Welcome to Sunniland

Like a hermit crab, we outgrew our home and had to move to a bigger place. Although L.A. was originally scratched from our home search back in April of 2009, it quickly became obvious that Lehigh Acres, FL would be the only place in Lee county that was suitable and on November 20th, 2009 we moved into our new home. I'll post more on "Sunniland" tomorrow for those interested in named places, oil fields and railroads but for the time being this is our new hermit crab shell.

Ma-Le and Pia

An entrance to accommodate Giraffes

"Vegetative fuel" all around. In realtor speak that means plants that burn and are a threat to your house so you might want to cut them down.

Nice old Live Oak in the backyard

"Wood"-tiled floors

"General Tso - get off the bed..."

"General Tso - get out of the tub...."

Sunset on Sunniland

Moonrise over Sunniland

Oh no - the cat got into the Cheetos?!?

We're flying to Vermont in a few minutes but a few hours ago, my cat (General Tso) and I got into a Curious George type of nightmare. I was spray painting a box fluorescent orange. Once again - never mind what was in the box. Despite my best efforts to cover the porch floor and spray only the box, it was seem I missed.

Obliviously - I left the box to dry, headed into my office, read a few emails and went back to check on the paint. As I crossed the living room floor I noticed ghostly orange orange footprints across the carpet! I looked out to the porch and apparently the orange mist had settled and I had tracked paint across the carpet. Idiot!

So I'm scrubbing away and after seemingly getting most of the paint off the carpet I look out on the porch and General Tso is prancing in the paint! IDIOT!

MaLe grabbed the cat who looked like he'd just run through a Cheetos factory. She dunked him in the tub, scrubbing the orange paint from his black paws.

After donning my invisible hazmat suit I scrubbed down the porch and vowed to never paint anywhere near the home again. Grrrr.

Let's hope the General stays out of trouble for the next 5 days while we're in Vermont and Massachusetts.

Cat Fancy

Ever wonder who reads the blog? Apparently the biggest demographic is house cats, but I can't say they actually read the blogs so much as scan the pictures and bat at the screen when the videos play (pictured below- Zatcat from Plymouth, MA). This is true for their human counterparts, including one reader in Rowley, Ma and another in Tuscon, AZ who say they "skim" but they get the gist of the blog. And that's what I'm going for. I simply want people to get a general idea of what I'm talking about.



Apathy runs rampant even here in the Jungle apartment where I can't even get my own cat to read the blog, until as General Tso (pictured below) says - I include more "cat related content". So without further ado, to appease my feline and because I'm too lazy to actually write something this evening - here is an email exchange between my mother (who was working at Coolidge State Park) and myself from 2005 wherein she requests information regarding Mountain Lions (and for the sake of an Everglades tie-in - Florida Panthers) and I respond with utmost seriousness.

Mom's questions in Black - My answers in ORANGE with 2007 responses in BLUE.

From: "Pete Corradino"
To: "'Janey'"
Subject: Answers
Date: Fri, 21 Jan 2005

are the males bigger than the females?
Yes – Males average 150 lbs, females 90
Florida Panthers are smaller

are they related to domestic cats?
Yes, they are both in the Felidae family

do they eat dead stuff ?
Yes, they often kill their prey, cache it and return for it over the course of a few nights

do they breed in captivity?
Yes

do they eat monkeys?
They range all the way to the southern tip of South America and can be found in the same habitat as many species of monkeys, so most definitely.
Species name is Puma concolor and known as Puma in South America

where can you buy one
Ebay

why do they pace in captivity
Stress

why do you pace in captivity
Stress
and sometimes if i need to pee

can they interbreed with other cats, i.e. a nice big fluffy lion?
There genetic makeup has diverged to the point where that combination would not produce viable offspring. (I have to check if that is 100% correct)
That is true but Lions and Tigers can reproduce - but their offspring can not.

do they mate for life?
No – they are solitary and only find one mate for a very short breeding cycle

how many are there in the US?
Very tough to find this answer!
There are about 80-100 in Florida and several thousand west of the Mississippi with more and more moving into the eastern United States

are they found outside the united states?
Weren’t you listening? I just said they are found all the way down to South America. Also found in Canada

where is the largest population of mountain lions found?
West of the Rockies – highest density might be a good way to ask that question….Don’t know the answer to that though.
I knew at one point. It was in my VINS slide show that I can't find. This is turining out to be more work than I wanted.

