Darn it, that's twice I've missed out now!

You'd think after missing out on the once-in-a-lifetime chance to buy an alligator for $200 that I would start grabbing screen shots of amazing craigslist ads. But no, I totally let the opportunity to buy a "Deathstalker" scorpion ('the most poisonous scorpion in the world!" promised the seller) for a mere $85 slip through my fingers yet again. It even came with a cage! All because I did the responsible thing and waited about thirty minutes to ask Gene before hitting up an ATM. Seriously, apparently it's someone's full time job to monitor craigslist and immediately yank down ads for anything that could maim, poison, eat, maul or otherwise kill someone before I get a chance to contact them. I want that job. Mostly because I could delete the ads, then call the seller with no worries of competing bids and come home with all sorts of crazy, yet useful, critters. I would already be the proud owner of an alligator, the third most venomous scorpion in the world (I googled it, the seller exaggerated), and a helper monkey.

But today wasn't a total loss. The grocery store had those tiny watermelons on sale for $2, which is the first sign of spring as far as I'm concerned. I brought one home, waited for a break in the lovely, lovely rain we've been having for two days, then dispensed a little taste of summer. It was Jimmy's first watermelon treat, and he was all over it. Then Dimsworth decided he wanted Jimmy's piece, and steamrolled right over Jimmy to get it. Fifty pound turkeys get whatever fifty pound turkeys want. The ducks, on the other hand, turn to the prison eating method of treat retention - they grab a rind, then run off to an unoccupied corner where they hunch over it and chow down. Most of the time it works out fairly well for them.
In planting news, I'm already at the point where I'm triple stacking pots of plant starts in the greenhouse. I've got pumpkin blossoms, gourd blossoms, and an actual green bean already. Unfortunately, I only have five decent tomato starts, so I planted a flat of them that is currently residing on the kitchen counter. Hopefully those will sprout soon, not that I know where to put them. Yesterday, I dragged Gene into the greenhouse to show off all the beautiful veggies, only to embarrass myself by screaming like a girl (his description) when I walked straight into an occupied spider web. You wouldn't think from looking inside the greenhouse that there's room to jump around while waving your arms and batting furiously at your head, but you'd be wrong. There's plenty of room for that, and I didn't even knock anything over.