Toads

 This is the swing that is on our front porch. It hangs from a couple of chain from the roof. Nice place to sit in the evenings. The other day I decided to lift the cushion and get some loose leaves out from under it. Surprise! There was a little gray toad under the cushion. I moved it off and over into the bushes around the porch. On checking the next day it was there again. I am glad there was no sign that we had sat on the cushion and squished a toad at some point. Now every time we go to sit we have to check for our pet toad. What I can't understand is why it wants to get into the swing that is about 2 feet off the concrete floor. That is quite a jump for a little toad.

 There are lots of these little gray toads around here. I don't mind them as they eat lots of bugs. They don't seem to get any bigger that a few inches. Below is one I found down in one of the flower pots one day.

Pets

After I put up the post on hand washing someone posted that maybe my pets were dirty. No, I don't figure that my pets are squeaky clean. But I do know they are cleaner than some pets I have been around. And even some people, I pulled out a few of my photos of the pets we have at this time. You may have seen them on some of my other posts. Ziva, the dog, gets brushed several times a week. I don't give her a bath as often as I should but she is frequently out in a rain shower and gets a rub down with one of her towels when we come in. The cats get brushed but no baths. I do use a wet towel to rub them down with when I think they need it. The don't even like that. I know people that do bathe there cats but I am not that fond of being scratched and I know my cats would scratch. I have bathed small kittens that needed it but my grown cats would be a handful to do. Even though the dog and cats are fairly clean they are hairy. I brush and brush and of course there are still hairs. Now and then I have spit cat hairs all my life. But I still don't like to eat them.First photo is of Ziva enjoying the snow last winter. The one little inch of snow we had the one time.

This is Silky. She is the only calico I have ever had out of the 25 cats that have been in my life.

This is Twinkie, the oldest of our cats. She is 8.

Silky again.

Ziva showing off the light coat we bought her the first winter we were here. This past winter was so warm she never needed it.

Ziva posing on the driveway.

Silky and her litter mate sister, Chantilly. Chantilly got blue eyes and Siamese marking from some relative. These two are 6 years old.

Cassie is a few weeks younger than Twinkie. They aren't sisters but we got them at the same time from Animal Control. She is my baby. She was only about 4 weeks old when we got her. I didn't have to put her on a bottle but thought she would never figure out how to drink kitten formula. She still acts as if she thinks I am her mom. Guess I am.

Cassie can be a real pest but we don't mind to much. Here she was inspecting the cupboards when we had the doors down to paint them.

This is Chantilly trying to take a nap.

Hand Washing - - -

    I still find it weird that apparently so many people are  not washing their hands enough. I have seen this problem mentioned on TV and the internet the past few years when there would be out breaks of the flu. I am seeing even more about it with the Coronavirus. I think that I wash my hands many times a day.
   So - - -
   I decided to keep a record of how many times I washed my hands in one day.
   1. When I got up in the morning.
   2. After I took the dog for her first walk of the day and put the bird feeders out.
   3. After I finished a cup of coffee and some cereal.
   4. After I inspected all my house plants out on the front porch and watered those that needed it.
   5. After I used the bathroom.
   6. After sitting and using my Kindle with the cat in my lap and I was petting her.
   7. So I could fix lunch even though I had washed just a few minutes before.
  8. After eating lunch as I had something a bit sticky on my fingers.
  9. After using the bathroom.
  10. After mowing part of the lawn.
  11. After taking the dog for another walk and getting the mail.
  12. Before staring to fix supper.
  13., 14, 15, 16 I think I washed my hands about 4 different times while fixing some  and making beans some mac and cheese.
  17, Took the dog for another walk so washed my hands since I had been petting her.
       Can I add in taking a shower here? Can that be counted as a hand washing time?
  18. Washed again before eating a couple of cookies. Wasn't sure if I had petted the dog or a cat but usually I have.
  19. Washed my hands before brushing my teeth.
  20. Cleaned the cats litter box so washed again.
  21. Washed after another round of petting and playing with the dog and the cats.

