Inchworms... the return?

Could it be the inchworms have returned... in moth form?

This fellow was found hanging out all day on the hallway wall. He was all alone though, perhaps he was the only one that didn't self distruct.

Panda Updates

So holy cow, there's a lot of stuff going on in the world of pandas. And I've missed a lot of news updates. Let's see...

Bai Yun's 4th Cub Arrived

That's right Friday August 3rd Bai Yun gave birth to her fourth panda cub at San Diego Zoo. As of right now they're still not sure if the cub is a girl or a boy. Washington Post Article Here


In related San Diego panda news, Mei Sheng, is celebrating his 4th birthday today, and his little sister Su Lin celebrated her 2nd birthday on August 2nd! Their both Bai Yun's previous cubs.



Panda Poo Souvenirs

It's no joke, China's trying to come up with ways to cut costs and such when caring for pandas, and it turns out their poo can be recycled and made into paper and other materials which are being sold as souvenirs. Full Article Here

Now, I can back this up too. A while back we'd heard something about this and I went looking to see if any thing was available on ebay as a joke. Well we didn't find anything. But then... there we were at the San Diego Zoo... and holy cow... panda poo notebooks.

Panda Attack!

Yeah they're cute, they look cuddly, and overall they are a mild mannered species, but that doesn't change the fact that they are wild animals. A zoo keeper in China was tore up when a panda grabbed his arm which was sticking through the wire cage. The keeper required 100 stitches after the attack. Full article here.

A couple things to note, this young panda was already in a state of distress when the attack happened, he had, within the week, just moved to that location, hadn't been eating since he'd gotten there, and was not accustomed to the zoo keeper that was attacked.

Male panda gives birth to twins!

Poor Jinzhu. Mistaken at birth in 1996 as a male panda, this girl was sent off to Japan in 2000 to mate with another female panda there. After Jinzhu showed absolutely no interest in mating with the other female there, they went in to do artificial insemination and discovered.... Jinzhu was not a male panda either....

At which point specialists believed she was either hermaphroditic or just had under developed sexual organs. It wasn't until 2005, when she was 9 years old that they discovered in an examination that her ovaries were simply in the wrong place. After a two hour operation, and then another two years later, she proudly gave birth to twin girls just two weeks ago.

Poor girl.

And lastly...

Send Chuang Chuang home?

This story bothers me a little bit, and I feel so sorry for Chuang Chuang. The Thai have been trying so hard to get their pair of pandas to successfully mate and produce a cub. I think they've gone a bit to far here and there.

Chuang Chuang has made the news several times in the past on the issue of mating. First they believed he was too heavy to mate, making him lazy and that he would crush his partner. So they put him on a diet, and the whole world heard about it. Then they even staged a panda marriage ceremony.... for real...

And then again they tested out the "panda porn" theory on him, forcing him to watch videos of pandas mating, hoping he would learn a few things, or simply just "get in the mood".

All these attempts failed, and I mean, come on, pandas are known for not being great at mating. So they went with artificial insemination. Which I might add, is widely used at most zoos to help with panda breeding, so in no way should it be a slight to Chuang Chuang.

Apparently the pregnancy has ended as a pseudo pregnancy. So still they will have no baby panda this year. but now talks are going on to discuss whether or not they put Chuang Chuang on another diet, or give up on him completely and send him back to China and basically trade him in for a better model.

Poor Chuang Chuang, hasn't this panda been through enough? I mean, you can't seriously blame a pseudo pregnancy on him as well. For those who don't know, pseudo pregnancies are EXTREMELY common. Two out of the three expected panda births in the US this year ended in pseudos as well.

Come on... give the guy a break. Plus... isn't he married now... are you going to stage a divorce as well?

Full article here.

Inchworms. The end.

Since Friday night, I've only had one or two inchworms show up in the house. Both those on Friday. Not a single one Saturday or Sunday.

As quickly as they came, they simply disappeared all over again. While scrubbing everything up on Saturday, I did find tons of little inchworm corpses, and I'm feeling a lot better without them coming in, and exploding all over the place.

I assume this means that they've all found a little corner of the world to cocoon themselves up in, and shortly we'll be seeing an increase in the moth population. While enjoying the day in my apartment with the windows shades open to let the sunlight in, I did see quite a few butterflies outside... are moths soon to follow?

Now they're gone though, my attention has been brought back to the original cockroach problem. I dunno if they were just afraid of the inchworms and didn't come out for that entire week or maybe I was just so distracted with exploding inchworms I didn't notice them, but they're back. I really can't stand them, but at least they're not falling on me from the ceiling and leaving goo puddles on the walls and floor.

And on that thought, goodnight, and sweet dreams. :)

Clean house and other stuff.

I've been fairly inactive online and with certain creative outlets the last two days. But for good reason, I've been cleaning house. All day yesterday, top to bottom the house has been cleaned. Now I'm not a neat freak, as my mother will tell you, but there's nothing more motivating and good feeling than a nice clean and organized space to mess up all over again.

After the recent bug invasions I really needed to remove the carcasses, scrub the floors and vacuum and organize some spaces that have gotten out of control. And now things are good.

The only truly frustrating aspect of this weekend is coming to the realization that my iPod has definitely played it's last tune. It started acting up a couple weeks ago, and I kinda just let it sit cause I didn't really want to deal with it. Especially since the recommended option was to reformat it. That's such a pain having to reload 40gb of stuff onto it all over again, making sure files are named correctly and blah blah blah...

So I finally sat down and decided just to go ahead with it. Plugging it in, the computer and iTunes wouldn't even recognize it. After reading up on the support site I figured I'd have to force it into disc mode, which I was able to do after some battling, and the use the restore option. Essentially reformatting.

Well it had an error and as much as I've fought with it over the last two days I'm pretty sure its a hardware issue and the little sucker just needs to be lain to rest for all eternity. The other option is to smash it in a fit of rage but well...

Technology is a wonderful thing. And sadly it's still a pretty expensive thing. And even sadder still, with new technology coming out, and the lifespan of current technology.... you constantly have to replace and upgrade things in order to stay up to date. This iPod cost me $400 about 3 years ago. It's not even a video iPod, it's the old standard two tone display 40gb iPod. And it only lasted just under 3 years. That's around 35 cents a day... I guess that's not bad... but when you've not got a lot of money to begin with....

But now I'm looking at paying around $350 for a new fancy shmancy video iPod. I mean I don't have to... I could go iPod-less and probably be okay.... but technology also makes you dependent on it, and I need my tunes, all of them, available to me, at anytime, with just the touch of a button..... :)

Sunflowers.

A while back I decided I was going to try growing some plants. I've never been very good with plants, but I thought why not. I planted basil, tomatoes, rosemary, and sunflowers.

Now the rosemary never even sprouted. The tomatoes came up real nice, then just... well held at where they still are, no where near growing any tomatoes. The basil kinda did the same thing.

Most of my original sunflower sprouts were eaten by something in the neighborhood. The second sprouting did well enough but most didn't get very big, some fell over and died, but one.... one lonely plant grew up. And it flowered the other day!

Inchworms continued....

They're still coming in, and I swear they're getting bigger. See example on the right.

I'm pretty confident now that they're coming in right through the front door. This weekend's plans include fortifying the weather stripping to hopefully cause a cease in the invasion. I've researched into renters rights in Florida to see if I need to pay for the exterminator or if that's my landlords responsibility. Turns out, since I rent half a duplex and not an actual apartment, the bill is on me.

Considering the extremely low amount of money I have right now, I guess I have to live through it for the time being. It's certainly making for interesting stories though.

Like the other day, when I was sitting at the coffee table working on Panda panda and suddenly I feel something... a little tickle.... going across my lower back....

Yup, it was an inchworm...

And then an hour and a half later.... the same thing happened all over again.

Or my current personal favorite... tonight I was sitting on one couch, and Joe was sitting on the other across the room, when suddenly he freaks out and flicks one off his neck.... and it flies across the room before I even know what's going on and lands right on me. Or should I say it bounces off the side of my face and then lands in my lap. And don't worry, that little worm was just fine.

I on the other hand was less then calm.

Oh the memories. Like cleaning up all the self destructions. See example to the left.

RoboPanda has arrived!!

So holy cow! Gabe text messaged me the other night with a picture he had taken at Walmart of the one, the only, RoboPanda. I couldn't believe it, but after a quick trip to confirm with my own eyes, there he was on the shelf, looking back at me... with those big, cute, glowing blue eyes.

Okay, so the eyes weren't glowing, but man was he awesome. And with an awesome price tag of $150, so for now, I had to leave him behind on the shelf. But I was amazed to see him there since the company website had said they weren't hitting shelves until October.

He's bigger than I had imagined he would be, but seeing him in person confirmed even more how much I really want to bring one home. And hey, feel free to paypal some money to silvrwrdz@aol.com if you want to help him come home that much sooner. ;)

If you have no idea what I'm talking about, see my previous blog post about him here.

Inchworms!!

For those of you who read my delightful story earlier about cockroaches, let me inform you that not only do I currently still have the cockroach problem, but now I'm infested with inchworms.

Yes inchworms.

Over the course of the few days or so, I've removed countless inchworms from my ceiling and walls and relocated them back to the yard where they belong. But there seems to be no end to them, and I have never seen anything like this before. My brief research into the inchworm phenomenon tells me that it should be a temporary problem since they'll be shortly cocooning themselves and turning into moths.

At which point I'm sure I'll have a lovely moth problem on my hands.

I'd also like to add that the inchworms seem to have this annoying habit of self destructing. Yes occasionally one will self destruct into a spatter of brown red goo, either on the wall, or floor. I've never seen this happen but I've come across what was left behind a few times, and it's always a pleasure cleaning that up.

Still investigating the cost of an exterminator.
I may go insane before I'm able to get one in here though.