TMI ALERT

TMI ALERT

There. You have been properly warned. This post is hilariously grody and discusses baby squirrel genitals. If that’s not your thing please click here for pictures of adorable clean well-behaved kittens.

Yesterday at the Wildlife Nursery I learned something . . . special about baby squirrels.

The nursery has a couple of big whiteboards where we track each animal. It keeps information on diet, medication, and habitat cleaning very well organized as there are a lot of people moving around the facility and staying on top of hundreds of hungry critters can get tricky. I kept noticing in the notes section by nearly every male squirrel that there were, well, penis issues. Yes, itty bitty baby squirrel penises. I said it. Please remember I DID give you a TMI warning. In the notes section of the whiteboard it was a penispalooza. Swollen penis. Don’t forget penis meds. Watch penis. Eew. Gross. No thanks.

I went to the squirrel cages with that morning’s set of tiny baby bottles filled with formula, and try as I might to focus on the adorable slurping sound, my eyes were inevitably drawn to their junk. As the whiteboard promised, lots of the males had seriously swollen, red, irritated squirrel schlongs. I asked one of the more senior volunteers what was up with that. She suppressed a laugh and told me. At first I was so grossed out that I almost dropped the baby bottle I was holding for a very hungry squirrel. It squealed in protest and I pushed the nipple back to its mouth. It went back to slurping and gazing at me contentedly with those velvety dark eyes. And then, as I watched it continue to eat, I laughed in spite of myself.

So here’s where I’m going with this. Like babies of any mammal species, they’ll suck on anything. Like . . . anything. Critters like to continue to suck on things even if their bellies are full, whether it be fingers, a pacifier, or their mother. It’s comforting to them. Human babies are drool factories that unceasingly seek out anything to slurp on. Now imagine that baby with enormous buck teeth on about nine shots of espresso and you’ve got an idea of what a baby squirrel is like.

Now you know where I’m going with this. Yes. Exactly. Male baby squirrels are, er, endowed with an item that is pretty much the same size and shape as a momma squirrel nipple. And their siblings, in the absence of an itty bitty squirrel pacifier, will go to town on their poor little squirrel schlongs, leaving bite marks, inflammation, and infection. There isn’t much that can be done about this, since it happens in nature and it’s much better for the squirrels to live in nests together where they can socialize. All the SPCA can do is offer a little ointment if their junk gets too much funk.

Happy Tuesday Everybody!

Move faster, clock. Move faster. I need to get through my work day.

In this tasty little teaser interview, Fillion dishes on his love of Halo, messing with fans, and his role as Sergeant Buck in the game.

Which has left me with a bizarre but delicious daydream in which I remake Kill Bill, Vol. 1, but with Buck getting his lips chewed on in a way that he wouldn’t complain about . . .

. . . rowr.

Do you hear me, baby? I miss you. Right now I’m gazing at you, wishing I could put my lips on you and whisper how much I’d love to just eat you up. Lick you. Go crazy and spend a whole night devoted to you.

Sigh. And yet all I can do is look at your sweet face:

It’s not the same. I love you, Jaffa Cakes. I first tasted them in college, and after moving back to the U.S. I made frequent trips to an import shop in Santa Monica just to get them. Gradually I weaned myself off of them, because they were hard to find and making special trips just gets more difficult. But I had some while on my vacation in April and it triggered that deep love. I could run, I could hide, but I could never escape this passion.

And the effing import shop is out. “Probably until Friday.”

Curse you, McVities, for your cruel and unfair failure to expand distribution to North America. Curse you for parting me and my great love.

So why is there so much snot in my nose? Has all the snot in the universe been sucked into a black hole over in the Gamma Quadrant, radiating out through an Einstein-Rosen bridge that has taken up residence in my sinuses, costing me a fortune in Kleenex?

There is no other orifice that behaves this way. If there’s something nasty coming out of you, usually you run out of it quickly and it’s done and over with. But the nose! Ah, the nose. What a miraculous little defier of physics you are.

MAN I hate being sick . . .