Quick rant

How is it fair that the staffers can eat 2 dozen chicken wings in front of us and we don't even get a lick or a bone or anything?
How is that fair?
Just wait until we get back outside near Staffer Mom's new plants.

Nighttime can be funtime

Winter can be tough because it's cold, but for us, it's sometimes worse because it gets dark outside earlier. We can still smell all the good stuff, but it's harder to find our good holes and the neighbor's cat or chihuahua. It's also harder for the staff to figure out we've left the yard and gone exploring.

The other night, we discovered we could run into the neighbors' yards and their outside lights would turn on. Ernie the cat explained it to us: If you move in front of the special spotlights, they come on.

Then, we figured out that all five neighbors have one of those cool lights to scare off bad people and deer. (Doesn't work for deer -- we know that. Willis just thinks they are funny. He says they help him find the good plants to eat.)

Anyway, when it's time to go in the house, we can run away from Staffer Dad and set off the neighbors' spotlights. He tries to track us by following the lights that pop on across the back yards.

So that brings us to the new winter game: Turn on all five backyard lights before we get caught and have to go in. Maggie's up to 3 at a time and Bandit's managed all 5 once. We're considering a point system where each week's winner gets first roll in the fresh deer pee.

Staffer Dad is not amused.

We've been slacking

No, we haven't been in timeout -- and we're pretty sure that's what you thought. We've just been slackers. We've just been having a pretty good time, and we took a break. But we're back.

We'll try to catch you up with our latest adventures:
- Right before Christmas, we woke up one morning and heard all sorts of strange sounds outside...it sounded like the chainsaw and giant suck machine (vacuum cleaner?) all at one time, so that couldn't be good. When we finally got to go outside and check out the noise, we found our favorite big pine trees were missing from the backyard. Bandit was particularly upset to find all the excavation work he'd done around the tree near the weird bush was all gone. Now there was a big hole full of wood chips. We're not really sure what caused this, but we figure there will be lots of termites and grubs in that part of the yard when summer comes. That can't be bad.

- Christmas was fun. Grandma came and slipped us food under the table a couple of times. Staffer Mom took some time off and when she does that, she tends to cook a lot. This time, she cooked so much, she dropped food on the floor a lot, so that worked out well. She can stay home more often.

- The staff got a Wii. And frankly, we think those things are hazardous. First of all, they always move the furniture to play with it, and when Staffer Mom is Wii boxing she gets pretty violent. Last night, she nearly stepped on Maggie twice. When Staffer Dad's playing Wii bowling, he won't let us in the den at all. This was quite unexpected for us and remains an annoying situation.

- Then, we spent New Year's at the beach. It was cold there, but the staff lets us sit on the couch at the beach house and that made up for a lot. Unlike last year, they didn't make us watch all five "Planet of the Apes" movies. Instead, they took the stupid Wii to play with. Now we're worried they'll take away our Wimbledon and U.S. Open vacations to play with that stupid toy.

So that puts us about even...except for our new nighttime yard game. We'll tell you about that later.