~Hotash~: Bramble vs. The Pond

The sand pit, originally uploaded by Hotash.

Baby Bramble is pushing eight weeks old now...just barely old enough to wean from mom. In the meantime Chris and I have been playing parents, well the other cats and dogs are helping a lot too.

So the story starts back about three weeks ago, shortly after Bramble came to live with us. I go to the river with Chris' niece and take the dogs and carry Bramble down. The river is shallow and barely flowing everyone is having fun. Bramble is playing along the shore in an open space when all of a sudden a tiny rock is tossed down river....Cali and Rain race after it.

This triggers Bramble's "freak out' mode and she flees in the most open direction she can....straight out into the river! As the river deepens around her, reaches her tummy, then finally under her chin...she freezes in mid-motion, one front foot hovering over the water, the other three firmly planted. She quietly waits in this position to be rescued. So, she has all four feet good and wet, her belly is wet and her chin has some water on it, but she is safe-phew!

Some parents we are...there is a theme here.

So, along comes the afternoon the other day...all of us are in the garden, dogs, cats, and all- doing some sitting around and watering. Bramble is playing, hunting, and otherwise annoying everything, and I mean everything that moves....when along comes a bumble bee

I'm watering at this point, Chris is watching Bramble chase the bee, she does a fantastical back flip jump and lands on her side near the edge of the pond....gets up, shakes off and WOW! there's that bee!!! She leaps straight away at the buzzing thing...right into the pond!

She sinks...Chris takes off running, she surfaces fighting and scrambling, arms flailing around, just as Chris is reaching the pond, she pulls herself out the other side. She is soaked, for reals soaked. She is so heavy with water she can only slowly waddle away from the evil pit of darkness.

I catch up with her under the truck - She comes to me and I dry her off with a towel where she just laid there and was in bliss to be held and dried about the body. She promptly fell asleep under the garden chair- exhausted!

Chris says "well, at least we know she can get out on her own."
Then we all had a huge laugh as this is the stuff cartoons are made of...

She is currently hassling Cali for a sleeping spot very near her tail- you know in case it moves again. Cali is the only one who will put up with her long enough for her to calm to sleep.

And of course the cutest video ever...
Bramble as a turtle