How do you control your fleas?

Sweet baby Wolfie, momma misses you! 

Aside from Erick and myself, there are 6 furry little friends in residence. Dumpling (our rat) doesn't go outside so the chances of her getting fleas are about as high as her giving me the plague. (which, admittedly would be much higher if she had fleas!)  The cats are easy to dose, as much as I loath to do it I buy commercial flea meds for them and dutifully dab them on the back of the neck. The rabbits, are much trickier.  My fear of dosing my rabbits isn't unwarranted, because I've already lost a rabbit to conventional flea medications.

A few years back I rescued a little black lop and named him Wolfie. He was my little buddy, sitting on my lap while I surfed the web, skittering around on the wood floor in his Christmas sweater, even coming with me to work one day to meet 4 classrooms of kinder gardeners and first graders, which is a big deal since most rabbits like children about as much as I like getting my hair pulled by a giant with sticky hands. He helped kids learn about mammals, how to take good care of a rabbit, and how to be a good pet friend. This rabbit was very special, and my goal was to try and make him a service animal.

I made the mistake of taking him to a local vet for some flea control. He gave me frontline, which I dutifully dabbed on his neck before I took him in the yard to play. First his appetite slacked, then one day a few hours before a routine vet appointment he keeled over next to my bed seizing, making a noise that can only be described as someone shrieking and chattering their teeth at the same time. I drove, barefoot, 70mph and without my purse to the vet, where the vet apologized and said it had never happened to him before, but rabbits can occasionally DIE from frontline. He said Wolfie had about a 50/50 chance of recovering. I took him home where he continued to seize occasionally, then more frequently. He had to be fed by syringe, his little body going stiff and contorting and the horrible hissing/chittering sound of his teeth violently chattering. This went on for two weeks. He'd seem to make some headway, hopping over to greet me and jump in my lap, and then fall into another seizure.

My friend took this the day I put the frontline on him

This kept going on until one night I finally went out to a live art festival with the assurance my roommate (a trained vet tech) would watch him, telling me not to worry and that I shouldn't feel guilty since I'd been planning on doing this event for months. When I returned home, Wolfie was wrapped in his blanket on top of the cage, he'd died and I hadn't even been there to say good bye. I will never forgive myself for the suffering I caused him if I'd of just taken the 10 minutes to google to effects of frontline on rabbits, which it turns out is a well documented and common sense thing a small animal vet should have known.

After he died I told myself every thing that goes into or onto my rabbits is going to be SAFE. As of yet, everything that is rabbit approved is still made for cats and dogs, there isn't a rabbit specific product. We're told the kitten doses are safe and that's that.  That being said, another thing to consider is that these products are being pumped out by companies that test these products without conscious or care on cats, dogs and rabbits (in at least one situation, I think it's made by Bayer), and the pictures from their labs aren't pretty. I love my pets, but putting another animal through misery just isn't justifiable.

I'm at a crossroads here.  The alt. products I've tried so far have been disappointing, once I used a "natural" flea spray on one of my older cats and he smelled so awful I had to bathe him several times, and he still smelled like cinnamon until the day he died.

What I really want to know is how other people deal with this? Not specifically to rabbits, I know they're not a common indoor pet, but how do you all deal with fleas, ticks, and the like, on your pets in a way that's effective and in line with your beliefs? If I can find something that's effective and cruelty free, the cats are getting switched as well. Any ideas?

Lots O' Stuff! Also, I'm a terrible vegan. And photos of kittens!

     Where to begin? Oh yeah, our street is overrun with kittens!! One of our less scrupulous neighbors more or less abandoned their cat to the wiles of our neighborhood, and now she's barefoot and pregnant (or, was) and we have kittens rollicking around the back yard.

     All of our animal visits started when I brought home a St. Francis statue. First the baby raccoons, then we saw a momma and baby opossum in our yard. Then Erick saw the same one sitting in our lawn chair cackling at him. So creepy. And now kittens! I'm not religious, but this thing has some weird animal magnetism to it.

     They're unbelievably sweet though, facemeltingly cute, and all the other things that make my heart melt into a rainbow puddle on the floor. Erick is less amused. Mostly because he's convinced I'm going to try adopting five cats in one go. He knows me too well....
     In an act of shocking maturity, I'm trying to home them with other people instead of throwing them all on a blanket and rolling around on the floor with them in a giant pile of fuzzy goodness. And probably getting fleas. *sigh*

Speaking of cats, our two furry children turn one in July! Atticus and Finch were two rescues we adopted who were in a very dicey situation. Thankfully, most of their siblings avoided an early retirement and are living comfortably in local homes. Because I'm one of those people who shamelessly shows photos of my cats like I actually birthed them myself, here they are when they were wee:

Our furry little man Atticus, also known as Chatticus, Attybear, and Fuzzicus. You can't see it but he has an enormous bottle brush tail and looks somewhat like a mix between a sea otter and a raccoon. High on cute, not so high on common sense. He was the runt of the litter and almost died before he made it here. When he was still a baby we were convinced his health problems had left him a little... special. He would fall asleep sitting up like a person on the couch with us, totally upside down with his feet over his head, sprawled out on his back on the couch in an upside down superman, etc. Aside from his sleeping foibles, he was just a weird, weird little cat. Now he's a weird, weird slightly bigger cat. We love him all the more for his oddness, since it helps him fit in here.

