by Hades), Jason decided to reach in and try to pet the kitten.

His reward? He was bitten through a finger.

(...Do I need to say this was the last cat I acquired during our relationship?)

I met Jason at the museum and we brought Lurk home. He cried for the entire walk to the car. He cried all the way home. He hid under our claw-footed tub and he cried for four days straight, until his voice was hoarse and none of us were entirely sure that this adoption had been anything remotely resembling a good idea.

And I named him "Lurk" because this was one of the few things I knew about him...that he was really good at hiding.

Lesson learned: When someone offers you a pet, try to find out more than just what species this critter is. (While I can't say that knowing how feral Lurk was would have discouraged me from adopting him, it would certainly have changed our plan of attack, so to speak..)


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Oh holy crap, I love Erin.

From vagynafondue's blogathon efforts over at http://ohhonestlyerin.com:

Cancer is not my personal boogeyman.

It really isn't.

And yet sometimes I forget that it's made more than its fair share of appearances in my family.

My mother was born with skin cancer. She writes:

...I was due in September but crashed in early at 5 lb 6 oz - and sickly - and with some cancerous growth on my side that it took them a while to get out of me - still have the scar 62 years later...

As I understand it, the cancer was burned off of her with radiation. This is one of those factoids I keep on trying to forget.

My grandmother also had skin cancer (if my memory serves me correctly), I assume from a lifetime of gardening.

My mom's wife was diagnosed with breast cancer several years ago. It manifested as a lump nearer her arm pit than her breast, which was something I hadn't realized was possible. She lost her breast and a handful of lymph nodes, and opted to not undergo "slash and burn" treatment.

"Well, then, we can't help you," she was told by her doctors.

She decided to try a holistic approach to her healthcare, and they changed their lifestyle dramatically, from the foods they ate to the place they called home. (One of the treatments she recommends is, I believe, essiac tea, grape seed extract, and flax seed. I am **NOT** a doctor and am **NOT** telling y'all that this is the magic bullet. I do think it's worth investigating.)

She's been (thank goodness) cancer free ever since.

Lesson learned: There's always more than one treatment option. You don't necessarily have to choose radiation and chemo therapy to fight off cancer. Do your research - ask questions - figure out what's gonna work best for YOU. That option may not be what western medicine tells you is best.

Oi, Philly/NJ peeps! Can you help this pup?

And now for something completely different..this is cross-posted from ysobelle's Facebook page:
~~
Late last night, my neighbour found a dog wandering our apartment complex here in Southwest Philadelphia. Not just any dog, but an incredibly emaciated, yet insanely friendly young, white male pitbull. And when I say friendly, I mean the kind of dog whose whole body wriggles when he wags his tail, which he does whenever anyone so much as looks at him. He's white with spots on his ears, amber-coloured eyes, and beautiful, expressive ears. He was so pathetically grateful for food it was heartbreaking. My well-meaning neighbour, who was reduced to tears for the dog, had given him hot dogs and chicken, and begged proper dog food from me. I did a very casual temperament test on him, and he didn't show the least signs of aggression: moving the bowl while he ate didn't bother him in the least; he only raised his head when he'd done eating to give kisses. He didn't flinch at a raised hand. He has no scars I could see. He had no problem having his ears or teeth checked, and loved having his head cuddled. He was fine on a leash, and seemed to know to sit when asked.

Animal control came to get him, and said they'd been getting calls about him for a while, but had never been able to catch him. So I have no idea how long he's been wandering the streets. Now that they do have him, though, he has less than 48 hours before he's put to sleep. I've called Little Darling from Pinups for Pitbulls, and they'll help with neutering him, as well as lend a crate to anyone willing to foster this amazing dog. There has to be someone out there willing to help him. Can someone help me find that person?

PLEASE CROSSPOST!

Drop her a note on her LJ if you can help.

Donation thank yous!

0_o

ZOMG.

MUCH MUCH thanks to nursechrissy and sealgair for the most recent bout of donations to LiveStrong.

We're up to $370.

Pardon me while I go pick my jaw off the floor.

Y'all rock like great rocking things. <3 <3 <3

Story request: Bunny

contrary74 asked for the bunny story.

My family moved to Cherry Hill, NJ, the year I went to kindergarden.

Being a southern flower, I was less than impressed by winter.


It was in New Jersey that I first became fascinated with vampires; and it was here that I met my first best friend, Trisha.

