About a month or so ago The Lady came home from walking Ernie and said she had seen a guy that looked just like David Cross at the dog run. The Lady and I are both huge fans of Arrested Development (one of Ernie’s many nicknames is Mother Boy). David Cross played Tobias Funke, the extremely closeted, struggling actor/psychologist on the genius series.

I ask The Lady “Do you think it was him?”. “Oh no” she says… never one to be shy “I walked right up to him and said ‘You must get this all the time. Does everyone say you that you look just like David Cross?’ His reply: ‘Finally, a celebrity that looks like me!'”. I pointed out that if I were David Cross, that’s exactly how I would answer that question too.

A few weeks later she’s making small talk at the dog run with another regular and they’re talking about celebrity dog run sightings (Parker Posey has been spotted with some regularity). She brings up the David Cross Look-a-Like and the dog run yenta confirms my suspicions, “That IS David Cross!”.

A few weeks ago (I’ve been meaning to post this for a while a now) The Lady sees David Cross again… as she’s walking by him she says “Ah, the David Cross Look-a-Like”. He shrugged and smiled.

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Ernie & The Lady at Dog Prom

Today is Ernie’s 1 year anniversary with us!

As I type he and The Lady are out on the town, no doubt marking all the way up and down Avenue A. I know there’s a new spiral in his future and perhaps some cheese too!

I remember the first time he stepped foot in the apartment, he did what he does the first time he goes anywhere… he made a mad dash around the perimeter of the apartment.

Item number 2 on the agenda was to jump on The Lady’s bed and do what we call “the charm routine” (rolling & snorting with some light growling). He had us at that first charm routine.

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I’m very sad to report that the Home Zoo now has an Animal House as our new neighbors. The apartment across the hall has been empty for months. They gave it the typical tacky marble everything renovation. Given that it’s a 3 bedroom and likely to be out of control expensive we were figuring it would attract some 20 something nogoodnik party types with suburban parents to guarantee it.

Last night we started to hear the door slam shut several times. After awhile every time the door opened we would hear a loud group “Woooooooooo”. As the night went on it got more rowdy, at one point I heard a girl yell “I LOOOOOOVE this place!!!”. We heard several loud and heartfelt “AWWWWWWWWW-sommmme!!!”s and many, many “Woooooo!!”s. Just now as I’m typing I heard a “Woooooo!” and responded back with one!

We’re guessing they got up around 10ish because that’s when we started to hear a few more “Woooo!!”s. Apparently they can only communicate by yelling. At one point last night as I was walked in the bathroom I noticed a reflection out the window on the window of the building next door. It was the new neighbors, several large jock-y guys chugging beer, standing in front of their gigantic flat screen TV, Wooooing and grunting at a sporting event.

I’m hoping that The Lady, in addition to being the Drunk Whisperer, is also the Annoying Neighbor Whisperer. Astute with understanding animals and beasts of all kinds, she pointed out that we don’t want to start out on the wrong foot with them as it very easily could become a source of amusement for them to “annoy us”. Duuuuuuude!!!! She’s always been good with animals, we’ll see! (Wish us luck… Woooooooooo!!!!!!!).

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A couple of weeks ago I was awakened by a lot of barking. This is unusual as Ernie usually only gives a woof or two at a drunk stumbling up or down the stairs. When the barking wasn’t stopping I got up to hear the door knob jiggling. I put on my best scary voice and yelled “Who’s out there?”… a meek little voice answered “Mary”.

I looked out the peephole to see a really drunk girl with her head on the door trying to shove in a key. “You’ve got the wrong apartment” I say. “No I don’t” answers Drunk Mary. I tried again to persuade her that she had the wrong apartment. She wandered downstairs but I didn’t hear the front door open and close.

About 20 minutes later Drunk Mary was back… we repeated the same scenario. This happened 2 or 3 more times with about a half an hour or so in between failed attempts. As one can imagine, each time Drunk Mary came back, I was less and less “pleasant” about dissuading her from her stubborn and misguided attempts to get into my apartment.

The next time our hapless intruder came back I asked The Lady to handle it. As it turns out, The Lady is the Drunk Whisperer! She calmly and assertively said “Hi, please go away” and just like that Drunk Mary was on her way. It was just like watching the unruly dog suddenly walk nicely on the leash.

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Frequent readers (all one of you, and I use the word frequent very loosely) may have noted that I often refer to Ernie’s bed as “Ernie’s “bed” (pile of towels)” or “Ernie’s “office” (pile of towels)”. I’m a fan of nice things. I have several if not many nice things. A dog bed is not one of them. I really don’t think Ernie minds, plus he really prefers the clean laundry bag that I leave on the (Knoll) couch. While Ernie’s bed (pile of towels) is just that, it’s worth noting that they are Marimekko towels.

Today I was reading BARC’s blog and noticed a link to Bklyn Bunny. Not only a good looking site, but a hotline to extreme cuteness via a bunny webcam. And guess what, their bunny’s hutch (pile of towels) is also Marimekko.

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Three out of four pets spit-up yesterday! Maybe I should buy a lottery ticket. It started off with Ernie, I heard him clicking around at night. This is rare, he usually sleeps all night and will stay in bed with The Lady until she gets up. After a few minutes of clicking I heard the gagging, poor thing.

Within less than a half an hour The Captain flopped right next to my head and he had extremely loud gurgly stomach. Soon enough he was heaving and I had to hold him over the side of my bed like a drunken sailor out a cab window.

Fast forward to the morning. As I’m getting ready to shower Gallagher starts heaving while she’s sitting on the counter waiting for breakfast (very charming). The morning wouldn’t be complete without one more pre-breakfast round from The Captain. Everything seems to be back under control.

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Uncharacteristically non-barking moment…

This weekend at Camp Home Zoo we hosted one large barky Larry Fleisher. He’s an extremely sweet boy. He really just wants to be one of the gang. In his own words, “Woof woof woof woof woof woof woof wooooofffffffff.”

Larry barks when anyone puts on shoes or a coat (we’re going out!), whenever any of the cats make an appearance (what’s that?), any time something audible happens outside the door (can we go out??) and from the moment we woke up until he was walking out the door (we’re going OUT!).

Other highlights include: he’s big enough to stand by my bed and lick my face, he did this randomly throughout the night and in the morning when it was time to go out (!!), he likes to eat pizza crust on the street, he seemed to have eaten a tampon and threw it up in the middle of the night (he didn’t get it from inside the apartment) and the only thing he did at the dog run was bark at The Lady!

He really is a very sweet boy, and he responds very well to commands (something our little Ernie could use some work on). Aunt Beerly will miss him tomorrow when he goes back home… and Aunt Beerly now has a new found appreciation for Ernie, who is a quarter of his size and an eighth as loud.

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We’re going to have a weekend guest at the Home Zoo, one large barky Larry Fleisher! He’s very sweet and he and Ernie seem to get along but Larry is usually very focused on Julian, his human companion.

Coincidentally Larry will be guesting at the HZ the same weekend as the Halloween Parade. The Lady will be dressing up Ernie up as a unicorn… looks like we’ll be taking two unicorns to the parade.

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