Snake Bully

I have Miss Topkapi on my lap right now. She's in one of her lazy moods. This morning, however, she made up for that thoroughly. I was sitting at the kitchen table, attempting to read, with Vinicius calmly chewing a bone beside my chair. Topkapi, for some obscure reason, decided to see what he was doing. She started slithering down the table, on to my lap, and down..towards the dog's mouth. Now, if you are new and have not seen pictures of this particular dog, I encourage you to do so by clicking on his name in the tags section. I'll wait.

He is a monster. Now, imagine Topkapi's little head heading straight for his mouth and front paws. She was almost touching him by the time I woke up and realized what was going on.
She must still have whiplash from how hard I yanked her back. She's insane.
It's incredible to me that she is the same python who used to snap at every moving thing that passed her way, including the dogs. If one of them got near her all hell would break loose, and now she provokes them. She's so confident that I will protect her no matter what that she goes out looking for trouble. Spoiled, bullying snake.

A Day with a Hound

That's another picture of our own, personal, Hound of Baskerville, the Brazilian Fila Vinicius. He's adorable. Sometimes, though, he really drives me nuts. I have to put him in the garage when it's time for the other two dogs to come out, because otherwise they would completely demolish the house. They get along fine, too well in fact, and they play very roughly. So, we switch them around so that we can keep our furniture intact. The garage has air conditioning and it has light, so why does the dog cry? He whimpers and pants, as if he were in the worst place on the planet. Some days are worse than others, sometimes he cries the entire time he is in there, and some days he makes no sound at all. We have still to find the reason for the spontaneous crying.
He is a sweet animal but he pesters my dad non-stop. He bullies him around, playfully of course, but a dog that size is pretty tough even when he plays around. He is also incredibly loud. Well, maybe not incredibly, since he is huge, but if he barks close to you it does hurt your ears a bit. And he barks ALL the time. If he hears a fly buzz too close to our house he is off. He continues well after whatever it was he heard is long gone. That is his job, though, so we can't really complain too much. And yet, we do.

Feeding Frenzy Friday Part 4

It's been way too many days without a picture of Topkapi, so to avoid the wrath of a scorned snake, here she is in all her glory. I took her out this morning before I fed all the other babies, because if I take her out afterwards, when I smell nice and mousy, there's a danger of someone loosing a finger. She was her sweet, curious, marvelous self and we had a grand old time sitting at the kitchen table. She drank her fresh water and then it was exploring time!

A little look on this side, a little look on that side. Doesn't she have a beautiful profile?
By the way, the foot you see on the right side of the last picture does not belong to a lion, it belongs to this:

That creature is Vinicius, a Brazilian Fila, which is a relatively uncommon dog to have. There is a reason for that, not only are they huge but they don't like strangers very much. Or at all. He is the sweetest animal to the four of us, but anybody outside of that circle is not welcome. Seriously, he will eat you. Since he really has no contact with the world outside of our house (we can't possibly walk him), there is no problem and he is the perfect guard dog. If you walk by my house you'll just hear a lot of barking.
The Fila breed was created by putting a little bit of mastiff, a little bit of bloodhound, and a little bit of bulldog together, stirring the pot and out popped the first Fila.
All joking aside, they really are a good breed if you know how to deal with big dogs. They are extremely smart, brave, and most importantly loyal.

I finished feeding the morning babies, and everyone ate without complaining. Tybalt was a bit hesitant at first, but after some insistence on my part he took the pinkie. Now I just have Topkapi to feed tonight and that's it for this week. Barbossa will not be eating tomorrow since he is shedding, but he ate fine last week so no worries.