Emotions last longer than actual memories. I remember she was taller than me – big surprise, right? – and that I adored her. Because I adored her, I would have done anything she asked. So when she presented me with a set of pajamas she’d outgrown that was more a rabbit costume than anything else and asked me to wear it, I of course said yes.

Sure, I was embarrassed. (Truth be told, I still am.) I don’t think any pictures exist of what I’m sure was a fairly ridiculous afternoon that consisted of Tricia walking me around the neighborhood introducing me as her pet bunny.

But I confess that my favourite nickname of all time is still DustBunny. :)


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And what's our total for Blogathon? Let's go to our sock in the field!

Zookeeper Tales: Old Man Crow

One of my human coworkers at the zoo accused me early on of having no respect for her – and I should, because she was my elder.

My general response to such a sentiment is, “No. You earn my respect; you may have my courtesy, as a general rule.”
But when it came to Old Man Crow, he immediately had both.

Old Man Crow was in his twenties when I started working at the zoo. He was so old that he literally had feathers going grey. His feet were knotted up and swollen from arthritis, so that he tended to walk on his elbows. But oh, he was a proud old gentleman, and he spent most of his days out of his cage and perched either under a parrot cage or balanced on top of a water hose. (I assumed he liked the warmth on his feet.)

When you have 120 animals in very close proximity, animals interact that would probably never see each other in the wild. We were always learning new and interesting things about our critter-coworkers. Opossums? They love bananas. Armadillos? They apparently hate opossums. And crows – well, at least Old Man Crow – are scared of tortoises. Which was useful to know, because it meant that if a tortoise escaped from the kitchen into the main area of the animal room, Old Man Crow would sound the alarm.

“OH HOLY CRAP YOU GUYS THAT HUGE WALKING ROCK IS OUT HERE WITH ME GET IT GET IT CAAAAAAAAAAAW!”

As contrary and sometimes aggressive as Baby Crow could be (don’t worry, the naming of the crows improved as the years went by), Old Man was generally pretty mellow. He did, however, have one thing he absolutely insisted on: Let him return to his cage under his own steam. If you tried to carry him back to his deluxe apartment in the sky, he’d fuss and flap his wings until you released his jesses, whereupon he’d fly to his home perch on his own, thank you VERY much.

In the wild, crows will mourn the death of one of their flock. I can’t say that I saw much of this from Baby when Old Man finally passed away – but then, it was hard to see much from Baby that wasn’t just plain ol’ ornery in those days.

I believe that both crows were imprints, meaning that they were raised by people and thought we were just some very feather-lacking crows. Both birds could fly, but whereas Old Man was given his freedom each day, Baby only got a few days a week in the bird exercise/flight room to stretch her wings. She had toys in her cage, but she preferred to amuse herself by trying to bite any monkey paw placed too close to the barred door of her cage. In later years, when she had a much larger enclosure and more time spent out of said enclosure, her nippiness faded away quite a bit. Beautiful and vaguely mischievous, interacting with Baby was one of the better parts of my job as a keeper, and my only regret involving her is that I could never quite get her to take a dump on Duckie’s head.

She came dang close though, one day, and received much praise as a result.

(Yes, I had, and have, duck issues. For dang good reason.)


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Zookeeper Tales: Prickles the Porcupine Part I

Some of the critter memories I most treasure are the ones that involve Prickles the porcupine.

Prickles had outlived her mate. When I made her acquaintance she was around 14 years old and slept more than anything else. When we were scheduled to clean her cage, we would make a ruckus by her door until she’d eventually rouse herself, give a good shake, and stumble out of her cage – either into an awaiting carrier or to a perch under an iguana tank – to doze off again until it was time to get her back into her freshly cleaned cage.

I started collecting quills from Prickle’s cage while I was cleaning – which taught me the very painful lesson of how one has a quill removed from one’s finger – which in my case involved hiding behind one keeper while another used forceps to pull the quill from my quivering hand – which is an experience I do NOT recommend!!

..Where was I?

Oh, yes. So I started collecting quills, regardless of whether or not she was in her cage. One day, Prickles noticed she had a visitor; and with a sleepy stretch and a shake of her back, she started to climb her way into my lap.

I did not scream.

I may, however, have squeaked.

Lesson learned: Be careful what you wish for. If you wish for a connection with a porcupine, you may find yourself with a lap full of quills wanting to be loved.


