Michelle over at Michelle’s Weekly Pet Challenge has a new challenge up this week. The rules say that you can show photos of your pet, those you feed or pets of family. I come from a family that loves animals and so does the family of the Garden Gnome. So beginning this post, I am going to share photos of HRH Princess Smudge a.k.a. The Diva. Of course I’ve talked about her often enough, it’s only fair that I show you just what a Diva she is 🙂
Before HRH came to live with us, we had an Australian Silky Terrier called Bundy. Sadly we lost Bundy just before his 14th birthday early last year.
We also feed birds in our garden. We fed them at our last home and now we feed them here. As you know I love birds of any kind. We have budgerigars in an aviary out the back but the wild birds are my passion. I haven’t managed to capture any photos of the Corellas and Galahs that feed at times also so you will have to be content with the Rainbow Lorikeets and King Parrots.
We don’t have room in our back yard any longer for chickens so we had to give our girls away. We also had a duck. All of our chickens had names (and personalities to match). Dibble the Duck was full of character. I still remember the morning that the next door neighbour was yelling for me to come outside because the duck was making herself at home on our roof.
We often have creatures visit our garden also. We regularly have Blue Tongued Lizards but this little fellow caught us by surprise. He stayed for about two weeks before moving on again.
Now I have to share my mother’s babies with you. Meet Missy (the long haired one) and Lucy. Missy is fickle and is friends with anyone who will play with her, pet her or feed her. Lucy is a one man girl and doesn’t like newcomers to her world. Although she doesn’t have front teeth, she will ‘gum’ the ankles of those who get close to her.
And I have two sister-in-laws who love their animals. The Goat Lady inherited goats with when she bought her property. Over the years, those numbers have fluctuated. I have a million photos somewhere but I’ve chosen to share just one 🙂
One of the Garden Gnome’s youngest sisters has a small hobby farm. Here are some of her animals, including Boxer and Hector (the dogs), Tammy the pig, Glenda the horse and the noisy rooster. Sadly, Hector is no longer with us.
And that my friends are some of the animals in my life. I have a photo of Jack (who was the dog of another SIL) but sadly I can’t find the photo and Jack is no longer with us either. All of these dogs we have lost were with the family for many, many years and it was sad to the whole family to lose them.
Have a blessed day everyone.
suzjones.wordpress.com 
One fluffy little mix 🙂
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Thanks Vic 🙂
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Suz, what a cool post you have here.
I got lost yesterday and I ended up at another blog that was probably yours — but I was weird — like the real you wasn’t there. My mouse is working much better today I think.
~ Eric
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Eric, I posted about music and… now I’ve forgotten. Darn that old age. 🙂
So were you weird or the blog?
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I see it — it was ‘itgoeson.wordpress.com’
No, I was okay — just felt lost for a few moments — let’s not worry abo little senior moments and such. 🙂
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Okay Eric, I just had a real giggle because I went to that link and found that Don Charisma and Conrad both liked the page. They are two of my most regular followers. lol So take heart in the senior moment and realise that you are not the first 😉
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yes, I think it was weird — but its an okay weird. I’m accustomed to some senioritis
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I just love animals. I had chickens for years until just a few months ago. We decided to give them away because we want to be able to get away at a moment’s notice (perhaps) and don’t want to hassle finding a watcher. We will be leaving our dogs in a kennel for the next week as it is which kills me but sometimes this has to be…ordinarily, though, I am here all the time tending to the wild birds, the dogs, my tortoise, and other creatures that visit. I’ve nicknamed myself “Mother Nature” here as this is my Garden of Eden. They all add to the beauty of our place in some special way of their own.
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Yay you. I love the animals. I guess it is a shared passion with the Garden Gnome (although he is the main feeder and waterer).lol I just take the photos and love them 😉
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What a wonderful post! Thanks so much for sharing all the wonderful animals you know with us. 🙂
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Thanks for stopping by my blog. It was a fun post to put together. 🙂
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Yes Sis I enjoyed your story ,as you know our life revolves around our girls now you have all left home .and Lucy has had more teeth out .Mum
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I’m sorry in one way that Lucy has had more teeth out but relieved that there is less chance of her breaking the skin when she latches on to my ankle now. 🙂
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They’re all just so cute. We loved to read about them 🙂 Pawkiss 🙂
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I’m glad you enjoyed. Thanks for stopping by 🙂
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I love them all! I’m definitely a kitty fanatic, but I’m a sucker for all animals. Your kitty certainly looks like a diva–but most cats are. Right?
And what was the animal that visited? Is that a hedgehog?
We feed the wild birds in our neighborhood too. I just trudged out in -5F weather to fill our feeder. We mostly have common sparrows and house finches, though, with a couple of chickadees and bluejays here and there. But it’s still nice to have some wildlife to watch in the depths of winter.
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Yes, I guess all cats are but this Diva doesn’t even like to be petted unless it’s on her terms and in her own time 😉
The animal that visited was an Echidna. I guess it is Australia’s version of a hedgehog. It was only a young one. We have a photo of it beside a table tennis bat to show it’s size. It really was quite gorgeous. We thought it may have been injured so took it to the vet. He said it looked fine and that it was probably escaping from all the wet weather we had been having and so it made itself at home in our garden for a while.
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Oh, she truly is a diva!
I’ve never heard of an Echidna. What a cool visitor to have. I looked up the birds that you talked about too. We don’t have anything that pretty hanging out in the backyards of Denver. There are some pretty birds in the mountains, but not in the city.
And I’m glad the Echidna was okay. It was so nice of you to take it to the vet. I’m guessing it was pretty agreeable to being captured and handled?
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Well they do have spines but it is a pretty slow moving animal and not at all aggressive so there were no issues at picking it up. I have photos of my sister in law holding it.
The birds are stunning. I need to take more photos of the native birds in our area. We are blessed with an abundance of them as we live in a rural area. Although we are in town, we are on the outskirts and have farmland around and mountains and rainforest a short distance away.
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Yes, please post some pictures of the birds and maybe your garden?
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I did a post a while ago with some of the flowers in the garden (when it was Spring). Right now our front garden is covered by ropes of lights that sort of detract from the whole image. However I will keep your request in mind for the future. I have a picture of a Kookaburra somewhere on my computer. They visit here regularly but the photo I have was taken at one of the National Parks a couple of hours away. I’ll make a note to take more photos. 🙂
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Your photos are lovely – quite a ‘zoo’ you have:) All of your animals are adorable – the birds are quite stunning. We do not have these breeds of birds around my part of the world. I really enjoy your post!
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Thank you for stopping by my blog and checking out the animals in our family. The birds are very pretty but like all parrots also extremely loud. We were given a rainbow lorikeet that had been bred and raised in captivity but needed to find him a new home because of his constant screeching. He was certainly entertaining though. 🙂
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