The brains of the operation, Finch is somewhat more aloof, but can usually be found watching Atticus doing something dumb and learning from his mistakes. She is an avid climber and has gotten herself stuck several times on the screen door separating the rabbit pen from the rest of the basement. Also, she plays fetch. Seriously. Her eyes are now gold, which makes her look very classy. She is the most expressive cat I've ever met. One look at her face and you know EXACTLY what she's thinking. Usually that we're annoying.

                 Okay, now that I did the annoying cat mom thing, on to other more pressing topics! 

     The gardens are doing stupendously! We have lettuce coming out of our ears (we can feed ourselves and three rabbits and have some leftover off the bounty) and the zukes are growing! For two newbs who just tilled a patch and threw a bunch of shit in, we're doing a lot better than we were expecting. We're going to try and see if the local food banks would take fresh produce. Does anyone else do that or know if they take it?

It would have been so
much prettier!

     The bug situation is officially handled. I'm such a bad vegan :( we are now the owners of a ruthlessly efficient bug zapper. Some days you can't see the bulb through the layer of mangled little bug bodies latticed together like an extra screen. It hums rather menacingly when I plug it in, but it was either that or much pricier options. Thankfully no fireflies have met their fate trying to seduce it yet. Sadly, a few moths have fallen victim. It's hard not to try and show mercy, but I know I get none from them, and have the bumps to prove it. After browsing around a bit more, I'm wishing I'd gotten this one: Owl bug zapper!


     Also, we're not allowed to have chickens in city limits. This is ridiculous, considering every neighboring town can, including CHICAGO! You can have hens in Chicago, but I can't here? Where we're surrounded on all sides by cornfields and when the wind is right you can smell the pig farm, but a few backyard hens are taboo? Erick came up with the brilliant plan to try and petition the town into granting people who rent or own houses to have no more than 5 hens. Since I'm currently unemployed it's my job now to get the particulars, lists, and impressive graphics all squared away, not to mention signatures of local residents who feel a few hens would be a valuable addition to a household. Does anyone else have experience with local government or know how we should go about this? I have a rough idea but I'm a little apprehensive to bust into the town hall meeting and just start talking about hens.

come to momma...*drool...
photo from noveleats.com

     Finally, a new grocery store opened up in town. I'm apprehensive to name it lest I look like some corporate hack, but I'm so excited. It rhymes with why me, and is employee owned and has regional food and is just a happy, happy place. I am never setting foot in a Wal-Mart again! We were planing on being Wal-Mart free by 2012 but now we gleefully buy fresh regional produce from employees who are happy and well paid. I ran into a former student's mother who works there, and she told me it's been a long time since she was happy to come to work. Everyone is smiling, the food is varied and truly beautiful, unlike the one step away from rancid approach we used to have to settle for. Not only that, but many of their products are made in the U.S, a lot of their cleaning products are biodegradable (and reasonably priced) they have a robustly sized health section with organic and fair trade food, cleaning products, coffee, and a lot of vegan options I'd normally have to drive 40 minutes to get. And they have Teese cheese. I nearly shit my pants when I saw it. For people who have never had Teese cheese, it is the closest I have come to a religious experience. A friend in Chicago made me a pizza with it, and I've been scouring the Midwest for it ever since. The closest I could find it was a full 40 minute drive, which is a bit excessive, even for me. UNTIL TODAY
!

Making due with less

     I'm not going to pussyfoot around it, Erick and I are on the low end of the tax bracket. I spent three years working at an elementary school with children who are developmentally/physically disabled and after taxes took home less than 10 grand a year. I recently lost my job (which in itself is a brutal and bitter blog for another day), and while Erick has thankfully found full time work that will make us considerably better off than what I was bringing home, times are still pretty tight. We're playing catch up with bills and taxes that I had to keep putting on the back burner to buy things like food, gas, and the occasional bag of cat litter.
    What I have found though, is that when you have to make due with less, creativity and self sufficiency quickly become virtues. You learn that everything can potentially serve more than one purpose. Biking instead of driving isn't the end of the world (in fact it gives you a way to explore parts of town you'd never see).  And a plentiful garden is one of the most cost effective investments you can make, considering the skyrocketing price of food. Also, cats are cheap entertainment!