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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


State of the Owl's Nest:
I want to eat everything in sight. Dang oral fixation.

We are past the 1/4 mark! How did THAT happen?? I hope these blogs are proving to be interesting and varied enough..!

Lurk remains a sulky little puddle of fur. JT is feeling well enough that there may be a performance of the cat-o-phone later this evening..which will result in an audio post, if so.

*rubs hands together gleefully*

Zookeeper Tales: Prickles the Porcupine Part II

(part two)

Prickles, as it turned out, liked to be petted. Which one could do. CAREFULLY. As long as you petted her ‘with the grain,’ so to speak, you could give her the affection she was requesting. And as she approached her 17th year of life – a remarkably old age for a porcupine! – she started to become more social altogether.

We moved the zoo to a better-designed area in the public eye. Once here, Prickles no longer needed to be roused from slumber by banging on a metal container and yelling her name. No, Prickles had decided that the world was pretty interesting after all, and she was very willing to venture outside her cage and take a look around.

Indeed, one way of showing her appreciation for the opportunities to walk around was to squat over a drain and pee there rather than in her cage.

(Well. It was appreciation, or it was bragging. “Wow, monkey…you need to go all the way to the ladies room to relieve yourself? Let me show you one of the ways in which it rocks to be a porcupine!”)

Sometimes we’d offer Prickles a treat – say, a piece of apple – to munch on while she was enjoying a bar-free view. Ever the genteel lady, she would take the fruit in her long-clawed hand and slowly munch on the offering.

…Usually.

Because you see, there was this duck.

I’ve posted before about Duckie the mallard…the fearless tyrannical duck…the crow-killing probably-ate-license-plates duck.

And boy, did Duckie like apples, too.

Duckie had the run of the mammal room at the time, because we’d had an in-floor duck pond installed into this room. And as I’ve said, Duckie feared no man, carnivore, or porcupine.

So imagine if you will, an elderly porcupine contemplating the apple in her claws.

She slooooowly moves her head forward to take a bite…

…and this little fart of a duck comes booking around the corner, grabs the apple, and keeps on running to the safety of the duck pond…

…and Prickles is looking around bemusedly for the apple she could have sworn she’d had a minute ago.

Lesson learned: Ducks are evil.

Prickles eventually got to a point in life where her body could apparently no longer fight off varied small illnesses. She had a bout of worms. She caught colds. And I assure you, there’s very little that’s as pitiful as a porcupine with a booger nose. One of my fondest memories of my ex-husband is seeing him in the cage with Prickles, trying to wipe the snot from her shniffly shnuffly nose.

Prickles passed away many years ago at this point. I still have a box of her quills; I still think of her a lot; and I still miss – just a little – the feeling of her clawed hand reaching out to pull at my pants, asking me to let her crawl up into my lap for a very cautious snuggle.


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Zookeeper Tales: Meep Meep!

For the Chuck Jones exhibit, we had, on loan from the Phoenix Zoo, a roadrunner named Rover. It’s a tribute to Mr Jones’ creativity that he extrapolated the colourful, long-limbed, plumed cartoon roadrunner from the drab short bird eyeing me doubtfully from the recesses of his temporary cage.

I was a part time, or “relief” zookeeper. This means that I mostly worked on weekends, holding down the fort while the staff of full time keepers enjoyed time mostly away from the zoo. Ya know, unless I couldn’t find a tortoise or something. We had a group of maybe 6-8 part timers at any given time that shared the weekend schedule, and a better group of people just couldn’t be found, in my not-at-all humble opinion.

..Anyway. The point I’m making is that we were part time staff. We couldn’t make a lot of decisions on our own; nor, generally, were we asked to. Our not-so-simple job was to make sure the collection of exotic animals were cared for over the course of the weekend, the museum educators had what they needed from us for their varied natural history shows and cleaned up after themselves, our volunteers were both learning from us and helping us clean/feed/play with the critters, and that the public had their varied questions answered about our animals.

“Why do you have a zoo in a dinosaur museum?”

“Because the animals are used to educate the public and to act as natural history ambassadors.”

“Can I pet the owl?”

“No.”

“Can I donate my nurse shark to you?”

“HELL no!”

As the Chuck Jones exhibit was being constructed, I was asked by the Exhibits Department to come take a look at the roadrunner area and to tell them what I thought of it.

“You realize I can’t ok it, right? All I can do is tell you what I think.”

“Ok.”

