One of the many pluses of our trees/grass/plants growing in, is that it has made the temperature at our house much cooler. All of the added shade and greenery has literary lowered the temperature at our house by 5 – 10 degrees and made our property a lot more temperate. And ready for a fishtank! After I purchased the tank, I ordered live aquarium plants and real stone gravel online. I prefer live plants and real gravel to the plastic stuff, as the real stuff is beneficial to the fish and creates a little self sustaining eco-system. That means less cleaning and healthier fish. Win-win!

Once the plants and gravel arrived in the mail, I set up the tank and headed to the Mayaguez mall for some fish. There is a little pet shop kiosk there and the two kids working the store were very knowledgable and helpful, even with my bad Spanish. I purchased 2 bettas (1 male, 1 female), 3 tiger barbs and 2 gouramis. All of these types of fish are semi-aggressive, which means they can hold their own. (It’s important to keep the same temperament of fish together in an aquarium or else they will fight/nip/annoy the less aggressive species to death.)

Our new fish / Nuestro peces nuevos:

Sydney LOVES the new fish and looks forward to feeding them everyday. The fishtank as a whole adds a great element to our living room and, in my opinion, is much more fun to watch then TV.

Spanish fish hobby words:

Aquarium = Acuario
Freshwater = Agua Dulce
Fish = Peces

I have one freshwater aquarium with seven semi-aggressive fish. = Yo tengo un acuario agua dulce con siete peces semi-agresivo.

(please feel free to correct any of my bad Spanish …)

I did a bit of research and not wanting to risk acquiring any more roosters, I decided to order pre-sexed chicks online from a professional hatchery. The minimum order is 15 chicks, so I purchased 5 Salmon Faverolle chickens and 10 Ameraucanas (or Easter Egg Chickens). The Salmon Faverolle’s are unique because they have an extra toe on each foot, feathered legs and a beard, and the Ameraucanas are cool because they lay colored eggs (green, blue and pink). 15 new chickens seemed like an awful lot, so I sold a couple of the Ameraucanas, and unfortunately we lost a few chicks to the perils of Puerto Rico. Monkey the dog killed one, Chichieto the cat killed two and a mongoose got two more. So the new chicks have been culled down to 7 Ameraucanas and 1 surviving Salmon Faverolle.

This is the sole surviving Salmon Faverolle, whom I’ve named “Skipper”:

“Hi! My name is Skipper and I’m a Salmon Faverolle chicken. I’m from Missouri and moved to Puerto Rico when I was one day old. Please don’t ask about my 4 sisters. Thanks.”

Our newest chickens are now 3 months old, so we should start getting eggs in the next month or two. Pictures of the Ameraucanas and their pretty colored eggs to follow!

The Washington Post reports:

“A shark estimated at 6 feet (1.8 meters) long bit a U.S. tourist earlier this week while she swam in a popular bioluminescent bay at night, doctors said Thursday.

Her mother said Strunk was doing much better, seeming to improve by the hour. She declined to go into details about the incident.

Stefan, my mom and I recently did the bioluminescent bay tour (the one in Parquera)…Yikes! It was creepy enough swimming around in that murky bay at night. Now that I know there may very well be sharks there, I won’t be doing that again!

Rooster on the Front Porch

Our crazy rooster, that attacks Summer all the time, is quite brave. This afternoon, he (and his hens) were cruising around the front yard and decided to take a closer look at how humans live in Rincon. He cruised right up to the porch like it was nobody’s business and claimed the house as his own. Summer, Sydney and I are moving to the chicken coop next week.

Cheech the Cat Likes the Baby Chickens

Cheech absolutely loves the new chickens. He doesn’t want to eat them at all. He is just inspecting them to make sure none of them are sick or need medical attention. Cheechers says meow!!!

The horses we have won’t eat apples, they won’t eat carrots but they will eat the heck out of some bananas, palm trees and grass. I think it’s a Puerto Rico thing. We surrounded the pasture with new barbed wire fence before the girls moved in and placed the fence about 2 feet back from our row of plants we strategically planted to block the view of the water plant in the summer. Once the horses either trampled or ate all of the grass we had in their pasture they started reaching through the fence and eating grass as far as they could reach (makes weed eating around the fence unnecessary). While they were over there, they found about 4 palm trees and a bread fruit tree and decided to eat them as well.

The horses are only going to be temporary so I didn’t think much of it, I figured I would replant once they moved out and put up a fence that they can’t reach through. Well, all that went out the window two weeks ago when they reached through the fence again and reached another palm, a McArthor palm and the corner of yet another Eureka palm. Conner and I decided to put up some fencing right away to avoid loosing those three plants like the other 5 we have already lost to the horses.

Hopefully this will do the trick, although the little girl (we call her Jackson) is biting at the fence trying to pull it away. I’ll keep my fingers crossed that the posts hold up. If they get out of the pasture they would reek havoc on our palm and fruit tree filled front yard.

Around 2:30am the dogs started flipping out, so I got out of bed to see what the commotion was all about. There were 4 very large cows in the front yard chowing on our plants. I love our plants. We are very attached to them. They have been chopped down by horses and now cows? I wasn’t having it. I put on shoes and ran up the driveway trying to shoo them off. I got to within touching distance of the closest cows face screaming and clapping but he wouldn’t budge. That’s when I realized it was a bull. Hmmm….don’t these things try to run people over that are in their way?

I picked my arms into the air and tried to make myself as big as possible and starting stomping, screaming and clapping and sprinted towards the bull. Well, that did it, he turned away and ran away and all the other cows followed. I really am such a city kid, cause I wasn’t really feeling the whole, “Get in the cows face” thing to scare it off.

Once they got out of the yard, I rehung the barbed wire fence we had up there that we were using to keep the neighbors horses out just last week. The plants are safe again, we can all rest easy.

Wooly Kuta Dog

Kuta with his right side done:

Almost there:

Luckly, Kuta likes getting shaved (it tickles him) and he is SO much happier after getting all of that hair shaved off! He’s back to running around the yard, where are before he would just lay in the house panting.

We actually have these two cute horses on loan from a friend (they needed a bigger place to stay and we needed some lawn mowers), and I can’t remember the momma horses name, but I am calling the baby horse “Jackson” because he has a sweet afro mane.

We fenced in about 1/4th of our property for the horses to graze and it seems to be working out well. Kinda nice to be able to test drive some large farm animals before we commit, but so far Stefan thinks having horses is way sweeter then hours and hours of machete work…:)

His cat, Ham, cruised in through the cat door of his house with a mouse in his mouth a couple weeks ago in the middle of the night. Hammy, with the mouse in his mouth, hopped up on Eric’s bed (his wife was sleeping) and dropped the mouse in the middle of them. The mouse took off through the covers, hoped on to the floor and darted down the hallway to the master closet.

Side Note: His other cats name is Cheese. Get it, Ham and Cheese.

This story was brought on by the fact that Cheech keeps bringing baby mice into the house, through the great room and right into the guest bathroom. He drops them and lets them run around and he chases them, swats at them and eventually kills them (if I don’t get in there and save them). I wouldn’t want to be killed by cheech, he is cold blooded ruthless murderer.

This morning I went into the bathroom to brush my teeth and there was blood all over the floor and there was a very large rat in the corner behind the toilet and trash can. It was very dead.

The first thing that popped into my head was that this thing is half the size of Cheech! I can’t imagine him trotting through the front door with that thing in his mouth. So, the second thing that popped into my head was, did he catch it in the house? So, instead of trying to resolve this mystery, I cleaned it up and now I am blogging about it.

Kuta is an Australian Shepperd. Here are some pictures of him: