They are lovely little rugrats.  Eleven puppies, eight girls and three boys.  Most are wildly colored merles with white points.  Two are mostly black with brown points; one of those has white legs and chest.  She had them Saturday, from 5:30 to 10:45.

Bonnie's new puppies

We will be keeping them inside for the first six weeks, until after they get their parvo shots.  Parvo is a real problem out here, and any dog who isn't vaccinated gets it immediately.(Idiots who dump their puppies out here are usually condemning the little ones to a horrible death by parvo.)

Luckily for the puppies, most of them are short haired.  These puppies are longer and leaner looking than the first batch of puppies.  We will adopt them out to good homes, probably at the end of May or beginning of June.

This is probably one of the funniest Star Wars pages I have ever read.  My only complaint--it is hard to read on that background.  It is one of those pages that once you read it, you will want to send it to all of your friends.

A small sample of the madness:

"A tremor in the pants. The last time I felt this was in the presence of my old master."  --Vader

"I find your lack of pants disturbing." --Darth Vader

"I used to bulls-eye womp-rats in my pants back home." --Luke

If you click on the link to the rest of the site, it takes you to any of the first four pants Star Wars movies. 

But please put your drinking material down--you might spew on your pants.

I posted a group photo to TheWayWeWere.

A woman in Kennick, Washington has been arrested for having hundreds of wild birds in and around her house, including many dead and decaying birds in her yard.

She has already been booked on animal cruelty charges, and the state Department of Fish and Wildlife is expected to also charge her with possession of protected species and wildlife.

Some of the birds in her possession were wild magpies, hawks, owls, pheasant, and quail.  Ramona Balko, 70, also had domesticated poultry, a couple of dogs, and a cat.

All of the animals in her care were neglected.

I pulled up Google, saw the funny graphic, and waited for the alt text to show up.  It said Earth Day 2005.

I was eight years old when the first Earth Day happened in 1970.  I was all for it, and the big green E thing that was everywhere.

Though my parents made us work in the packing plant instead of up in the executive suites, as girls we pretty much had whatever we wanted materially.  Our parents gave us an allowance, and we spent on almost anything we wanted (with the exception of the orange satin short-shorts set--my dad blew a gasket when he saw it on me and I was made to return it).  So saving the environment was a "good thing". 

I didn't realize how many people are hurt every year by the actions of environmentalists.  How many people die in the world every year from malaria because DDT was banned?  But that is okay with environmentalists.  They don't care about the suffering of people.  They care if the fuzzy bunnies have green grass.

Environmentalists tend to ignore economic realities; people will do what they have to do to support their families despite what the environmentalists think.  I am not sure that environmentalists totally ignore economic realities--after all, just how much do they receive in donations every year?  And how much is spent on administrative costs?  Some of the organizations are internationally based, and don't have to report their overhead.  I tried to find the financials on Earth Day Network, but the information is not available on their website.

So I searched the web, and found an blog entry by Dean Esmay from 2003 that talked about the fund raising that goes on for environmental causes.  He links to an article by Tom Knudsen called "Environmental, Inc.".  Mr. Knudsen's article is a definite must read for anyone who really cares about the environment--and is concerned about the fundraising behaviors of some of the people (like Denis Hayes, the Earth Day founder, who seems to have made himself rather rich--to the tune of some $100 million--by suing people and corporations over environmental issues).

I love my animals.  I love living in a rural area, where it is green and the grass grows and there are wildflowers blooming.  But I refuse to ascribe to the belief that the environment is more important than the people it supports. Some environmentalists seem to believe the world would be better off without us.  Yet this world gave birth to us; whether you believe in creation or evolution, this planet is HOME.  We came from here, the environment is what we make it.  We grew from this planet as part of the environment, our decisions about it reflect what the planet or the creator developed. 

We aren't separate from our environment.  Many environmentalists seem to believe that we are not part of the life of this planet.  How they can believe that is a mystery to me.  After all, we didn't land here from somewhere else (okay, SF people don't start in on me).  Why can't they see that?