So I took a look. The enclosure was pretty nice, but..I did have a concern. The entire front was made up of a mesh screen, allowing cool air into the enclosure. The only source of heat came from the track lighting up at the top of the mesh screen wall.

I pointed at the exposed light cords. “If I were a desert bird and I was cold, I’d spend most of my time up there.”

“Yeah, yeah…but the rest is ok.”

“Well. Sure. I’m just concerned about warmth.”

My feedback was – to the best of my knowledge – ignored, because (sure enough) Rover spent a large part of his time out of sight of the visitors, tucked up and behind the lights.

When the exhibit closed, Phoenix didn’t necessarily want their bird back, and while Jacquie searched for another home for Rover (and I begged her to let us try to fist-train him), he was put into a temporary home that didn’t come close to the luxury to which he’d grown accustomed. Moping, he stopped eating; and unhappy, he developed a knack for escaping at any opportunity (which fortunately was NOT very often).

At this time, our zoo was still located in the basement of the museum – or as I affectionately called it, “the bowels of the Academy.” Rover was pretty good at zipping down and across the varied hallways, leading me to another realization about Mr Jones’ cartoons: If I were Wile E Coyote? I’d probably hate the roadrunner too.

(I am eternally grateful that no one actually witnessed me chasing that silly bird around the basement…)


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October Project - my fav song

roadnotes asked me to write about my favourite October Project song(s).

My introduction to this fantastic band's music happened at Penn's Landing in Philadelphia, during a free summertime concert sponsored by WXPN. irisl, contrary74 and I were there together, sorta primarily to see Sarah McLachlan, if memory serves.

As the sun started to descend, painting the river with varied tones of pinks, oranges, and reds, October Project took the stage. Mary Fahl was singing lead, and blew me away with her powerful voice. And then they did a song that has never stopped being one of my favourites.

The lead-in was Mary talking about how they had submitted the song for consideration for the not-then-released Interview with the Vampire, and how it hadn't been accepted.

I still think that was a HUGE mistake.

"Take Me as I Am"
( lyrics behind the cut )

(And because time is NOT in fact linear - EVERYTHING HAPPENS AT ONCE - Mary Fahl will be in Pittsburgh the same weekend of Pi-Con and the Philly LiveStrong event. Gah!)


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Donation thank yous!

Much much thanks to Cynthia, who has put us at a current total of $380 raised for <a href="http://www.livestrong.org>LiveStrong</a>!! *squee* You are fabulous and awesome. Thank you so so much!!!

Day! We can haz cookie!

Or in this case, chili.

Dinner time for us good lil' bloggers after the 6PM post!

(Have I not said that elfowls_nest is the Best Housemate Evar??)

Best and Worst Con Experiences

shadowwolf13 wanted to hear about my best and worst con experiences.

Worst Con Experience:
Some of my memories about this story are hazy – perhaps deliberately so.

In the late 1980s/early 1990s, I was active in Philly-area “Doctor Who” and “Blake’s 7” fandom. (Trivia: I wrote B7 episode reviews and have had one piece of Who fanfic published.) I think this story involves a “Blake’s 7”-esque con…I had volunteered to help work the con with and for some friends in New Jersey.

And I came down with a horrific cold. The kind of cold that wraps your brain in cotton and turns you into a snot-zombie.

I know they took me with them anyway, and I am very sure I did absolutely no useful work. I have vague collections of – I *think* - being leaned up against walls and trying desperately to breathe but mostly being in a near-coma-like state all weekend.

I can’t even remember how I got home..

Lesson learned: Know your limits, and stay the hell home if you’re sick.

Best Con Experience:
…Hm.

The thought that comes to mind first doesn’t entirely count because it was at a trade show, not a convention – but this hits a bit of the request from hughcasey(?) to tell tales about the haunt industry.

In 1999, I attended my first TransWorld Halloween and Party trade show. The show was in Chicago and was so large and overwhelming to country-mouse-me that I had to take breaks from the trade show floor. Descriptions will not do it justice – but imagine a convention center filled with party store vendors and costumes and make-up and props for haunted houses, and – off in a corner – someone is selling lightning-making machines that sporadically whip out lout CRRRACK!s of lightning…my first few years of TransWorld were amazing, surreal experiences.

And because I can’t resist a volunteer job, I raised my hand and found myself on a board of directors working to create a haunted attraction association. Which I may write about later today.

