Animals

For the Love of a Stink Bug

August 14, 2018 By Annette1 Leave a Comment

My son has this thing for bugs. He thinks they are such interesting little critters. Today he was researching flies since he found one that was green! He learned that the iridescent ones I am catching on the fly paper in the rabbitry are bot flies. We haven’t figured out what type of fly it is yet.

We were fascinated by a tiny spider we discovered Monday, that looked a bit like sparrow poop! It was a fascinating little spider and I tried mightily to get a video of it but just couldn’t get it to come in clearly.

Anyways, this lad has shown me his heart in the care he bestows upon these wee ones of creation. He researches and studies, he’s learned where to ask questions, and he spends so much time looking and watching and learning. He’s lately starting to gravitate toward ants and recently captured a wild carpenter ant colony. He’s checking it regularly to see if he can find the queen. If he has the queen he’ll have a long working colony.

This post isn’t about ants though! 🙂 It’s about my lad’s heart and his love of the creepy crawlies in our world.

I saw this clearly when he had discovered a stink bug in the house last fall. They don’t stay over the winter and tend to die off fairly quickly when frost hits. Occasionally they make their way into the house and we find them when we step on them (don’t do that by the way, they will live up to their name). Knowing this my son argued about the need to keep him in the house where it was warm. He didn’t bite, just a harmless fellow, so I said “sure, do what you can for him.” He found an old crate that we got some Easter bears in added popsicles sticks, bottle caps, felt and string to make a nice living area for a climbing bug.

Anyways, this green fellow intrigued my lad, so he figured out how to care for him, and built it a habitat. He fed it a variety of food – predominately apples, oranges, some pomegranate, tomatoes and lettuce. That wee stink bug kept going over most of the winter.

When finally Stink Bug bit the dust there was much sadness in our house as he was the perfect house guest. He made no fuss, and NO STINK, and ate a good variety of feed. My son loved watching him climb around in his habitat. Toward the end of his days he found ways to escape his habitat but never ventured far much to my lad’s delight. Isn’t that what we want for ALL our pets? 🙂

Interested in doing your own insect research? Discover the fascinating world of insects!

SchoolhouseTeachers.com also has a bug class. Did you know that right now if you become a member you can get two years for the price of one? I KNOW! It’s an amazing deal. School for your whole family for one low price!

Something Rotten

July 7, 2018 By Annette1 Leave a Comment

Imagine, you are driving down the road, and like any other day you see a piece of roadkill lying there. But today is different than any other day, today you think.. oh.. I wonder, I wonder why that animal died, I wonder just how a snakes fangs work, so you pull off the road, pick up that dead snake and take it home with you. And thus a love of roadkill and all it can teach you is born. Learn of this fascination in Something Rotten, my latest review from Raincoast books.

Heather Montgomery walks us through the intriguing world that is roadkill, taking us through learning about parasites released Burmese pythons are giving to the native snake population (not a good thing), we learned about how red wolves might not actually be wolves but be a combination of coyote and wolf genetics, and how the Tasmanian devil is helping people.

Roadkill has never entered my radar of being a fascinating study until I read this book and then it was a like a whole new world opened up for me. The things to learn, the use that scientists can put them, and how they benefit the living, not only of their own species but in the lives of other living beings as well. It is simply amazing.

When you add up the amount of animals killed on the road it’s a staggering amount, then think of all the people involved in those kills and how some of them will be injured or lose their lives. Roadkill becomes a serious matter. It’s no small wonder that more and more animals bridges and underpasses are being built.

So what do you get?

Eleven chapters, 176 pages, text written with the middle schooler in mind, black and white images, and a fascinating look into the world of dead animals and scientists from around the world. She includes a section on steps people can take to save lives as well, which includes projects that people of all ages can take part in.

What did I think?

When I got the book I thought I would be bored out of my mind. 🙂 Like seriously ROAD KILL????? What in the world could be remotely interesting about roadkill? Then something good happened, I got hooked. Somewhere between learning how snakes fangs fold and coyotes I got hooked. I wanted to know what new and amazing thing she would discover next. Every time she turned a new corner I wanted to know more.

