The Christmas Pets

THIS evening I adopted all the "Nativity animals."

However, my cow's name stems not from any Biblical connection, but from a sweet memory.

One of the best treats to have in Rhode Island as a kid was a paper cup of Hood's ice cream, called a "Hoodsie." It came with a paper wrapped wooden "spoon" to eat the ice cream with. In the 1940s, kids collected the Hoodsie caps because they had photographs of movie stars on them, but that custom was long gone by the early 1960s.

Hood's Milk still makes these ice cream cups. Not sure if they still come with a wooden spoon, though.

Who thought I would buy a camel? When I was about eleven or twelve I got bitten on the left bicep by a camel that was housed behind too short a fence at "Kiddieland" in Rocky Point Park. I was petting the donkey that was also in the enclosure with the camel; who knows, maybe he was jealous of the attention?

Melchior is a different sort, as you can see by the rosy cheeks of the stuffed version! LOL. I've never seen a camel look that happy; they're very dour.

My sheep's name comes from the dog story Beautiful Joe. Joe and his mistress Laura are in the countryside of New Hampshire for the summer and one morning her Uncle John takes her out to look at his flock of sheep.

Laura would like to pet one of the lambs and John coaxes one to her with some salt, calling "Come, Cosset." I don't know if this is an old-fashioned name for a sheep or what, but it seemed very apt for an old-fashioned looking sheep adopted on Christmas night.

Christmas Has Come!

JOLLY cool things this year!

Follows: front page greetings, Belsnickel's Christmas room (he's just lighting the last lamp) with the post awaiting, the Christmas card itself, the Christmas package, and the gifts.

"You Ain't Heard Nothing Yet!"

CONGRATULATIONS to the Wheel of WOW, which finally has its "voice" back. The strident tones of "the Wheel of WOW!" hasn't been heard for about a year.

Home, Home on the...

I had originally intended to adopt an animal each saint's day in December (Barbara, Nicholas, and Lucia), but then time went rushing by like an express train, so all I managed was my bison, which I adopted on St. Barbara's Day (December 4).

I toyed with a name like "Smoky" or "Gatlin" since I bought him in Gatlinburg, but instead I settled for a name pun.

"Oh, give me a home
Where the buffalo roam...
Home, home on the range..."

A New Wrinkle on Gifts!

HERE are the Thanksgiving front page, card, and gifts for this year.

One of the gifts, the Thanksgiving dinner, is quite novel, as the Webkinz folks have never given us food that would actually sit on the table before. It always has had to be fed to your pet.

I do wish we could keep the baskets (in this case) or boxes that the gifts come in. They are, like this basket, usually very beautiful!

Ditto for the cards.

No Knowledge Is No Knowledge

YOU know, if you're going to post educational questions on what is nominally a kids' site, don't you think the answers to the questions should be correct?

Today the "calendar question" at Quizzy's was "Who is on trial in To Kill a Mockingbird?" The choices are: Jem, Atticus Finch, Scout, and Boo Radley. The "correct" answer is, according to "Quizzy," Boo.

Boo Radley is not on trial in To Kill a Mockingbird. It's Tom Robinson who is on trial.

Shame on you guys.

Have a Batty Hallowe'en

MY original thought for a bat name was "Belfrey."

But then I remembered the crazed little character in Love at First Bite. What could be better for an insect eater than "Renfield"?

Not Bigger Than A Breadbox

WANTED to do something to celebrate it having gotten cold today; the least expensive option was to adopt a pet.

I hadn't intended to buy a Lil Kinz black-and-white cheeky dog, as I was perfectly satisfied with my large acquisition ("Mighty Manfred"), then one little guy smiled at me from a rack. His cheeky little smile reminded me of an "old friend" whom I watched every night.

Mr. Cerf, this one's for you. :-)

(I notice Bennett likes puzzles, as did Mr. Cerf, which makes the name all the more appropriate.)

OMG!

I actually WON a Quick Draw! I didn't think that was possible!

New For October

ADOPTED in honor of cool breezes, cold fronts from Canada, turning leaves, and October eves.

Er, what else would a Remember WENN fan name a wolf? :-)

Double or Nothing (With Reservations)

THE moment I saw the deer—really a fawn—I was determined to have one and name him after Jody's deer in The Yearling (yes, I know Flag came to a bad end, but it was too good a name to pass up).