This story, however, is about my third year on the board. I had headed up the nomination committee for elections for the new board, and had been put through hell the weeks leading up to our annual meeting at TransWorld. A haunter was trying to get himself on the ballot and hadn’t been nominated, so was trying to strong arm me into adding him to the list.

He didn’t know we had already discussed him, both on the board and on the committee, and not only did we as a group choose to not nominate him, I’d had people tell me, “If he gets voted in, I quit.” 0_o I tried to be kind and not tell him this; as a result, I suffered through a three hour phone conversation with him where he tried to persuade, sweet talk, and then bully me into doing as he wished.

Going into the meeting, I was terrified. Absolutely terrified. I was convinced he was going to make good on his threats, storm into the meeting, and denounce me in front of the entire membership. I wasn’t a haunt owner. I was a haunt manager, actor, constructor…but not an owner. What right, really, did I have to be here?

What I learned that night is that I had as much right to be there as anyone else did. I was valued enough that the membership actually put a bouncer by the door whose only job was to make sure that my naysayer did not in fact cause a scene. I had a room full of my peers who made it very clear that they accepted me, embraced me, and valued me. (Indeed, one later told me I was his hero because I hadn’t allowed my naysayer to chase me out of the industry, as others had in the past.)

It was a pretty amazing experience.

And this, I’d say, was hands-down my best con experience. :)


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Haunting Tales: Becoming a scare actor

As I’ve said previously, I didn’t intend to become a haunt actor. I’m shy (no, really, I am, and I’ve ALWAYS wanted to be involved in stage crew work. My first job in a haunted house was building a small staircase for a porch. I’m ridiculously proud of that fact.

I joined the cast of Grisly Gothic Gables because I was dating someone who worked there. (I’m, um, not so proud of that fact.) It wasn’t my intention to work there, though I loved the show from the first time I heard about it; but when Allan gave me the opportunity to help out, he certainly didn’t need to ask twice.

Those who know me well know I’m not afraid of difficult work. Vacuuming the basement of a still-in-use stable to help convert the space into a costume room was a task no one wanted – I think there was a visible dust cloud kicked up from people running from this particular assignment – but I did it, and I helped herd cats…er, actors because these were jobs that needed to be done.

As it turned out, I was pretty good at herding cats actors. I could generally get people to fill unpopular spots. Well, I could at least get one night’s use out of them before they found creative reasons to not take on those roles.

“Hey, Stacy, I have you signed up to get in the clown bed tonight.”

“I’m claustrophobic.”

“You weren’t last week.”

“I am now.”

Lesson learned: Get actors to tell you up front about their health conditions. Because it’s hard to say, “I’m claustrophic,” after you’ve signed off on a form declaring you’re not.

The clown bed in question was a glorified box. We needed smallish actors to put on a clown costume, climb inside the rectangular box that looked something like a bed, and, upon seeing the flash of a strobe light, lift the “mattress” and cackle madly.

No one - no one – wanted to be the clown. On the occasions where our clown for the night abandoned their post halfway through the night, varied people would agree to hop into the bed, clown costume or not, and do the scare. My personal favourite moment was when Bazil the house butler lunged from the bed, snarling, “I’m not a clown, but I’ll kill you anyway!”

I’m fairly small, and so I ended up hopping into the bed more than once. I’d never done scares before, but this seemed like a fairly easy bit of sorta-acting. Wearing my black lace dress and a clown mask, I hunkered down inside the bed and awaited my cue.

*strobe light*

I popped out of the bed and let out a wild high-pitched laugh, then tried to hurry up and lower the “mattress” back down so I was ready for the next group.

The “mattress” in question was a piece of hinged plywood.

I am a klutz.

I nearly knocked myself out with that damned thing.

Dizzily, I collapsed to the floor inside the bed. Next door, I heard an unidentified scare actor hiss at someone in a tone that was both awed and horrified, “Who the HELL is in the clown bed?”

Lesson learned: Scary screams and cackles? I has them.


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Yahoo mail hates me right now.

I rebooted my computer because I was having a few small performance issues ("That's what he said!") and discovered I missed a bunch of comments because Yahoo Mail hid them from me.

Now it's being wicked slow in showing me said comments.

If I could spank my mailbox, I so would.

Haunting Tales: Take it off, baby!!

So my standard dress at Grisly for my first year was a black lace dress. Generally speaking, it did exactly what I needed: it looked vaguely Victorian, and was generic enough to allow me to blend into wherever I needed to be in the haunt.