 The most important thing I think I've learned from all of this though, is how important a strong bond with community and family is. Without the support of friends and family, living on the low end of the tax bracket would be incredibly lonely and stressful.

As we claw ourselves out of our debt hole, I wonder how other people are dealing with money woes. I'm grateful we don't have children to send to college or a mortgage that's underwater. In that respect I count us very, very lucky that our debt is a small, cranky beast.

Living on less is something I feel is going to become a finely honed skill in our country's future.

How are you all dealing with it?

community plot/ questions?

Sorry in advance, alas, no new photos. BUT! Good news on the garden front!

Back in Marchish, we applied for a spot at our local community garden. The city clerk was very nice, but let us know we'd be on the waiting list and not to hold our breath. Last week though....I got an email. Turns out the resident of plot 11 in row 1 was too lazy to pull up an entire plot's worth of waist high thistles! Yes. That's right. Waist high for Erick, more like chest high for me. The cherry on the thorny sundae? They were all about to go to seed so we couldn't mow or roto-till! We spent 2 hours pulling them by hand. After that we busted out the tiller and made some modest rows that are now nestled with potatoes, onions (white and green) garlic, radishes, opal and sweet basil, lemon balm, sunflowers, sugar daddy peas, morning glory, and heirloom tomatoes. And marigolds. We've literally doubled our garden space! All for the reasonable price of 10 dollars and some intense sweat equity. It could be worse though, one plot is literally walled in by heaps of compost bags rotting in the sun. The smell is ungodly. You'd think there'd be some manners at a community garden, but sadly, around 12 plots are untended or abandoned and are now home to hungry nibblers and nesters. Erick almost tripped over a duck the other day there.

DESTROY ALL HUMANS!
photo from megacatch.com

Also, I have a few questions for more seasoned gardeners and homesteaders that might stumble upon my page. The first is about mosquitoes. The Illinois state bird has infested our neighborhood, I can't walk out back without being swarmed by no less than a dozen at a time, even after I reluctantly spray myself with bug spray. How do you all who have mosquito problems deal? We're careful about standing water on your property, but nothing really seems to help. I put up a bat house, but it sits empty, mocking me while I sprint around my yard trying to outrun the evil little shits.  Erick is set on a bug zapper, but the vegan in me weeps at the thought. I've looked up traps that wouldn't potentially light moths on fire, and I'm considering ordering one. The beast of a thing looks like it's from a terminator movie. What would you guys do?

Next- seeds. I love making lists, planning, ordering, planting, all of it. But there are always some left over. Sometimes there are ALOT left over. Do I need 30+ tomato plants? No. My idea was to go in with a few people on seeds we all want and split them equally among ourselves. Maybe posting a list at shops around town with plant info and contact information? I feel bad wasting them, and even worse about spending the money to have three varieties I'll only need 4 seeds from each packet for. Has anyone done this before? Is this a common thing? I worry I'm the lone OCD garden planner in my area, eagerly awaiting seed catalogs the way most people wait for their Cosmo or Playboy subscriptions, making lists and garden maps and potential greenhouse diagrams the way they surely planned before storming Normandy. The other night I suggested we go to the bar and Erick replied he'd rather save the money and buy a new hose for the garden. Woe is us nerds.

Garage sales

Part of learning to live a more sustainable life I've come to find, is being able to live very, very frugally. This lesson isn't a new one to me, but it's been reinforced over the past year as the price of everything skyrockets, while our paychecks seem to dwindle. Which is why I wanted to post a blog about my favorite thing in the world: garage sales. Can I just take a minute to admire the concept of a garage sale? It's a thing of beauty. 100% recycled, reusable, CHEAP stuff! Stuff you can actually USE. Stuff that, full price, would be completely unattainable. I love them. I love garage sales with all my wee little heart.

To garage sale successfully, there are a few rules my mother
*the undisputed queen of ebay, garage sales, and all things shopping related*
has drilled into my brain since I was old enough to talk.

1) Unless you are specifically looking for children's clothes or toys, seeing them out in the driveway is the kiss of death for a good garage sale. They usually won't have anything but kid related items.

2) Subdivisions and newer parts of town usually have disappointing (to put it nicely) amounts of items, and the prices are usually higher.

3) Always, ALWAYS stop at a barn sale. The best barn sale I ever went to was a gentleman who's son had started a head shop and it had gone under. We got enough incense to last us years.

4) The older houses or houses with elderly residents usually have the best finds. They've been around longer, and what they're selling was probably made before the time of flimsy plastic shit. Today at a sale the kindly older woman was selling stuff that was blowing my mind. I picked up a Schwinn bike from the 60's for 10 bucks. Not only that, but there were vintage embroidered linens, porcelain enamled cookware, books from the 20's; you catch my drift. The kind of things you drool over at a "resale boutique". For almost nothing. Amazing!

