Max and Tyler’s blog

Hairy the groundhog

Originally uploaded by tb0n3z

Finally got the little dood! Hairy woke up today probably due to the temp (85 deg). We had despaired of him ever falling for our humane trap, but he did! The dogs went nuts when they found him in his trap, and he took a quick trip to the Humane Society who will either release him or humanely euthanize him if he can’t be released.

It’s driving me nuts that I can’t find his second entrance. I filled in the first one, and it’s undisturbed. We are NOT discussing the fact that this could be a second groundhog. Still, the trap is going back out for a while if it stays this warm.

So, we have this groundhog.  We’ve called it Harry.  It has grown quite humongous over the last few weeks when we catch a glimpe of it in the backyard.  It has taken over a part of our garage, where it has dug a nice deep hole to who-knows-where.  After much discussion, we have decided to attempt a catch and release program… so Tyler purchased a live trap (a big cage, really) over the internet and he set it up tonight, with some fresh fruit and veggies as bait.  We’ll let you know

At the Minnesota Zoo

what happens!  We’re afraid perhaps Harry has already started hibernating, despite our recent warm days.

Unrelated to Harry, we had a nice weekend visit from my dad Bill, and step-mom Ruthann, this past weekend.   We went to the Minnesota Zoo on Saturday and saw many wonderful and amazing animals, and the new exhibit on “Russia’s Grizzly Coast” with 3 grizzly bears, 2 Amur Leopards, Sea Otters and Wild Boars.  As usual, Dad took a whole lot of amazing pictures of animals and landscapes — but this is one of only about 3 pictures of people we got with his camera that day!  I’ll include one of his best animal pics too.

just sitting around at the MN Zoo

Sept 2008 Anneke Trip

Originally uploaded by tb0n3z

I bet she’s thinking, “Wow, my arms are about to merge with my ears. Put me down you big oaf.” But it looks cute anyway. As Uncle I had to come up with something special that we could do that would worry her mom a bit, so we did a lot of “flying baby” (which wasn’t all that risky since you still have to hold her head all the time). But it is a nearly surefire crying cessation ploy! So now Mom & Dad started using it. I’ll have to find something else.

Rosanne and Anneke

Originally uploaded by tb0n3z

Like many families, I’m sure we’re ascribing far more to this kid than she’s really thinking beyond “boob! sleep! poop! change me!” … but wow she has some pensive, thoughtful expressions. Rosanne is such a fantastic mom, too! And look – look at the Anneke hold her head up! This is just shy of 3 weeks. She’s already ahead of the curve, she constantly tries to do pushups to hold herself up and sometime succeeds.

Sept 2008 Anneke Trip

Originally uploaded by tb0n3z

Ok, Anneke’s pretty much the cutest thing on the planet, but the dogs are still pretty darn cute. Here’s how they waited for us everytime we ran in somewhere to go to the bathroom or grab food/gas. Matty already knew “in the back!” as a command, and now Sweetie does as well (yes, we’ve given up on Sammy/Mickey/etc … we just can’t make it stick and are back to calling her Sweetie Pie).