Outside of sometimes playing the part of a homicidal cackling clown, my job during hours of operation was to make sure my little cherubs were in their spots and doing their jobs, and to give people breaks or drinks as needed.

We were working in a stable, which was in general pretty cool, so the actors wore a few layers of clothing to keep warm. Halloween night that year was unseasonably warm. One guide passed out. Everyone was wicked uncomfortable. And I was worried about the person playing our mad scientist for the evening, because she had on a few too many layers.

I didn’t know the role well enough to jump in for Nicole, and we were too busy to stop the line long enough to give her time to go get undressed. So I shadowed a group going through the attraction and as soon as they had left the lab, I attacked Nicole and started tearing off her clothing.

“WHAT the…what are you DOING?”

“Quick!” I hissed. “We’ve GOT to get you cooled off! Take off anything you don’t need to be wearing!”

Oh, yes…grace and poise at all times.


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Blogathon update:

Someone who's sorta new to the Blogathon lists - but has been blogging all day - is aurora_lamour.

She's raising money for the Oklahoma chapter of the Lupus Foundation of America. She's also fielding questions about lupus, fibromyalgia, thyroid disorders, and more. :)

Take a moment, pretty please, and go over to see what she has to say!

Blogathon: O hai virus!

Sooooo this update is breaking my self-imposed rule of not posting filler, because I have suddenly been hit by a virus.

I am frantic but we are working on it and I'm going to go look into getting the back-up laptop running.

Send good thoughts, folks.

(No donation link for this update.)

BlogathonL Still borked.

Back-up laptop is being an old cranky bitch.

sealgair and her sweetie are working with my workhorse laptop and I'm afraid of the actual diagnosis.

No donation link - this doesn't really count as an update.

Haunting Tales: It's alive! Well..maybe not.

(Because that topic seems damned fitting right now.)

One of my goals at Grisly was to be able to fill in any role, just in case someone needed a break or had to leave or anything of the sort.

In our mad scientist room, we had a Frankenstein's Monster table that was designed for people of a certain height to be able to control by lying across it and, with a slight kick of their legs, make the table pivot down, cautiously launching the "monster" off the table and into the lab so he could "kill" the doctor.

On the night of which I write, I'd told my "monster" to take a break because I thought we had enough of a gap between breaks that he wouldn't be needed.

I was wrong.

"Crap! Quick, get me on the table!" I gasped to the mad scientist of the evening, who helped hold the table while I pulled a monster mask on and climbed aboard.

I am, however, MUCH MUCH MUCH too short to control this table. My weight is distributed wrongly, and I hadn't a hope in Hell of keeping the table balanced until I was ready to be moved by the table from a prone to an upright position.

This means that, no sooner had the scientist removed her hand from the table, I was being flung across the room and into the opposite wall.

...OW.

But oh CRAP that group is almost here, and I was crying behind my mask but I was bound and determined to get back up on that table, and so I did, sobbing, "Ok..just..hold it as long you can and please GOD don't let me die doing this..."

Clinging to the sides of the table, I looked up through my tears to see my "monster" looking down at me with a puzzled look on his face.

"Is there a problem?"

"GET ME THE HELL OF THIS THING!!" He and the scientist peeled me from the table and I scurried off behind a wall as the group turned a corner and came into the scene.

Lesson learned: I have my limits. Dammit.


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Blogging from the Land of Bork

Yeah, it's kinda like that.




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Blogathon: Hysteria and panic, we haz it.

sealgair and elfowls_nest and Lionel and irisl and Myk are all saints.

It takes a damn village to talk me down.

Back-up laptop from hughcasey refuses to allow me to log online.

adelheid_p may be coming to the rescue.

Backing data off the borked laptop now.

Good times...good times.

(No donation link because this is not the post you're looking for. Back soon. Trying like hell.)

Annnd we're back!

(adelheid_p has come to my rescue with a back-up computer! I feel like I have a lot of catch-up to do. We'll see if I can actually manage that.)

Grisly Gothic Gables was a very theatrical, Addams Family-esque haunted house. No gore, lots of pretty. We conducted tours though the manse, telling tales of varied family members and triggering cues for our scare actors.

