Sarah Stevenson scampered through a heavy rain one recent Friday evening, arriving at a Manhattan rental agency just before it closed.

Ms. Stevenson, a 26-year-old nurse’s aide from Brooklyn, had reserved a compact cutie with a lot of spunk for tooling around on the weekend.

The man behind the counter went and fetched it from a pillow in another room.

“Hi, hi, hi,” Ms. Stevenson said with a smile that kept getting wider. “How have you been, my handsome boy? I missed you.”

Ms. Stevenson picked up Oliver, a 3-year-old cockapoo — half cocker spaniel, half poodle — whom she had rented before.

‘Last weekend, I didn’t want to bring him back because we were having the best time,’ she said as she ran her fingers through Oliver’s tan curly locks.

The agency was Flexpetz, which rents dogs that have been rescued from animal shelters in the hope that they will eventually be adopted. Flexpetz operates out of the Wet Nose Doggy Gym at 34 East 13th Street, which provides day care and boarding for dogs. The company started in San Diego and opened in Los Angeles in June and in New York in October. It plans to expand to Boston, Washington, San Francisco and London.

“There are a lot of people out there looking for companionship,” said Chris Haddix, 28, who runs the New York branch of Flexpetz. There are usually five or six dogs available for rent, many of them on display in the Wet Nose storefront window, attracting crowds.

{ NY Times | Continue reading }

{ Modern Mechanix }

Generally, the scent of a cat, even one that’s a crummy mouser, should help keep mice away. Over the millennia, mice and rats have evolved a strong aversion to the smell of cats and other predators; laboratory-bred rodents hundreds of generations removed from the wild will freak out upon catching a mere whiff of cat. Unless, of course, they’re somehow reconfigured not to.

In a study published late last year, for instance, Japanese researchers reported on a strain of mutant mice they’d whipped up that lacked certain crucial mechanisms for interpreting odors. These mice could smell cats just fine, but didn’t know they were supposed to be afraid: confronted with a cat, they chose to investigate or even try to play rather than flee.

Another exception that proves the rule is the case of the parasite Toxoplasma gondii. T. gondii infects a variety of mammals, including rats, but can reproduce only when the host animal is a cat; one of its evolutionary tricks is to make infected rats act weird, improving their odds of being caught by cats and thereby allowing the parasite to spread. A key form of said weird behavior: T. gondii-infected rats not only fear cat odor less, they’re actually drawn to it. So, since about a third of wild rats carry the parasite, having a cat in the house will repel the majority of rats but might encourage some in the minority to stop by.

{ The Straight Dope | Continue reading }

An old man lived alone in the country. He wanted to dig his potato garden but it was very hard work as the ground was hard. His only son Fred, who used to help him, was in prison. The old man wrote a letter to his son and described his predicament.

Dear Fred,
I am feeling pretty bad because it looks like I won’t be able to plant my potato garden this year. I’m just getting too old to be digging up a garden plot. If you were here, all my troubles would be over I know you would dig the plot for me.
Love,
Dad

A few days later he received a letter from his son.

Dear Dad,
For heaven’s sake, don’t dig up that garden! That’s where I buried the BODIES!
Love,
Fred

At 4am the next morning, FBI agents and local police arrived and dug up the entire area without finding any bodies. They apologized to the old man and left. That same day the old man received another letter from his son.

Dear Dad,
Go ahead and plant the potatoes now. That’s the best I could do under the circumstances.
Love,
Fred

{ Emily’s webpage }

The Ploughman And His Sons

A wealthy ploughman drawing near his end,
Called in his sons apart from every friend,
And said, “When of your sire bereft,
The heritage our fathers left
Guard well, nor sell a single field.

A treasure in it is concealed:
The place, precisely, I don’t know,
But industry will serve to show.

The harvest past, Time’s forelock take,
And search with plough, and spade, and rake;
Turn over every inch of sod,
Nor leave unsearched a single clod.”

The father died. The sons—and not in vain—
Turned over the soil, and over again;
That year their acres bore
More grain than ever before.

Though hidden money found they none,
Yet had their father wisely done,
To show by such a measure,
That toil itself is treasure.

{ Jean de La Fontaine }

{ sakura }

{ Michael Northrup }

I always had big dogs. Then my [ex-] wife brought home a Chihuahua. It had a cough that night. I remember going down to the kitchen and sleeping with the dog, holding her. I felt bad for her. Man, that was sixteen years ago, and I’ve had Chihuahuas ever since. (…)

See, these damaged dogs—they’re like people. I know damn well when I look in this dog’s eyes that somebody abused him—beat the fuck out of this little guy for years. I know about that stuff from my own life. But he’s not even that little. He’s the most muscular Chihuahua you’ve ever seen.

{ Mickey Rourke interviewed by Radar | Continue reading }

related { Times Square dog Halloween | photo gallery }

related { How do you get your dog to come back when he runs off? }

{ Pneumatic Anatomica | Freeny }