I was occasionally surprised like learning that throwing food out the window is a REALLY bad idea. It teaches animals to come to the road for food and while there, what do you think happens? Death to the animal and potential injury to other people. Do you want to be responsible for that? I don’t. I’ll save that apple core to toss at home eh? Won’t you? Another surprise was learning about a contagious cancer! Who would have thought!?!?!?! Totally surprised me.

Now this book is not for the faint of heart. If you are easily grossed out or can’t handle anatomical descriptions, it’s not the book for you. But if you have an inquiring mind and are fascinated by all things animal and don’t mind a bit of messiness (which by the by isn’t over the top but it is factual) this is an extremely interesting book. I’ll be adding it to the pile of books my lad will be reading, and guessing it won’t take him long to go through.

Something Rotten: A Fresh Look at Roadkill
Heather L. Montgomery
Kevin O’Malley (illustrator)
Bloomsbury Kids
176 pages, 10-14 years old, softcover, non-fiction
Roadkill, science, scientists, research, biology
Reviewed for Raincoast books.
Where to find Amazon

If Polar Bears Disappeared

July 5, 2018 By Annette1 Leave a Comment

If Polar Bears Disappeared is a full coloured, picture book that is guaranteed to delight your children as they learn about the world’s biggest bear and what might happen if they disappeared. Join me as I review this great publication from Roaring Brook Press.

Geared for children 4-8 years old, this book will be a great introduction to the topics of global warming, endangered animals, life in the north and the food chain. Lily Williams asks this important question: What would happen if polar bears disappeared? Have you ever thought through what might the end result be of such a horrible loss?

Imagine the beauty and power gone from the earth!

The beautifully illustrated pictures bring to life the wonders of the Artic, a place where polar bears, seals, caribou, lichen, and more live. We are drawn through a world where if too much ice melts in the Artic, even life in the desert will be affected.

So if we learn how to save the polar bears… perhaps we can learn how to save the whole earth?

My thoughts:

Even though I am not an advocate for global warming or old-earth teaching, there is much in If Polar Bears Disappeared that I simple adore. I love how author Lily Williams pulls in all the different aspects of life on earth that could be affected if Polar Bears Disappeared.

I urge you to get this book if you are learning about endangered animals, the food cycle or just trying to teach your students the importance of all the varied life on earth.

If Polar Bears Disappeared
Lily Williams
Roaring Brook Press
40 pages, 4-8 years, softcover, picture book
biology, global warming, life cycle, science
Reviewed for Raincoast Books

Hawk Rising

June 30, 2018 By Annette1 Leave a Comment

Maria Gianferrari has given us a book teaching us about hawks called Hawk Rising. In this picture book, Brian Floca, brings to life the story of Father Hawk and the young lady watching him.
The images in this book, I liked them. Really. Brian Floca did an excellent job bringing the text to life. He showed us the world from two vantage points, one of the hawk, the other of a young girl watching him. Crashing through tree tops, or watching a hawk sitting up high searching.
Maria Gianferrari writes out a story bringing to life one day in a life of a Father Hawk going about his business of providing for his family. Running into troubles along the way, but sticking with his objective throughout the day, feeding and caring for his family.

As he does this, he’s observed by a young gal and her mom. The back and forth between the two works.

Aesthetically the print is easy to read, a large nice font that if you wanted to read it to a group of children you could do so easily. It would be a good book to start off a study on hawks, or the food chain, or on how we can observe closely the world around us to learn much.

My thoughts:

I have to admit, I’m not sure what to think about this book. On the surface it seems okay, but by the time I was done reading my thought was “I would not want to read this to a young child”. It was a rather odd feeling so I asked a homeschool mom to read it as well and her reaction was “it’s a bit of a strange book, I wouldn’t want to read to a young child”.

There is much in this book that I do like.. the persistence in father hawk in caring for his young, the persistence of the young gal watching him. The care and determination displayed. So that lingering thing… I don’t really understand it. Ergo it’s a bit of a tough call. There’s nothing that says DON’T read this book. Nothing that hollers at me as being wrong or of false beliefs or anything, just this lingering lack of ease about it. I don’t know.