can I have the answers to these questions when you get them?
Yes

how big do they get .. how tall, how much do they weigh?
males can be up to 265 pounds, males can be 8 feet in length (including a 3 foot tail!)
oddly enough I said above that males weigh up to 150 lbs - so obviously I make stuff up?

how far can they jump?
they can jump up 15 feet and leap 30 feet

do they eat people?
10 people have been killed by mountain lions in the last 15 years. They rarely get the chance to eat them although they have inferred that we taste like chicken. They have been known to bite campers in the privates.
In 2004 - a teenage camper at Coolidge State Park came up to my mother at the Ranger Station and announced that a coyote had just bit him in the privates (he used another word that I have changed so as not to offend young readers.) Anyway - that explains the running joke in our family about animals biting people's privates.

what do they eat?
Ungulates (Moose, Deer, Elk), Turkey, Dogs, Cats and a variety of other small animals

are they found in all 50 states?
They were at one time but now they breed in 10 states and are sporadic in others.

how long do they live?
They average about 18-20 years but can live 25-30 years in captivity

do they make good pets? ... hahahaha
They have been known to bite people in the privates

how many cubs in a litter?
average of 3

where do they sleep at night?
in a cave, tree cavity, earthen den, in a tree

how long do the cubs stay with the mom?
they stay with mom for an average of 15 months but up to 2 years.

are they nice or do they bite (from abigail)?
They have been known to bite people in the privates. They all have different personalities, they can be shy, they can be aggressive, they can be lazy

do both parents raise the young
The dads are useless and would sit on the couch and watch football if they could. They would root for the Panthers.
This is true.

what is a bunch of mountain lions called .. bevy, pride or are they solitary?
They are solitary
But a group of Polar Bears is an Aurora and a group of Weasels is a Sneak.

are they nocturnal?
They tend to be nocturnal, but will be diurnal when the prey species is

do they have friends?
George Bush would consider them terrorists, but there are many organizations that support their reintroduction and conservation

can you hunt them (you can in montana)
In several states yes, but they are a Federally listed Endangered Species

can you eat them (you can in montana .. they taste like chinese food ... hahahah)
Wow
My mother actually ate bear and mountain lion when she lived in Montana.

I'll think of more.
You do that.

It should be noted that my Mother - the English major from the University of Vermont asked every question in this email without capitalizing. So it's not my error! I guess that is acceptable in emails.

Special thanks to Tiffany Berish for supplying the archived email and Amanda Harden for suplying the photo of her cat reading the blog. If your cat/other pet reads the blog, send a photo and I will post.

I Paid For a $360 Haircut

Truth be told I haven't paid to have my haircut in 11 years, but when you have a long-haired coon cat in Florida, you don't have much choice but to go Poodle-cut on the fluffy beast.

General Tso is 6 1/2 years old. (Poor thing was born on 9/11/2000. I don't think he understands).

He was named after the delicious Chinese dish because Bill, my mom and I had just been to the China Buffet and my mom had convinced me I needed another cat. We were not too sure where in Rutland, Vermont to find a cat, so she asked the waitress who either didn't understand the question or was being defensive. After that, naming him General Tso was a no-brainer.

He sheds his fur in massive quantities this time every year and if I'm not quick to brush it out it forms dense mats of fur that tugs at his skin. It can't be pleasant. I tried at first to shave him. I can shave my own head so how hard can it be to shave an animal. With claws. and teeth. He's a sweet cat, but that was not going to happen. He was shaved for the first time in 2005, much to the dismay of cat #2, Ticonderoga who responded to his return home by hissing at him and chasing him around. As if looking like a poodle were not bad enough.

I decided to go with a preemptive shave last year and brought him in before the mats became too painful. The nice vets at Green Mountain vet were warned that he's a sweet cat in a bad mood. They said not to worry. No cat could be as bad as Missy and pointed to a picture on the wall of a gnarled, one-fanged, mangy beast that looked as if it had been peeled off the road. I knew he was in good hands.

