Images from:
1) even steven (Paco)
2) Jethro (Chicks) pictures from my brother’s little farmette in WV.
3) Jethro (Dog and Cow) pictures from my brother’s little farmette in WV.
4) Jethro (Goats) pictures from my brother’s little farmette in WV.
5) SNS (Toad)
6) Tim-FJB (Fish) with Purple Geode and Marbles.
7) Happy New Year from Roger F and Jellybean
To submit your critter pictures for a future Sunday Critters, please email them to:
INCLUDE:
- A picture you/family/friend took and agree to publish here. NO images found on the internet.
- ‘Critters’ in the subject line.
- Your screen name.
- Your critter’s name (or species, if not your pet).
- Comments about the critter you want to share.
NEEDED: If your picture is for any of the following themes, please name the theme.
1-12 Random iOTWr Critters – Pictures needed by FRIDAY at NOON – Send in your critter pics!
1-19 Everyone Say Cheese! – Your critters posing for their portraits.
1-26 Wayback Critter Machine from 2018 – No pictures needed.
Thanks for your photos, contributors!
Beautiful!
Another collection of God’s wonders to kick off the week!
Thanks, Claudia!
I think Tim-FJB’s picture is upside down.
It looks like you’re right, Jethro! I know you can’t see the fish very well, but it looks like it’s right-side-up!
I’ll fix t when I get home!!!
😬
Especially enjoyed picture of the goats. I used to raise angora goats, and sheared them twice a year. I fell in love with one who was deformed, severe cleft palate, but I kept her alive for eight wonderful years. I buried her under a weeping willow tree not far from my living room window, so in a way she is still with me.
I have sad news about Toad.
This guy lived at my house since we moved in in ’21, and was something of a regular autumnal visitor, hanging out on the porch, clinging to the garage door for some reason, and scaring my MIL when she went out for an evening smoke by just staring at her from the flowerpots across from her bench. Occasionally I’d invite him in for a brief visit with the wife who also liked him, but him having signaled his displeasure by peeing on my hands on most occasions I had discontinued that practice some time ago, but we continued to enjoy his presence at a distance.
All of that changed one terrible October day, on the occasion of my wife’s birthday.
…I was prepping for the impending ceremonies by, among other things, removing the trash from the house as dusk gathered itself above the trash cans. To my surprise I felt an anomoly as I placed a foot in my driveway and immediately recoiled, to find Br’er Toad looking at me reproachfully from the concrete. Concerned I temporarily abandoned my somewhat whiffy cargo to pick him up and examine him; and to my great relief I found him with no visible damage or obvious impairment, as well as a freshly emptied bladder as the contents dripped between my fingers in the gloaming in his traditional salutation to me.
Relieved, I chided him about the dangers of driveways that a toad his age SURELY had learned by now, then conveyed him to the creek a good distance from the pavement where I assume he had hearth and home, and resumed my burdens and washed my hands while amusing the birthday girl with tales of her erstwhile well-wisher and his somewhat understandable but no less unhygenic treatment of me during our unexpected encounter.
As I went about my preparations for the recognition of her natal day guest begin to arrive in the rapidly encroaching darkness, one such worthy being her sister and so my SIL. After greetings and recalling her womb-mate to the room, she suddenly remarked she had forgotten the gift in the car and moved to get it. Not being a complete churl and also welcoming an opportunity to relieve my aging ears of the rapid-fire female discourse as is common between sisters I offered to retrieve said gift for her, to which she consented and so handed me the keys.
As the darkness had solidified at this point and my post lamp being inoperative, and also being mindful of our previous visitation I collected a flashlight and ventured into the starless eventide, playing the remorseless beam about the ground … only to see a lump on the edge of the pool of light just beyond her trunk.
It was Br’er Toad.
…his eyes had mercifully faded into their own eternal darkness by this point, but it was evident he had suffered greatly. One tire had evidently clipped him during his ill-considered second foray onto our unforgiving surface, just sufficient to squeeze his side hard enough to burst his intestines throuh even his tough, scaly flesh. This had evidently not killed him immediately to judge by the bloody trail leading from the initial impact spall to where he had at last surrended his batrachian ghost, and I can only imagine the suffering of this poor creature struggling his last in a vain attempt to live a liitle longer, dragging his innards beside him across the cruel peaks of the unforgiving coarse concrete surface.
Having verified that he had indeed croaked in a more final way than toads usually do I retrieved the brightly wrapped package and returned to the festivites with the incongruous task of bringing the news of death into a celebration of birth. My wife was understandably saddeded by this news but unsurprised after my previous report, and told my SIL it was unlikely she could have seen the autumn leaf-colored creature on my autumn leaf-covered driveway as she ascended my hill in darkness with the headlights bouncing above the plain of the pavement, but this did not assuage the loss; only birthday cake has that power, and it was only later that power would be consumed. I left them to commiserate each other as I exited to the sad task of reptilian interral, wondering what other creatures may die during the process from my very footfalls in the night.
I dont know about the territorialty of toads or if I had actually seen more than one as they tend towards a sameness in mien; but the fact I have seen no toad since augers ill for the presence of others.
I would like to believe he lived a long, happy life as the lives of toads go, and that somewhere in my creek embankment he left a legacy to the future to arise and eat of the insects around my door once more, and look forwards to the glad day when my MIL once more reports being terrified from her station outside my door by a beady little insectavorious grin.
As we celebrate the animals God gifted us with today, spare a thought for Br’er Toad by looking DOWN occasionally as you walk and drive.
His kin will thank you for it…
I cut and pasted the picture in powerpoint and flipped it over to confirm. It is definitely upside down.
Fixed it, Jethro! Now that I see it right-side-up, the fish looks even better. And I can’t believe I didn’t act on my thought of “why did he put the geode on the top?”!!!!
*sulks away ashamedly….*
😂😂😂
Whatta lovely menagerie!
SNS , sorry about your little toad friend.
Geni
Sunday, 5 January 2025, 13:42 at 1:42 pm
…sadly, the wild ones have to cross the Rainbow Bridge sometime too, Ive probably had far more animals die around the house than I know about (as the coyotes and owls would seem to suggest), but sometimes you get fond of a little guy like this who just hangs out too, as God’s love isnt limited to the domestic but sometimes runs through the yard and eats the wife’s tomatoes because they can…Im just glad he came around for no real reason I can explain, and if he DOES have kin have I got the bugs for them…
Claudia
Sunday, 5 January 2025, 13:29 at 1:29 pm
…if you get ONE picture blocked wrong in literal MONTHS of Sundays, girl, you dont have anything to be ashamed of at all…
Even though my phone has tiny pictures Tim-FJB’s Fish appeared to be an Angelfish although I’m no expert.
SNS, I have the tiniest of gardens at my little house and get to know and appreciate the wildlife I see and have been told off by a squirrel or two when disturbing their little stashes whenever planting something new. So I get some fresh peanuts and leave them where they can be found and they’re not angry for long .