I just gave an invading baby chipmunk a sponge bath. That bat $#!+ crazy statement pretty much sums up my life. I’m not very good at this farming thing..farmers are supposed to be thick-skinned, with an inherent understanding that if a critter on your farm isn’t making you money, or is destroying said farm…that critter must be “culled” from the ranks. But I just can’t do it. I have to come to terms with the fact that I now own the world’s most expensive petting zoo..I can’t call myself a farmer anymore I don’t think. The minute you dig the 6th baby chipmunk that you’ve found in your house out of your trash can this week, floundering about in a bag of flaming hot Taki Chips, covered in red jalapeño dust…and you know that now the count is up to a half a dozen vermin that have scurried under your feet since your return from NYC..he really deserves to be left to a fiery Taki death, or be fed to your cat…but ya just can’t see it…nor can little chippy as he is currently blinded by red hot delicious Taki dust…Nope. I’m not a farmer anymore. I’m a pinko, hippie, tree-huggin’ nut at this point, because this is the spot in the story when said froopy-loopy artist’s heart-strings are pulled, and she gives a baby chipmunk a bath….Lord knows I don’t need an extra blind rodent running around the place.  After the warm sponge bath, a nice toweled fur fluffing, and a few reassuring pats to the head, nutball artist treks barefoot in the frost across her farm to relocate poor Chippy to her warm hay filled barn. The end.

So I just returned home from a long 6 day, high-falootin’ business trip to New York City….I’ve been wining, and dining, and meeting with my VIP clients in their showrooms on 5th Avenue and Madison Avenue…Traveling back to AZ is always exhausting with the long TSA lines in NY, the 3 hour time difference, Phoenix Sky Harbor’s excruciatingly slow service, and then a 2 hour drive back up to the mountains, dodging elk and raccoons as my jet-lagged, hallucinating carcass just dreams of my own bed…I get there, and within 5 minutes, I am screaming because I’ve found 3 baby chipmunks running for their lives from my cat, one making a dive for the very bed that I’ve dreamed of for the last week… This sophisticado gets an instant reality check of her return to country life…and after screaming and saving a few rodents’ lives..she smiles, sighs, and passes out for 12 hours. 

Only to wake up and realize that it is now baby rabbit herding time…You’ve heard of “herding cats”? Well if you’ve got that mastered…I challenge you to herd 7 baby rabbits…Then we can talk. Nothing like promising cute baby Easter bunnies to children and then having promised bunnies get eaten by a cat or slip through their wire cage…You desperately search for them for hours..finally find them burrowed in with the tortoises…because well. Heat Lamp. Duh. It was warm in there. Most chaotic, expensive, sometimes tragic, fun petting zoo. ever. Have a happy spring everyone from Tre Sorelle Studio’s funny farm to yours!