When I returned, the vet began laughing, handed me a pair of gloves that workers at nuclear power plants use to handle plutonium and suggested I would have to handle the Tasmanian Devil in Vet Block #481516. It took a lasso, a squirt gun and a burlap sack, but I was able to extract the angry monster from his temporary lair. Missy's picture had been removed, there was a new vet devil champion. He hissed and growled all the way home and was again not greeted as the liberator that many thought he would be. Oh wait that's another story.

Since I've moved from Vermont to Florida, this would be his first trip to the vet down here. He was fairly calm on the trip over. He asked at one point "what's up with coconuts?" which I took to be merely an existential question and not a botanical inquiry.

I warned his new vet that he's a cuddly, lovable cat but gets medieval when he hears the clippers. She jotted that advice down, giggled when I gave his name and told me to pick him up after 4 pm.

Apparently the vet forgot to tell her assistant about the clippers. Before Tso was knocked out he turned them on and the cat expressed his own anal glands in the poor assistant's general direction. I paid for it in the end.

The shave only cost $50. And that was all I was bringing him in for anyway. But somehow he got his teeth cleaned, 2 vaccines, blood drawn and who knows what else.

In the end, it all worked out well. Tso got the Poodle Bob - which is a new style for him. If I had thought about it I would have gone with the Mr. T Mohawk in honor of Ash (pictured below being shaved by wife Kate on New Year's...a story for another day)

Maybe next year. His return elicited a few hisses and one camel spit from Ti. I'm not sure what that material was she spit, but it had some distance on it.

You gotta love this cat. And aren't pets supposed to look like their owners anyway?
Look at that tail!

JQ - Jungleboy Quarterly

It's been 3 months of nonsense and it's time to recap!

After leaving Vermont on January 29th, I've seen and done quite a few spectacular things and know the best is yet to come. We have 54 subscribers, not including dingleberry@redsoxnerd.com (one of my brother-in-law Jim's fake email addresses) and have readers in 24 countries. The goal, is to improve the educational level of the entries while making things simple enough so my sister can understand (she knows which one), increase the sophistication of the humor while adding more poop jokes and get an editor so no one has to endure my bad grammar anymore. Ruth won the grammar correction contest with 44 corrections. Thanks Ruth!

I've received a lot of comments and questions and thought I'd finally answer them all here if possible. I have to paraphrase or simply make up all that I can't remember.

Q1 - Is it a good idea to write when you are angry?
A1 - Sure! I'm angry a lot. And happy a lot too. I've been saddled with the burden of knowledge and hampered with the curse of stupidity. Two great traits that don't taste so good together. There's a lot of frustrating, annoying, crazy things out there that get me fired up and not only does writing focus the energy, it helps formulate possible ideas on how to solve the issues. Or encourages others to solve them. Or just simply pokes fun at it. Which ever comes first.

Q2 - Is your Meez single?
A2 - Quite possibly the most disturbing question. The answer is no. I hate to break anyone's heart or psychotic delusions, but my Meez is just a cartoon facsimile that has a cartoon facsimile girlfriend that is often offscreen. The cartoon girlfriend has to be careful that the cartoon agents from the Department of Homeland Security do not find her.

Q3 - What's your favorite smell?
A3 - Orange Blossoms and/or Methane

Q4 - Is Red Drift Algae always so boring?
A4 - Yes

Q5 - Aren't you scared of the Alligators?
A5 - Funny thing about that. When I was a kid I was terrified. The media sensationalizes animal encounters, often alligator encounters and people end up fearing them more than they should. Respect them. Give them distance. Don't feed them and you will be fine. They are fearful of people 99% of the time. This is a terrible statistic, but there were more traffic fatalities in Lee County last week than there have been fatalities caused by Alligators in all of Florida since 1950. Only 19 people in 57 years is not bad. Unless you are one of the 19.

Q6 - Are you going to shave your cat again this year?
A6 - It's 85 and humid right now on April 30th. That cat needs to be shaved. No one asked this question. I just wanted to post this picture.

Q7 - How many Peeps did you eat in the video?
A7 - Only 5. I had to eat as many as Will did. And yes my stomach hurt afterwards.