Sometimes we found it necessary/helpful to have a person follow behind a group to keep the group together. In most haunted houses, groups tend to merge into one huge conga line of people; in Grisly, because of the scripts and the sizes of the rooms, we really needed to keep people contained into groups of 6 to 10 people. And so the position of the back guide was created.

Not our best move.

Because you see, once someone became a back guide, they were apparently only really good for herding jobs of varied types.

I can sorta understand. It was perhaps the most fun job to have, because you got to see people’s reactions as well as what your fellow haunt actors were doing, and you really didn’t have the pressure of performing or – well – actually working.

cussingeorge put together a song mix one year that included varied quotes from our guides dubbed over a song by Primus. Perhaps the best part of said song was the use of a back guide’s repeated instructions to, “STAY with your GUIDE!” I wish I had that available RIGHT NOW so y’all could hear it. It’s fabulous.

We also found that – as odd as it sounds – a volunteer staff was vastly better than a paid staff. Over and over, it was proven true that once you paid people to come in and act, they were there more for the paycheck than for the love of Halloween. Conversely, it is – obviously – much easier to fill a haunt with cast if you’re offering them even a token paycheck.

My official transformation into becoming a haunt actor happened out of necessity. Our cast had dwindled quite a bit, and because I was a huge fan of the show, I’d watched enough videos of tours to have learned the general script/spiel.

The black lace dress was swapped out for a ruched mostly-red Ercoli gown. My hair was back-combed like crazy. And when I’ve watched Minion on video (sadly, I don’t have that available online to share right now)..man was she mean. It’s very disconcerting to watch a video that you know is of you and to really not be able to see yourself there.

(This is probably further proof that I’m not really an actor.)

Guiding at Grisly was a constant challenge. How do you control a panicked group? How do you project so everyone can hear you over the ambient sounds around you? How do you keep up the energy to give your tiny audience a good show each and every time? How do you keep yourself and your fellow cast mates safe?

Sometimes Grisly was too much of a challenge. I’m not convinced that, had I stayed in Philadelphia, I would have continued working in the haunted attraction industry. But damn, I loved that show, and I loved that core cast, and part of me still not-so-secretly wishes for the day Allan puts out the word that we’re raising the family home one more time.


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Haunting Tales: Erzie the Fish Bride

So I’ve written about how exactly I came to be a haunt actor. One of the things that makes me eminently useful in a haunted attraction is that I can also scream my head off all night and not lose my voice.

Yessirree, I’m a screamer. Makes me SO popular with the boys, too!

..Ahem.

ANYWAY. One of the roles at Grisly that was often difficult to fill was that of Erzabet Grisly. Many haunts incorporate the idea of a cursed bride into their storyline. We handled the plot point a little differently. Some years, Erzabet was cursed because she was interrupted during her wedding preparations, and her bloody reflection pulled her into her mirror. Other years – most years – she found her groom in a compromising position on their wedding night with Raven the chamber maid, and in a fit of rage tried to cut out his heart.

(We did this sans gore. Because that’s the way the Grislys roll, y0.)

The biggest issue with the role of Erzabet was that she needed to be able to let out a quality shriek without blowing out her vocal cords. It’s a little surprising to me how many women actually physically cannot scream.

I do not have this problem.

One year, Grisly was set up in the basement of a farmer’s market. Erzabet’s attic was positioned directly underneath the fish market portion of said location, and just about every night there would be a puddle of slimy fish water in the room. One of the first things on Allan’s agenda, therefore, was to make sure that water had been dryvacc’ed up and removed from said room.

Usually he remembered to do both parts of this task.

..Usually.

So here I am, in a wedding gown, sans glasses, getting ready to leap like a gazelle from a coffin at a group of visitors.

I wait for the cue.

I leap, screaming.

…Annnnd I hit that bucket of fish water.

“SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE-squeak!”

Thus was Erzie the Fish Bride born.

SLOWLY I turned after the group had left my room and, holding the dress as far away from me as I could, I went off in search of Allan.

Who looked horrified and walked backwards away from me, stuttering out an apology.

“Just make sure this thing gets cleaned by tomorrow night,” I said through gritted teeth.

Lesson learned: Always have a back-up costume. Just in case.


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Donation thank yous!

This one is a little vague and I very much apologize for that. With the..shall we say coma of my usual computer, I've lost the password to check the LiveStrong donation page.

I see we're up to $400 but I'm not sure who put us there! :(

BUT...thank you so much, As-Yet-Unknown-Donor! :) To have donated when my content has not been of the quality I'm aiming for..well, that's perfectly fabulous of you. I'll do better. I promise. <3

ETA: Oh! It's justthedriver! Woo!!

