Blog Archives
I’m thinking that if you have a dog, you don’t need this
It pays to always have my Canon 550D just inches from my hand so that as I’m driving, I can snap a picture, like this one:
Really? There were no dogs in line to get themselves washed, but I do hope this business succeeds. I’ll have to check a few times later in the summer to see if all those sandy, salty dogs from Dog Beach just down the road go here to get all cleaned up.
Looking for real estate services in San Diego County?
I can highly recommend
James Frimmer, Realtor
Century 21 Award, DRE #01458572
If you’re looking for a home inspector,
I recommend Russel Ray — that’s me!
The story behind Zoey the Cool Cat
I grew up in the farming and ranching community of Kingsville, Texas, population 23,000 or so. My family, however, were railroaders with Missouri Pacific Railroad until my third oldest uncle bought a ton of land and created his own ranch.
I’ve had every kind of pet you can possibly imagine — Great Horned Owl, Screech Owl family, snakes, pigs, horses, cattle, fish, dogs, cats, hamsters, guinea pigs, rats, mice, even a monkey which I eventually had to give up to the San Antonio Zoo.
My favorite pets were always dogs. My first was Bosco, a mutt. Then I had Bougher, a Welsh corghi. Then it was a pair of purebred beagles, Union and Pacific (named after the Union Pacific Railroad). Then Sugar, a chow/besenji mix, and Penny, a long-haired dachshund.
Sugar rode on the back of my motorcyle with me.
I disappeared from College Station, Texas, on April 15, 1993, letting only one friend know what I was doing. He came down from Waco, Texas, and took the two dogs. I took off in my 1989 Ford Mustang GT for who knows where, eventually winding up in San Diego. I never went back to Texas. Midlife crisis, I am here.
I didn’t have any pets from 1993 to 2006. On Thanksgiving Day 2006, a feral black cat came to visit me. I gave her food and milk; she accepted everything and then took off. Nothing like eating and running.
She returned on Christmas Eve. I guess she understood human holidays. I gave her more food and milk; this time she stayed. Jim named her Sophie.
We tried to make Sophie into an indoor cat. She was happy being inside until the sun went down. Then she would howl and howl until we opened the door to let her out. She’d come back the next morning and scratch on our bedroom window to let us know that she was back and wanted in. Sometimes she’d bring us a gopher, or snake, or rat, or bird………… Typical cat.
On September 19, 2007, in the wee hours of the morning, Sophie was hit and killed by a car. A black cat on a black asphalt road in the black of night. I knew it would happen eventually. A neighborhood lady found her smashed body, removed her nametag, wrapped her in some old towels, and called to tell me what had happened. I went and got Sophie from the side of the road and gave her a proper burial. Unfortunately, I unwrapped the towels to make sure that it was our Sophie. It was, but it was the most gruesome sight I have ever seen. I was devastated.
You can see more pictures of Sophie at her memorial web site.
That afternoon Jim and I went down to the El Cajon Animal Shelter to get a cat……….. an indoor cat. We settled on Zoey, with the name spelled Zoe. We were not able to pick her up until 24 hours later. I added the Y to Zoe to create Zoey, so that it would rhyme in sight and sound with Joey. Makes sense.
Zoey had been with us about three hours when she took this position in the chair in which I sit at this very moment:
“What a cool cat!” I remarked, and after that it was always “Zoey the Cool Cat.”
I am now officially a cat person.
SNIPPETS are short posts about anything and everything.
Each SNIPPETS will have at leasst one picture.
After all, this is Russel Ray Photos.
Looking for real estate services in San Diego County?
I recommend
James Frimmer, Realtor
Century 21 Award, DRE #01458572
If you’re looking for a home inspector,
I recommend Russel Ray (that’s me!)
I went out birdwatching and came home with these….
I went out birdwatching early yesterday morning with the San Diego Beginning Birders.
Although I got lots of good bird pictures (San Diego: A bird-lover’s paradise), I also came home with pictures of some of our fine, furry, four-legged friends.
I particularly like the last picture of the dog resting on the picnic table waiting for his master to return. Master had gone to the edge of the woods to spread some bread for the birds.
Find other posts in my Picture of the Moment series by clicking on the logo at the upper right.
Two women, two dogs, one picture
I don’t take too many pictures of people, preferring nature and inanimate objects, but sometimes when I’m out and about I’ll see a picture of people that is too good to pass up, such as this one:
I thought that the two elderly women with their beautiful dogs, and one woman taking a picture, made a great picture.
I had a lot of extraneous feet at the top of the picture which I removed using Corel Paintshop Pro X4.
The picture was taken on November 23, 2011, when several hundred people (including me!) interrupted their Thanksgiving preparations to head to Mission Bay in San Diego to watch the recovery and necropsy of a dead fin whale:
The fin whale (Balaenoptera physalus) is the second longest whale, getting up to 88 feet long, and the sixth largest living animal. Although a fin whale has never been weighed, estimates are that they average about 70,000 pounds but at their longest and heaviest, they could potentially get up to 150,000 pounds.
This fin whale was determined to have died from a ship strike, a common cause of death for whales along the Pacific Coast. It was a female and was pregnant at the time it was hit by a ship; the baby was expelled by decomposition gases after death and floated out to sea.
Marine biologists also gathered specimens from this fin whale; since it was pregnant, those specimens can provide valuable data about this endangered species. After the necropsy, it was towed about five miles out to sea where it was sunk to the ocean floor using about 25,000 pounds of steel. Over the next few years, marine biologists will study how it decomposes, what marine life feeds on it, and generally how dead whales contribute to the life of the ocean.
