Waiting for the Chirp, Chirp, Chirp

OMG! There IS going to be a Webkinz chickadee!

From the Depths of the Forest

LAST August everyone in Webkinz World was looking for charms. The twenty-four physical charms had been released, and a minimum of eight allowed you to search for virtual charms in the Charm Forest, an enchanted place occupied by good fairies with plaited red hair, led by the lissome Alyssa, and bad fairies with dark hair and an even darker laugh, led by the nefarious Nefaria (first encountered in the arcade game Tulip Trouble 2).

Then the Chinese-lead-paint scandal exploded. Ganz never came out and said the charms had lead in them, but all of a sudden the charms dwindled and they eventually disappeared.

Now, once you find all the virtual charms, the Charm Forest is just a place to go to get laughed at by Nafaria, gather charm candy or special food, or to get the occasional W100 gold coin or duplicate charm which will get you W100. Otherwise, the challenge was gone.

Alyssa's Star ChallengeWell, there's a new challenge in the Forest, "Alyssa's Star Challenge." Like Arte's Gem Search, this can be done once a day. You search a sky full of Webkinz constellations, clicking the tip of the pole of your star net on a colored star. The net swings and you either "catch" or "miss" a star which may have the shape of a triangle or square, or be in the image of a pawprint or other Webkinz-associated shape. Alyssa will offer you Kinzcash for your acquisition or you can keep it in a revolving star-keeper. If you gather all the stars, you get a special prize. There are also shooting stars, which pay off in cookies or in various parts of a space suit.

So far I have two stars and the pants part of the space suit.

Recent Adoptions

BeatrixUSED to drive my mother nuts since I always loved mice. I didn't want them in my house, mind you, but I liked looking at them and wasn't afraid of them, like my mom was (but she had due cause: when she was a girl she saw a baby who had been bitten by a rat). Mom always told the tale about the night we were at the mall and a crowd was gathering around one of the sunken seating areas that were popular in malls back then. We asked someone what everyone was looking at, and they said there was a mouse under one of the seats. My mom nearly had a cow when I excused myself through the crowd and got down on my knees to peek at the cute little meadow mouse who was huddling under the seat!

She wrote about all cute little animal characters, so I thought it was quite appropriate to name this little mouse after Beatrix Potter.

SarangSarang the tiger is named after the tiger who was on the series Daktari (which took place in Africa; I can't remember why they had a tiger in Africa).

The real Sarang was one of Ralph Helfer's animals at "Africa USA," which supplied the wild creatures that appeared on the series. They were famous for being "affection trained" rather than ruled with whips and prods as the old-style animal "tamers" used to do it in the past.

I highly recommend Helfer's Zamba and Toni Ringo Helfer's The Gentle Jungle to folks who want to read about animals.