the menagerie minus one

We discovered the name of the yellow-white dog: Linda. She loves to follow us into town, and once there, the townspeople usually yell, "Linda, vai a casa!" or "Linda, go home!" Clearly she must wander up to town a lot. Yesterday we drove up to town so Linda didn't follow. We were at the stationery store and on our way out the owner said to say, "hi" to Linda and to tell her to come visit. I guess we've been in town long enough that Linda is now seen as our dog.

We have a new dog as well, Schizzo (as it says on his tag). Schizzo seemed pretty skinny, so we called the number on the tag a few times, but no luck. Then we asked in town, and they said Schizzo showed up two years ago abandoned. Since he has a lovely blue collar and there was a phone number that's no longer in service, we worry that his owner must have died. Anyway, John then decided we needed to give Schizzo some food so he bought a large can of dog food (we couldn't find any dry food). Linda was there as well, so we also fed her. Boy, did those dogs love us after that.

Meanwhile Kitty has benefited from any remnants of milk. She drinks it down so quickly it's rather astonishing. I also fed her scraps from our picnic lunch the other day. How many American cats do you know that would eat a cannelinni bean or a chunk of tomato? The animals here are hungry.

But I think we've reached the end of our beneficence. Yesterday Linda showed up with a dead rabbit. Clearly the animals here fend for themselves.

We're down one animal, though. Mice carry the toxoplasmosis parasite which is dangerous for pregnant women, so despite thinking him awfully cute, we had to remove the mouse. The owners of the house gave us a piece of cardboard slathered in sticky glue with some parmesan cubes in the middle. The mouse totally went for it. Luckily John had it all taken care of before I even got out of bed in the morning. He feels terrible about the mouse, but I and the other animals still love him.