Hawk Rising
Maria Gianerrari
Brian Floca
Roaring Brook Press
40 pages, 4-8 years, softcover
Hawks, Science, picture book, Biology
Reviewed for Raincoast Books.
Where to Find Amazon.

Raising Bunnies Ties in with Homeschooling

April 17, 2018 By Annette1 2 Comments

This post is one I shared as a guest post for someone a while back. Thought it might be good to share it again, boy oh boy it brought back memories… I still remember these kits and their momma clearly.

One of the things I do is raise rabbits. I love them. They make great pets, excellent small livestock, and you can train them to do a variety of things from rabbit sports to therapy bunnies. They are useful for meat, wool, hides, companionship, sport and competition. They are such a multi-purpose animal and they come in so many varieties that breeding what you want and for whatever purpose is quite easy.

But with breeding animals, as with raising children, comes a great deal of responsibility. You have this small livestock, that is a prey animal, and needs to be on a good diet in order to thrive, combine that with changing weather patterns, being an easily frightened animal, and it can at times spell disaster.

I’ve been breeding rabbits for more than 10 years and have run into my fair number of disasters, and now that I am raising a boy at home, I can help him to learn how to cope with disaster and think through problems.

Recently one of our disasters was the loss of a young doe. She was a first time mom, was finding the experience a stressful time, went off feed and then the weather changed. I could not get her restarted (using all my tricks) she just was one of those animals (just like you get with people) that when they get sick they just shut down. It left me with five eight day old kits to try to save.

Do note: I am NOT a vet. BUT I have lots of experience with raising animals. I have NO rabbit vets anywhere near me so I do my own vetting with the help of a great group of people on rabbittalk.com. What they don’t know as a group I honestly I don’t think a vet would know either. 🙂

Anyone in the rabbit world will tell you. Trying to save kit under 14 days old is a real bear to do and that you will lose more than you save. Baby bunnies aspirate so easily and without mom’s cecals to help stabilize their gut, even if you get them to 14 days you still risk losing them.

So we fought to save the babies. The problem with fighting to save them is get attached. And it’s a hard one. Many breeders will choose not to try to save them, they save themselves the heart ache as well as the work. It’s hard work caring for babies.

We use goat milk. I’ve saved babies with it before. It’s better than trying to do a formulation of kitten milk or cow milk. Goat’s milk is high in fat and that’s what bunnies need.

Unless an animal is suffering I’ll work with them. Here we have five babies. They quickly earned names… StarBright, Blue, Little One, Tongues and Stubborn. It’s a bit of an experiment (hence the homeschooling aspect) to see what the kits will take to. We tried a sponge as apparently that’s the NEW method of feeding baby bunnies.. COLOSSAL FAILURE. My lad was not happy. We tried the suck a towel soaked in milk thing.. so NOT working. Blue and Tongues couldn’t figure out a medicine dropper so I raided our science kit and found a pipette! WOOT WOOT! It gave the needed control. My son was delighted! He managed to feed a baby bunny!

This is Tongues. He was called that because he would ONLY drink if you put ONE drop of milk on his tongue at a time. It took forever to feed him and it became apparent fairly quickly that something was wrong with him. He couldn’t “NOT” move. The only time he was still was if he was snuggled up his siblings. My lad and I took to the rabbit boards to see if we could figure out why and the best answer was that sometimes when moms die early kits develop a neurological unbalance that if they do recover always have a tilt thing going on… and I wasn’t going to subject him to that. See in the pic how his head is at an angle? I did very carefully medicate him to see if that would help him improve (in case it was an odd parasitic case), but alas it did not. He was such a game boy though… got him to almost three weeks before it was apparent that it really wasn’t in his best interest to continue struggling.

Special needs bunny this one. Some bunnies, like people, just have a harder go of things and it takes time and patience to see them through. They make you laugh and smile, and sometimes just plain break your heart.

