River's Biggest Fears

Until now we thought River's only fears were drains and cattle guards. Well boy were we wrong. Turns out an even bigger fear of hers, so it would appear, are these huge, banana shaped pods that fall off of a tree here that we haven't yet learned the name of (seen in image number 2). We noticed that she was unsure of them when we were walking to the beach one morning. When she noticed a pod on the sidewalk, she quickly moved to the complete opposite side of the concrete to avoid it. Carl and I, being the awful parents that we are, felt the urge to torment her a little. So we picked one up and set it next to her. She completely freaked out and jumped, and I do mean jumped, onto the grass. Little did she know, she landed right in a huge patch of them. I've never seen her leap so high as the moment she realized where she was standing. She panicked. We felt kinda bad for her, but it was REALLY funny.



Other than that she loves it here. The guys that share our property (from here on out known as Matt and Ryan) have 2 cats. For the last week River's been high-tailing it after them when she sees them. A couple of nights ago I was cooking dinner and I heard Carl whisper, "Stace, look at this." I turned around to see River sleeping on the tile and MashTun, one of the cats, was behind her sniffing her rear. We couldn't believe how brave the cat was. River bounced up when she heard my reaction to the sight, and the cat was out the door. We thought they'd never become friends, but today they semi- played together.

At lot of times during the day River comes back up stairs from playing outside and looks like this...