Cold weather blues

We're not sure why it's cold outside, but we can attest that is and has been very cold. It's so cold the staff won't even make us stay out for our normal time in the evenings before bedtime. Staffer Mom says no beast should be out in this weather, and we're OK with that. We did suggest she let the Willis and his deer friends in the house, and she refused to consider it.
Maggie got a science lesson, too. Bandit remembers living in Kentucky where it stayed cold a lot. He said that pee will crack when it hit the cold stone outside the door, and it will! We've tried it several times now and so Staffer Mom says we have to go all the way off the walk before we can pee now. That's probably for the best anyway since the grass doesn't seem so cold.
It needs to get warm soon. We can only amuse ourselves in this cold for so long.

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.

Cold weather is here, and so are the deer

This week, it turned winter around here. Staffer Mom pulled out the blankets for the staff, and we got an extra blankie, too. All that thoughtfulness is nice, but we still had to go outside to do our business -- and it was below freezing.
Staffer Dad insists we go out and walk and stuff. Bandit doesn't like it, but he remembers when it was worse. When he lived in Kentucky and had to go out in the snow and dig a hole. He thought it was pretty neat since his poo would steam when it was really cold. He keeps trying to make it happen here in this yard. Maggie just keeps crawling up on Staffer Dad to snuggle.

The other big thing this week is that we have a pet deer. Staffer Mom doesn't like him at all because he ate all her new pansy plants, but we think he's cool. The staff couldn't figure out why we won't chase him out of the yard or even acknowledge his presence. It's probably a good thing they don't realize how long he's been living here. We see and smell him all the time. We roll in his pee a lot. We think he's now peeing exclusively in our yard just because we appreciate it so much.
He was here all weekend, and that's why Staffer Dad made us take a bath today.
Anyway, we like the deer and we're going to try to keep him.
Staffer Mom's not going to be happy about this. She'll have to deal: We've named it Willis.