What can I tell you about StarBright? Wow this little girlie quickly stole our hearts. Bright, eager, happy drinker. Took to the pipette like no one’s business. I was so determined to see this little girl through….. and she broke my heart she did. She was doing so so well and then she scoured on me. Scours dehydrates bunnies so fast and it just wrecks their systems.

That’s the way it is sometimes in schooling. We think all is going well and then we are sidelined by health, criticism, poorly fitting curriculum… and we just fade away. I hear of parents putting their children into public school because they just can’t do. Of homeschool graduates who struggle through life due to parental choices and it’s hard.

Blue, Little One and Stubborn

My litte champions.

3.5 weeks old and I tossed them outside with a foster doe.

Immediately they all looked better and well cared for. I was stoked!

Woot woot I was going to save three of the five and beat the odds.

But I forgot something important.

Baby bunny piles. Babies like to pile on top of each other.

Blue… my little fighter blue got caught on the bottom of a bunny pile.

and so I kicked myself hard for forgetting that aspect of things.

Circumstances in life sometimes beat us down you know? Through no fault of your own, it’s just the weight of everything hitting you and if you have the strength you push through, and if you don’t, well, it’s just hard and sad.

I continued to bring them in the house for supplemental feeding.

They were doing well.

Stubborn (who became little gentleman) was soon seen eating hay, drinking water, fitting in well.

Little One was eating hay, nibbling on oatmeal, but water seemed to confuse her.

She wasn’t transitioning well.

She started huddling off to a corner, shying away from the other kits.

When kits do that you know things aren’t going well.

I started to worry. I gave her more feedings, more care, and more hope.

But she just continued to fail.

That’s the thing with bunnies right?

They are so subject to gut issues that if one thing goes out of whack,

it can throw their entire body out of whack.

I found her dead.

A little girl who was SO hoping she would pull through cried.

She was such a hope for us.

My Mom-in-law likes to tell the story of how my hubby liked school, thrived in school,

until he got a teacher who was horrid to him.

Product of a single mom home hubby was, in a time when it was unacceptable.

She couldn’t let it pass.

And bullied my hubby something fierce and it took him years to get past that.

ONE bad thing.

It’s one of the reasons we homeschool.

Turned out well though, means I can homeschool my boy. 🙂

and of course we have Stubborn.

Aka Mr. Gentleman.

Aka… ???? (turns out he’s a she!)

One of five.

Survives!!!!

People ask me.. why Stubborn?

Because I could not get her to drink much of anything.

I kept wondering how she survived… on a wing and a prayer I think.

Most active of all the kits, we’d find her in the oddest places.

She quickly transferred from the nest box to “under the chair”

So we put them in the cage (see above) simply to keep her contained.

When she finally did figure out the whole drinking thing

(which is when she became Mr. Gentleman)

She would very prim and proper sit in my hand and LICK the milk out.

No sucking, no pulling, no biting.

Just a very neat lick.

She made me hoot.

So it’s funny how

against all odds.

The one who fought the hardest my help

is the one who survived in the end.

I learned so much.

Some of it hard.

Some of it fun.

It’s called the nitty gritty of raising rabbits.

Farewell Little one

Do continue to thrive Mr. Gentleman….

We really DO need a new name for you.

A good girls name…

I raise my rabbits at AT Home Pets. 🙂

Review: How Animals Build

February 17, 2018 By Annette1 Leave a Comment

I don’t know about you, but I have a lad who is fascinated by a variety of animals and insects. He enjoys focusing on different how they are the same but different. How sometimes what they do relates to what people can do, and how they can often do it better than we can. A book like “How Animals Build” is a book that appeals to him. Burrows, tunnels, nests, towns and much more. Come learn with us won’t you?

Lonely Planet Kids brings us another fascinating book to read, How Animals Build. Within the pages of this delightful read you will see termites town, penguin rock nests. bee hives, birds weaving nests and bowers, seeing fish living in rocks, bears hiding in ice packs, and beavers living in a lodge. So many different animals, and so many different ways to build.

I loved the illustrations contained within the pages, bright and colourful, reflecting well the variety of colour found within the animal kingdom.

