The Baby Animal Exchange.

This idea got its start more than a year ago. It seems that the young transients in Arcata always have puppies, not full-grown dogs. I figured they must need puppies so that they have the cuteness factor when they panhandle, because the young Arcata transient usually isn't all that cute on his/her own. So, there must be a puppy exchange somewhere... like an animal shelter, but they take the older dogs back when they've outgrown the adorable stage and give the dirty, penniless 20-something a new puppy.

Now, I like puppies as much (no, maybe more) than the next person, but I'm more than happy to have an adult dog, too. There are a few animals that I would love to have as babies, but I'm not so sure about owning an adult one. The Exchange started as The Baby Cow Exchange, but then we realized that there were others that should be included. Example: I would LOVE to have a calf, but what do you do with a full-grown cow? It's not quite as cute as it once was, but I'm certainly not going to sell it for meat. (I couldn't do that to a friend.) So, what do you do? You exchange it for a new calf. Since The Baby Cow Exchange was dreamed up, we've also added pigs, sheep, horses and a whole fleet of specialty non-domesticated animals. We're open to suggestion. Granted, there are a whole lot of details that need to be worked out, so this remains a fantasy of ours.

Goats, dogs, cats and chickens fall into the category of not needing to be exchanged. Look for them on the Jones acre in the future. In the meantime, we'll just have to talk to our friendly neighbor cow, who now has a buddy: a goat! They really like each other and were playing in the yard when we visited on Friday.


Yesterday, Andy and I drove up to Crescent City to order our cabinets and pick up the insulation for the house. We had some time to kill, so we drove around for a bit. The weather on the way up was 2 minutes of rain, 3 minutes of fog, 5 minutes of clear, 30 seconds of hail, etc. all the way there. In the afternoon, though, it was gorgeous. This photo was taken from Point St. George, looking north toward Oregon. This photo doesn't really show it, but it was SUPER windy and pretty cold.