ME: [grubs about in side yard]
BEAGLE NEXT DOOR: [staring between the slats of the fence] Ahem.
ME: [looks up]
BEAGLE NEXT DOOR: Made you look! WIKTORY!
[Beagle Next Door begins triumphal rendition of the 3,972nd verse of "Lord, It's Hard to be a Beagle"]
[Puggle Next Door joins in on harmony]
[both dogs careen around their yard like fools, awoowoowoo-ing their heads off]
[I go back to gardening]

I'm rereading The Reluctant Widow and am wondering: does anyone have a good photo-reference for Bouncer? I know roughly what a Mastiff looks like, and by lurcher, I imagine Heyer most probably means a Greyhound-Collie cross, but I'm having a rather difficult time imagining how the three would go together. Aside from the part where Bouncer is clearly a Very Large Dog.

Since it seems unlikely that anyone out there actually has a Greyhound/Collie/Mastiff cross and has put pictures of same on the internet (although this is the internet and one never knows), speculation is also welcome!

1. Today is the launch day for Catherynne M. Valente's Palimpsest. If you want a taste, the short story from which the book came is here. Also, because Cat is seriously made of awesome, there is a trailer:


2. The vendetta of the universe against black-footed ferrets continues. First it was poisoned prairie-dogs, then plagiarism, and now plague. The ray of hope here is that the giant gerbils of Kazakhstan may help save them.

No, you read that right. The giant gerbils of Kazakhstan.

3. buymeaclue has a beautiful post about what horsemanship is. Hannah's posts regularly make me wish I had the time and the money and the guts for serious equestrianism, and this one is no exception. "There is a crack in everything," Leonard Cohen says. "It's how the light gets in."

4. Yesterday, matociquala induced an epiphany in me re: John Bellairs and The House with a Clock in its Walls.

5. ursulav makes me hurt myself laughing on a regular basis. This entry is an excellent representative sample. Also, it reminds me to hope that these pit bulls are continuing to prosper.

Everybody knows the starfish parable, right? "It mattered to that one"? Here's how it applies to pit bulls.