maybe i shouldn't even post this because he probably wasn't feeling so grand after stealing and eating a lump of butter the size of his own head, but this blurry photo of my furry boy basu baageli keeps on cracking me up after many weeks. also, he looks like an inuit carving of some sort, and i love those.
this shot feels like a natural pair for the first one. the rats fell ill some time ago and i had to give them antibiotics. at first paroni tapiiri liked it so much he began to bite the plastic syringe when the meds ran out, but that didn't last... anyone who's had to de-worm a cat knows it can be challenging. rats have a really tiny mouth but they are freakishly strong, much like toddlers. i'm glad those eleven days of wrestling and spitting are long gone. (oddly enough, both of them immediately returned to me for comfort after administration.)
today was warm and foggy, a strange combination, especially this time of year. ideal for foraging, though. i found many mushrooms i couldn't identify, even back at home with all my books. one in particular had a really intense, almost perfume-like, fruity scent but it was so past its prime there was no telling what the identifying features might have been, and i didn't want to put it in my basket to mess all the funnel chanterelles up. my best guess is albatrellus confluens, but they usually form clusters and this was singular. i've never smelled one so strong before, either.
two things brewing in my mind right now above all else are a desire to study mycology and the different properties of mushrooms more 'officially', and a rekindled idea of living in ireland for a while, maybe even in a big city like cork. the latter especially surprises me, but the fact is, i need to move away for a while at least once the new cycling lane construction begins. (it will cut through a great chunk of my familiar surroundings and i just know it will be too stressful and noisy for me, so i want to get far away from all that.) to combine the two would be ideal... i would also love to live on a small island somewhere on the west coast, with nothing to do but paint and write, for once. dreams, dreams...