5) There is no shame in haggling. Don't be aggressive, but politely ask if they'll take less. I never ask for less than half, and often times people are willing to let stuff go for half of what the sticker says. It never hurts to ask!

6) You can always spruce up what you buy. The birdhouse with the ugly paint that was a buck? Later this afternoon it'll be transformed into a lovely avacado bird cottage nestled in my maple tree. Just because it looked cheap when you bought it doesn't mean it has to look cheap forever!

As you can see I spent a lot of time in other people's garages as a child.

Garden update before I melt

wee little radishes!
photo from Burpee.com

Holy. Shit. It's hotter than Satan's taint here! Two days of upper 90's weather? Blegh. The garden seems to be loving it though, with the exception of the lettuces. Everything that was looking puny and sickly a few weeks ago has beefed up and looks great! After visiting Sacred Acres and seeing their china rose radishes, I rushed out and got a few seeds to inter plant through the garden. French breakfast radishes mature in 23 days. 23 DAYS! It's like the drive through of gardening!

I have also learned the virtues of mulching. There's an amazing radio show out of Chicago every week by Mike Nowak that's all about gardening, soil enrichment, the evils of Monsanto, local good works and sustainable living programs. I'm so smitten :)  It's worth looking up!  Not a week goes by that he sings the praises of mulching and compost, and after a month or so, I took heed and heaped grass clippings from my parent's lawn *they actually HAVE a lawn, not our violet and dandelion infested stretch of a yard* around my parched plants. Already it looks better! It took three bags to do half, so the other half is getting done later this afternoon so I won't burst into flames when I step outside. Ugh.

Olive when she was a baby. She's
about 4 now but I can't find
any recent photos :( 

On another note, we have a family of hawks that live in the tree behind our house. This poses a problem with letting my bunnies outside to play, as they're white, small, and highly edible. I used to let them into a fenced in portion of the yard but Mr. Hawk would sometimes sit on the back of our fence or a branch and just stare. Not only is this highly HIGHLY unsettling, (because I feel that hawks are the sharks of suburbia, and looking into their eyes is like looking into the eyes of a soulless and highly adept killing machine) It also poses serious chances of my rabbits being eaten, as I mentioned before with their edibleness. I considered a harness and leash type system that I used for our less edible cats, but I have a feeling that would end up being a sort of rabbit/hawk kite situation. So, my new idea is a pop up play house I had as a child. It has fabric walls and mesh screening, and a roof! We'll see how that goes later tonight...

good lord!

So. The baby raccoons are gone! While I was at work poor Erick had to wait three hours for people to come. Animal control did show up suprisingly, it turns out when the animals are IN your house they have to come. An officer came too...with elbow length gloves and mace. Yes, he was pointing mace at baby raccoons. Turns out they'd fallen asleep inside our pedal power washing machine. Good lord. They're at a rescue right now being doted on by our local wildlife recueman John.

Saturday brought a concert at the local barn collective (Indipendent Rock Barn) and some live art by moi while Venice gashouse trolley rocked out. It's great to see how other people in the community are making agriculture and self sustainability work, it reminds me how much we have to learn and how far we still have to go! It's also interesting to see the entire side of a barn roof covered in solar panals. Sunday was a garden tour of our lovely friend Cozy's Sacred Acres. It's a small scale farm right now, with about 60 chickens and a respectable sized garden that's just glowing with sun and tasty produce. We're talking about swaping some ideas, plants, and rabbit shit for composting. I don't think I've had such a good weekend in months! Yay Summer!

Holy. Shit.



photo byshoegazergabby

 So. This morning as I was getting ready for work I heard a shreiking coming from my basement that only a dying rabbit would make. Or so I thought. Thinking that Tallulah or Dumptruck was possibly dying, I sprinted down my basement stairs; only to nearly trample three baby raccoons.

That's right. I have three baby raccoons hissing, shreiking, and rolly pollying around my basement. Super.

A call to animal control left me with a voicemail saying they dont' handle cats or wildlife (then what do you do? USELESS!) The very curt and unhelpful voicemail also directed me to call the police in case of an emergency. Did this constitute an emergency? I thought so. I had three very scared baby raccoons chasing me up my own basement stairs. Not only that, but momma was bound to be around somewhere!

The much more helpful voice on the end of the police non emergency line said they'd sent a squad over with live traps and once the critters had bumbled and hissed their way into would be whisked away to a rescue. The only problem? I had to leave for work in 15 minutes. They said someone had to be home so the cop could come in. So... I left Erick a note about the raccoons...and some cat food in a dish down there incase the wee ones get hungry. I have a video I'll post soon, since they're just soooo cute. Even when they're hissing.

We'll see what carnage awaits when I get home!