I'm a little off right now in part because Lurk is definitely not feeling well. He's currently sulking under elfowls_nest's sewing table, letting me know in no uncertain yowling terms that he's not happy, thankyouVERYmuch. :( x a lot

Haunting Tales: You wanna cut out my WHAT??

During most of my time at Grisly, I did not wear contacts. You’d think that after Erzie the Fish Bride I’d have figured out that I’m way too damn near-sighted to get away with just not wearing my glasses, and I have an admitted prejudice against wearing my glasses whilst in costume unless the costume really seems to call for it.

I did try to get fitted for contacts, and was told by my eye doctor, “No, you’re a very bad candidate for them.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because you’re digging holes into my chair with your fingernails at the idea of me putting a lens into your eye.”

“…Oh.”

So yet another year at Grisly – I believe it was the year after the farmer’s market location – we were in one of the Fairmount Park mansions - but oh, NOT one of the ones you see photographed so beautifully here, though we did inhabit the recently-renovated Rockland Mansion a few times..and goodness, it’s great to see it looking so spiffy!! – Erzie’s attic was the first room of the maze.

(That was a horrible sentence. Just so you know I know.)

ANYWAY. The room could perhaps have been set up a teeny bit better than it was. Erzie’s coffin was facing the entrance to the haunt. I was supposed to wait until the guide had gotten her or his group into the room and away from the door; then, at the proper cue, I would leap out screaming and attack one of the ‘corpses’ scattered around the space, scaring the group forward.

It looks good on paper.

Now, here’s the dealio: One should never never NEVER NEVER NEVER touch a person in a haunted house. (Ok, maybe sometimes. But your average haunt actor shouldn’t know there are exceptions to this rule. So just don’t tell anyone I told you this, ‘kay?) And if you’re a monster and you’re all RAWRGH I’M A-GONNA KILL YOU!! and, um, you don’t kill me?

Lame.

Kill me or get the hell away from me.

Generally, “get the hell away from me” means “get out of the room so the not-dead-yet visitors don’t get a good look at you.” In this case, I didn’t have anywhere to hide..which is why I was supposed to attack a “corpse” and stab away at it with my huge plastic dagger.

So – yay, here’s a group!
Here’s my cue!
Here I am shrieking and leaping and stabbing and I’m not wearing my glasses and…wow, that group of men just sorta squeaked and scampered away. Not quite the reaction I anticipated. I wonder what….I…..OH.

Blind as a bat, I had intended to attack my victim’s chest, trying to stab his heart.

Instead? I was enthusiastically stabbing at his crotch.

*facepalm*

Lesson learned: Get over your issues and get those damned contacts already.


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I'm blogging this.

"I can't tell where I put the satyr."

"If you can't tell where you put the satyr, he can't be a very good satyr!"

I'm blogging this, too.

Even though it's already been tweeted.

sealgair is blogging BPAL reviews. (Go read!)

She just wrote about Snake Oil.

elfowls_nest offered up her own review..."Snake Oil: comes in darn handy when your snake starts to squeak!"

(Followed by, "Actually if your snake starts squeaking you should *probably* go see a doctor, pronto.")

<3

Haunting Tales: Pig Piles

“...So we were at the haunt last night, and this group pig-piled..”

“What does that mean?”

Bazil looked at my husband in disbelief. “You don't know what a pig pile is?”

“No.”

“Ok. Imagine this. You have an entrance on one side of a room. There's an obvious exit on the other side. And there's a scare in the corner opposite the entrance.”

“..Ok.”

“Now, if you come into the room and someone scares you, which way are you going to run?”

“Towards the exit.”

“Wrong. You're going to scream, jump on top of everyone else in your group, and knock down a wall, thereby creating your own exit.”

“Wha?”

"Like this!" And Bazil proceeded to take a flying leap on top of Jason, knocking him to the ground.

“That's a pig-pile.”

And that, my friends, is what haunting in Philadelphia is like.

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Lurk is not feeling well.

He is telling me - and the entire household - so in loud cranky "MROW!"

I threatened to sing the following to him. The mere threat made him move out of reach of my proffered petting.

And so I shall torture y'all with the song instead..made more perfect because it's so true. For lo! I am pussy whipped.

Oh you better KNOW I'm going there!