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!

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…:)

Cheech has been bringing home (he stashes all of his prizes in the guest bed and bath) frogs, geckos, lizards and birds on the regular basis. A few of the lizards he brought back were pretty big, maybe 8 or 10 inches long. I prefer to remove the big lizards with a bucket when I find them alive, they creep me out.

Last week, a mother bird was dive bombing us when we walked across the driveway by our African Violet tree. She had a nest on one of the branches. It started dive bombing cheech on the regular and cheech started getting little cuts on the back of his head from where the birds were sticking him. Cheech probably never would have known they were even up there if they weren’t protecting their territory so diligently. As of today, the bird is no longer dive bombing us AND we found a cleaned up a bunch of feathers three days ago. My guess is Cheech turned around and got the bird doing some sort of Judo flying 360 attack move. Poor little guy. Cheech is a killer.

There is always a new crew in the bathroom each day…This guy escaped the cat of death with a little less tail.

This guy was resting up behind the trashcan, waiting to make his break.

Yes, we clean blood off of the floor everyday. Thanks Cheech…

I am a killer because I use gas powered yard tools. Apparently, my weapon of choice is our Weed Wacker. I mean well, but I haven’t been doing so good. After mowing the entire yard (a lot of areas are still more rock than grass) I go around and weed eat around the driveway rocks and plants. The areas that usually become very overgrown always create problems for me. I don’t see a plant deep down in the Elephant Grass or I am trimming around the plant and the plastic cords catch a rock, root or branch and pull the machine right up to the plant and it gets chopped in half.

Weed Eater Attributed Deaths: 5
Vehicle Related Deaths: 1

I am going to be scary with a chainsaw.

When Stefan 1st told me that Monkey’s nose was bleeding, I figured she had a scratch and it was a little bloody (no big deal). But, no. Monkey had a constant stream of blood, with gross meaty-looking blood clots pouring out of her nose, with no reason to be found. I was raised around animals (mom was a dog breeder, hung out in vet clinics, had horses, chickens, birthed puppies, etc.) and never had I seen an animal bleeding out of its nose for no apparent reason, so that is quite concerning to begin with. Then, not being able to stop the bleeding is a horribly helpless feeling. Could you imagine your child bleeding out through the nose and having to tell them, “Well, I hope you make it through the night because it’s Sunday and hospitals in Puerto Rico are not open right now…”

Any how, after the vet visit and medication, Monkey certainly does seem to be feeling MUCH better today and her nose did finally stop bleeding, so that is very encouraging news.

The night before the vet visit, Monkey decided to sleep in the storage room, on the queen size mattress Mark let us borrow (sorry, Mark! We owe you a new, less bloody replacement)…

Lots of blood loss is scary

There is literally blood everywhere downstairs. The bed, the floor, the walls. There was even blood spatter from one end of the room to the walls on the other end (7 – 8 feet?) from Monkey trying to sneeze out the blood that was coagulated in her poor little Monkey nose. So sad! I’m so glad she is feeling better. Fingers still crossed.

Extreme close up!! Cheech, buddy, are you okay??!!

Don’t worry, he snapped out of it…

Literally. We spend at least a few hours a week, yanking those little blood suckers off of our poor pups. And, it’s not like we don’t try and protect our dogs, it’s just that nothing seems to work. We have our dogs on Advantix (a monthly treatment) and we are constantly giving them flea/tick bathes. As a matter of fact, we have bathed them twice in the last 3 days and we still spent 30 minutes picking ticks off of the dogs today.

Our friends RT and Nora had to take their dogs to the vet to be sedated in order to remove all of the ticks from them.

Another friend uses tick pesticides intended for horses, on his dog.

I don’t know what else to do. Ticks are so gross!! Does anyone else have any suggestions on how we can keep the ticks off of our dogs in Puerto Rico?!

Tick Solution Update

We found a combo of products that have been keeping the ticks and flees off of the dogs;

1. Frontline drops every month
2. Advantax Flee Collar

This combo has worked like a charm keeping ticks and flea’s off our dogs in Puerto Rico.

Kuta and Monkey do a really good job scaring off our neighbors goats on the nightly basis. Don’t take this the wrong way though, the goats are fenced in and can’t come into our yard. But Kuta and Monkey know that they are dangerous beasts so they periodically run outside and bark at them (next to our window) through out the night to deter them from even trying to break out of their pen. Evil goats.

Cheech does a good job killing critters, making sure I don’t sleep all night (attacking face/crotch at the wee hours of the morning) and making sure the house doesn’t get flooded by emptying the toilets on a regular basis.

Team Work Gets the Job Done