Gizmo's on Twitter

For those of you who are interested in me and Gizmo's day-to-day minutiae, I've started a Twitter for us. Our screenname on there is, unsurprisingly, "GizmoTheFox".

It's mostly about Gizmo, but I'll also throw in little tidbits here and there about what's going on with me (Like a few days ago, when I saw an American Kestrel sitting on a mailbox in my neighborhood. Falcons are cool.)

I'm happy to answer any quick questions you have over Twitter. Honestly, for things that only need short replies, it'll probably be the most efficient way of getting them.

Happy Birthday Gizmo!

Today is Gizmo's birthday--he's two years old today!

This past year has been a particularly crazy one, but he's in good health, for which I'm thankful.

To celebrate, he got pancakes for dinner, and a brand new toy. The pancakes were small ones (3-4" in diameter), so I just put a little stack of them in his bowl. It turns out, there is a proper etiquette for eating pancakes that I was entirely unaware of.

First, you take each individual pancake out of the dish, and lay them in a line, taking special care to lick each one. Then, you make a little stack with them and set your brand new ball on top of the stack. Then you pick the ball back up, set it in your food dish, and wolf down the pancakes, pausing after each one to squeal loudly.

I'll need to remember this for the next time I'm served pancakes.

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Thunderstorms Are Scary

Right now we've got a pretty decent storm going on outside, with lightening and thunder and all of it. It's hard to tell who it's freaking out more; Gizmo or the dog.

Turns out, leaving Gizmo in his indoor playpen was not an option. The second I stepped out of the room, he started screaming and wailing to the world that I was abandoning him all alone in the midst of a terrible storm, and letting the universe know what a terrible mommy I am.

So, right now as I'm typing this, I've got a shivering fox sitting in my lap, letting out an earsplitting yelp every time the thunder rolls, and sporadically trying to make off with my computer's mouse. Worse, the dog is in here too, and she keeps nosing my leg every few minutes and whining.

Gizmo responds to this by jabbering and swatting at her face with his forepaw, because god forbid I pay any attention to the dog while he is afraid of the storm.

Due to recent warm-up in temperature, Gizmo is also shedding in big, poofy clouds of fur, so odds are my computer desk is gonna be covered with a half-inch of the stuff before the storm moves on. Maybe afterward I can gather it all up, make it into yarn, and knit myself some cruelty-free fox-fur mittens.

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Nail clipping accident

While trimming Gizmo's nails, he gave a little kick, and for the first time ever I nipped the quick while cutting them. It wasn't a bad cut (didn't even bleed), but he still started making his little sobbing noises and I felt awful.

It was on the first foot I was trimming, so I figured the rest of them were probably going to be a huge fight now that Gizmo realized that nail trimming could hurt, but he was actually surprisingly cooperative about the whole thing.

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In other news, Gizmo has been shedding like crazy. I swear I've been grooming a chinchilla worth of hair off of him every day.