I loved the fold out pages and the lift the flap elements. It’s just a lovely way to cram more information into a book in an interactive manner that helps the reader retain the information. This is a book you can go through several times, being amazed at the variety in the animals around us.

Did you know that a spider went into space and learned to adapt to lack of gravity?! We were both surprised. You can find a video showing the web creation here.

What I thought:

I thought the book was well done, but felt that they missed a crucial couple of groups: the sheer variety of insect and spider nests, and reptiles were scarcely covered. My son had hoped to see crocodile mounds, and bees that nest in hollow tubes, and spider webs of a variety of sorts. He was impressed with the variety of animals nests that were included and we even looked up the inside a termite town.

The rest of the book, with it’s fold out pages and lift the flap elements was fantastic. Brightly coloured pages that were loaded with facts. We both learned much! Which is an excellent thing to do eh? Leaf rollers “I’ve seen those before mom!” The bunny tunnels “They do a lot of damage in towns don’t they mom?” The beehives brought back memories of going to Clovermead and seeing the bees in action. Just a thoroughly interesting book with lots of talking points. Well done.

How Animals Build
Moira Butterfield & Tim Hutchinson
Lonely Planet Kids
Hardcover, non-fiction, pull-out, lift the flap
Animals, activity book, elementary, animal homes.
12 pages (plus fold outs), 8-12 years.
Reviewed for: Raincoast Books.
Where to find: Amazon Link.

Some other animal books you might be interested in:
Animals at Night.
Animal Camouflage. 
Building animals from Lego. 
Magnificent book of Dinosaurs. 
The Animal Book.

Review: Animal Camouflage

January 6, 2018 By Annette1 2 Comments

Every once in a while you get a book in your hands for reviewing and you just fall in love. As soon as I saw this beautiful book “Animal Camouflage” I was like “Son, look at this book”, and talking to other people about it. I just really, really like this book and thought it a very clever design.

Now I have to admit that my 12 year wasn’t quite an enamoured as his mother was, but he thought it was pretty interesting, and had fun flipping through the pages and finding the more difficult animals to spot. I am also concerned that I won’t be able to show you well the beauty and wonder that is contained within this book.

I’m trying to figure out just what I like so much about it.

First: It’s an unusual rendition of a camouflage book. It’s not animals hiding in their areas, with their colours and stripes and stops within a multi-coloured background. It’s white with dark lines, so the animals are right there and can be seen, some easier than others. But no colours to look for, just shapes and outlines, hidden with all the white and lines.

Second: the information is presented in a clear format. Do you see how each area has a colour? That colour is used for the four pages it takes for each area. This makes it easy to differentiate between areas.

Third: It’s a lovely book to hold. Feels good in the hand. It’s pretty to look at and to exclaim over. I showed it to a friend and she agreed it was a nice book to hold in your hand, and loved the ways the animals/scenery was represented. “It’s very clean”.

Fourth: It’s educational. The text is brief, but more animals are covered than just a couple for each area. I do wish that they talked about the TYPE of camouflage that each animal possessed, like the gazelle with a stripe down it’s belly. The spots of a giraffe helping it blend into the browns of the savannah, and the brown pelt of the cottontail helping it hide in the underbrush.

Fifth: I think that it’s perhaps less about the camouflage of animals, but more how they create a fun camouflage search and find to help children want to learn more about the different animals represented. Honestly… it’s a FUN book to look through, to find the four reindeer or the 10ish wolves or can you find the anaconda slithering along the ground?

If you get stuck, or your child needs help, the answers are in back of the book.

Animal Camouflage: Search and find
Sarah Dennis & Sam Hutchinson
Princeton Architectural Press
Hardcover, ages 6-9
Animal, elementary, nature

Reviewed for: Raincoast Books.

Where can you Find it?   Amazon Link.

Animals

For the Love of a Stink Bug

Something Rotten

So what do you get?

What did I think?

If Polar Bears Disappeared

My thoughts:

Hawk Rising

My thoughts:

Raising Bunnies Ties in with Homeschooling

Review: How Animals Build

What I thought:

Review: Animal Camouflage

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