Q8 - Was Will actually bitten by a bat?
A8 - The poor kid. In September of 2005 I led a group of homeschool kids and their parents to the Dorset Bat Cave in Vermont. During the next weeks class Will told me he had been bitten by a rabid bat. I dismissed him, thinking he was making up the story. No one had been bitten by a rabid bat in Vermont in many decades. Later someone showed me a headline in the Bennington Banner that explained that a local boy had been bitten by a rabid bat! It was a scary story and really a rarity. To his credit, the 9 year old Will told reporters that it was scary but he still appreciated bats. Cool kid. And he's a Peep eater.

Q9 - Do airboats ever flip over?
A9 - This was asked a few weeks ago and the answer was very rarely. A few days later, an airboat flipped, sending passengers into "alligator infested waters". The water is very low and apparently the boat had a mechanical failure, rendering the driver nothing but a passenger. They hit a clump of sawgrass and over they went. The "alligator infested water" is a perfect example of media hysteria. There was maybe one alligator within a 300 yard radius and wanted nothing to do with the accident. The driver suffered a broken collarbone and passengers had cuts and scrapes. That is the first accident I have heard about in all of the time of been around the everglades. Very rare.

Q10 - Is your criticism of exotic species analogous to your feelings on illegal immigrants?
A10 - Apparently you don't know who I'm dating. (Edited after post - My inarticulate point is that MaLe is a fervent supporter of dignified immigration laws here in the U.S. as am I. She in fact has a tourist visa and is here legally, lest anyone misunderstood me. Her Meez on the other hand is here illegally.)

Q11 - How do you get someone off the phone when you're done talking to them?
A11 - Excellent question. Some people can chat forever and the old excuse - "My show is on!" no longer works if you have Tivo. Kate and Ashley (not the twins) refuse to get Tivo just so they can still use that line. Or they don't want to talk to me. But I like to use "the cat is puking on the carpet!" Which is often unfortunately true and the reason he needs to be shaved.

Q12 - If you could be Pinocchio or Peter Pan, which would you choose?
A12 - No one asked me this but it's still an interesting question. Peter Pan could fly but he wore tights. Pinocchio wore little red shorts and had a slight case of wood rot but he had a pet cricket and if he got hungry he could eat him. So I would go with the Gippetto's kid.

Q13 - Is there an Easter Bunny?
A13 - Absolutely. I once dressed as the Easter Bunny and after trying to explain this to a 9-year old, she became very confused. The Easter Bunny has a cadre of lackeys he uses to distract kids while he hides Easter eggs. There really is no other explanation. But yes there is a real Easter Bunny and yes I pretended to be him for a day.

Pete and Mom - assisting the Easter Bunny for a day.

Looking forward to the next three months of adventure. Keep the comments and questions coming.

That's all folk!

Jumper

How bad is it living with me? Am I so horrible that I might drive one to leap off a balcony? The answer is yes. More on that later.

As I headed to work this morning, well before sunrise, I sat behind a car at a red light. No one coming either way. Not a car in sight for half a mile. And yes you can turn right on red, but the person in front of me didn't turn until the light turned green. It's ok. I got their plate. HAWAII! I assume they only have one road in Hawaii and it's a big circle around the island so no need to ever turn right? I cut them some slack.

On my tour today I had a couple from Boston who were in town to see the Red Sox spring training. Fair for me to assume they are Red Sox fans? Nope. They won an all expense paid trip to see 2 games from Bank of America. Airfare, Hotel, Car Rental and Restaurants included. Kinda cool. They rooted for the Red Sox anyway.

So tonight it was a bit warm (82 degrees) and I decided to let the cats out on the balcony. We live on the 2nd floor and it's 10 feet to the ground. I wouldn't jump. Now this may be a coincidence, but just last night I had asked Ma-Le if she wanted General Tso for dinner. I was referring to the Chinese food which is also the namesake for my cat, General Tso's. Did he misunderstand? Around 9:30 pm Ma-Le asks if I've seen the big dufus. Sure enough he jumped into the dark abyss! Maybe he saw a better place below. Maybe the Muscovy ducks looked tasty. Maybe the neighbor's cat Lo-Mien was looking good. I don't know.

I retrieved him. His little kitty heart beating as fast as a hummingbird's. No more free passes to the balcony. And next time I'll refer to the General Tso chicken as the number 12. (Steamed rice please)