    So - - - 21 times I washed my hands in a normal day at home. There was probably more as I used the bathroom more times than those mentioned.
   Now if I had gone to the store there would have been a lot more times that I would have washed. Also, if I had done a lot more house work, like using the vacuum cleaner and mopping or dusting, or laundry, or made bigger meals there would have been a lot more hand washing as well as taking at least one shower each day.
    I don't know if this is an average number of times to be washing hands in an average day for an average person or not. I never counted before and don't know if anyone else has.
   I do think that people who work either wash their hands fewer times than I do in an average day or a lot more depending on what kind of job they do. Nurses and doctors probably wash their hands hundreds of times a day. As do waitresses, and any one that works in a kitchen. Maybe office workers don't. I remember washing only during breaks while I was doing most of the jobs I held in my life. It was usually the only chance I had to wash. Sometimes I worked office jobs and sometimes I worked as a cashier. And cashiers have to handle money. Money is one of the dirty-est things there is. My husband was a mechanic. He always had grease, oil, or gasoline on his hands. We both learned to wash our hands before we used the restroom and again afterward as do most people with those kinds of jobs.
   On the other hand - - - I had a friend that told me recently that her husband very seldom washed his hands. He drives her nuts not washing after using the restroom, and before eating. There is no way I could put up with that.
   So - - - Pandemic or not - - - -remember  - - - wash your hands. PLEASE

Who Would Have Thought ----------

   

I would have never thought that I would see what is going on in the world with Corona Virus. It never entered my wildest thought at any time in my life.
     My parents would be horrified to see what is going on, if they were still alive. My grandparents managed to not get the Spanish Flu in 1918. Maybe because they lived on small farms in very rural communities. I have been reading about different pandemics.
    Smallpox has killed more people than any other disease. Thank goodness we have a vaccine for it now, as we do for polio, measles, mumps, and the flu as well as many other diseases we don't want to get the way people used to always get. When I was a kid everyone got mumps, measles and chicken pox at some point when they were a child. I never knew of any one that died from these diseases but many children did. My son was vaccined against measles and mumps but there wasn't a vaccine against chicken pox in the 1980's as there is now. I remember that my parents were always taking us to the doctors for some sort of shot against something that had just been found. This was back in the 1950's. I guess we were lucky to get so many vaccines discovered at that time.
    The Black Death, or Plague, from about 1340 to 1350, was one of the worse pandemics before people learned about cleanliness and doctors leaned about germs and disease. The flu kills many people every year even now with most people getting a flu shot every year. So does Malaria, and AIDS. When I lived in New Mexico there would be a couple of cases of Hantavirus and The Plague each year although most people think those  diseases are gone. Legionnaires Disease still pops up every once in a while.
    Why do we keep thinking that there won't be any more pandemics? We think that because that is what we want. And then when we have another one, like now, most of us really don't know what to do.
    I really think that there are still a lot of people that do not understand how to be clean and keep germs down in their home. When I first saw things on TV and on the computer telling us how to wash our hands it really bamboozled me. I couldn't understand how anyone could not know that hand washing was one of the most necessary things that needed to be done to keep from getting sick. My parents allowed us to play in the dirt and we had all kinds of pets - dogs, cats, birds, fish, and turtles but we were always being told to wash our hands, with soap, after we were out making mud pies, or pulling weeks or petting the cats and dogs. We always had to wash before eating. I don't think we took baths or showers as often as I do now but we washed our faces and brushed our teeth each morning and every night before bed. We never seemed to be as sick from colds and flu as some of the other kids in school.
    I remember the story of how one family kept having cold after cold in their family. The doctor told the parents to let the dog lick the plates after they were finished eating, then to wash the plates like normal. They were leery of doing it but when they did the colds went away. Apparently the dishes were not being washed clean enough to get the germs off. Of course this was before the time of automatic dish washers. The saliva in a dogs mouth is known to kill lots of germs. But I don't think it would kill any of the Coronavirus germs.
   Nor do I think that a dogs saliva would have made a difference when the Plague was so bad in Europe. But cats did. Since the Plague seemed to be carried my rodents it was the cats that went out and killed the rodents that helped get rid of Plegue. Many people are upset that cats kill rodents saying it is mean to the little critter but if cats, and wild animals like foxes, coyotes, and  owls didn't kill mice we would be over run with them and that means we might have more deseases. I was horrified at how many mice were in the house we bought in Kentucky. Between my cats and some traps we seem to have gotten all of them that were in the house. But I do still see them out in the bean fields and in my yard when I go out at night sometimes. And no I will not use poison's to kill mice or other rodents. If an owl or hawk eats a mouse that has eaten poison the bird will die, too. That is not good.
     So ---- Who would have thought-----