Except Webkinz wouldn't let me name him "Flag." They said that was "a forbidden word." Eh? They have this vocabulary thing now, so that idiots can't post dirty words in the KinzChat Plus rooms, so many words are forbidden. For instance, you can't name a cow "Buttercup" or "Butter"-anything because it has "Butt" in it. [eyes roll] Just in case they were not seeing the L, and interpreting "Flag" as "Fag," I tried "Phlag" (which I hated, but...). Nope. "Lag" apparently is a "bad word"!

So this says my deer's name is "Jody." No, his name is "Flag." No matter what the certificate says, his name is "Flag." So there.

And my other woodland creature, adopted along with Flag, a bit late but in honor of autumn, is the darling little chickadee. His name was easier, since Webkinz didn't object and he is wearing a mask, after all. (So I guess in Webkinz World, "bandits" are okay, but "flags" are not. Heh.)

OMG!

I managed to do a third-level KinzPost Sorter!

Adoption Just Because

IT'S September. I work in purchasing. Therefore I hate September.

So I have adopted my Siamese "just because." (And perhaps in honor of the leaves scudding about for Fall Festival.)

No, he's not named after Burn Gorman's character on Torchwood. :-) I purchased him in the FYE in Owensboro, Kentucky, when we went up to see the Remember WENN radio play. Ergo...

The Floating Leaves

FALL festival is early this year! Last year it was held in October.



The "corn dolly" cow, leaf sweater, and apple hat (yes, thank God) are gone this year, replaced by an orange sweater, a cornucopia, and a fall place setting for a table (you can see the cornucopia and sweater above).

Today the leaves have been flying pretty quickly, like the first day of Winterfest earlier in the year. I'm sure Ganz will twig and they'll slow down soon, so I'm trying to nab as many as possible.

Frankly, I think they should keep them flying fast. Webkinz, after all, is primarily for children, and most parents limit their kids' computer time to an hour or so. On the regular six-minute interval setting, you can't get much in an hour, and if you want to do an autumn room, not very conducive to doing so.

Yay!

FOUND a chickadee! Also a sheep!

Latest (and Belated) Adoptions

TOO busy with real life to have updated here...

Of course I had to have a flying pet! I didn't adopt the toucan for ages because I couldn't think of a name for him. The name of the Froot Loops toucan would have been too corny. I checked the encyclopedia for names in the toco toucan's home range, but I didn't like any of them. So I ended up with corny anyway. :-) It suits him. Adopted July 20.




Another adoption that took forever because of the name. I wanted something associated with winter, but not all that common. Hence, "hoarfrost," although he's known by the more casual name of "Frosty." Adopted July 26.




I'd dismissed the rhino since I figured it was just a hippo with a horn and I didn't like the hippo.

Then this fellow looked at me.

A nosy person is often known as a "Nosey Parker," which is also the name for Lady Penelope's chauffeur in Thunderbirds. So "Parker" he became. Adopted August 9.




A two-for-one! Anyone older than dirt like me remember the movie Snowfire? It was made in 1958 and was a children's matinee movie and television staple for years. Here's TCM's synopsis of the film. I paged through my memories for other white horse names—Maestoso Borina from White Stallion of Lipizza, El Blanco from the Disney short, Aladdin from the episode of The Virginian, Silver...then I remembered the movie. (I did a search for it online; you wouldn't believe how many people are trying to find a copy of this film!)

Adopted September 4.

Sammy is just named after the blue jay in the Thorton W. Burgess "Old Mother West Wind" stories. His friends were Johnny [Wood]Chuck, Peter Rabbit, etc. Adopted September 4.

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.

Well, 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

USED 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.

Sarang 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.

Branch by Branch

I have a new favorite Arcade game: Tropical Troubles. This involves the monkey from "Bananza," which I've always had trouble managing, jumping from branch to branch collecting bananas, avoiding deadly spiders and insects, and knocking over pineapples and cocoanuts to possibly roll on the deadly spiders and insects, which gains you extra points.

I can't say I'm really good at it—I think my highest score has been 22—but I really enjoy it because it reminds me of the old Jumpman game—and if the monkey falls, he doesn't get killed the way Jumpman does. :-)

I do hate that one bug, though, the one with the big eyes that pops up and follows the monkey. The other bugs just wander at random, and the spiders just crawl up and down branches, but you either have to scramble to avoid the big-eyed one, let yourself get bitten, or hit it with a cocoanut or pineapple to get rid of it. It's a pain in the neck.