Friday, November 16, 2007

Dirt and Celebrities

Don’t worry. Contrary to what the title of my post suggests, I am not trying to give the people over at TMZ a run for their money. I just wanted to share with you a couple of peculiar things I learned yesterday.

Until my visit to the pet store to replace Luke's pleco that died prematurely, I thought that boys were one of the grimiest, dirt loving creations on the planet. I was wrong. Have you ever seen a chinchilla? And not just on Go, Diego, Go! but up close and personal? They are the fluffiest, softest, cutest little things I’ve ever seen. The pet store worker asked if Luke and I wanted to watch the two chinchillas take a bath. We enthusiastically agreed. She brought a plastic tub out of the back room and put it in the cage. We expected to see water in the tub. What do you think we saw? Dirt. Well, actually very fine grained, specialty chinchilla dust, but it looked like dirt to me.

The chinchillas proceeded to hop into the dirt, scrape it with their little paws, and then roll around in it repeatedly. Then, they shook themselves out creating a dust cloud that obscured visibility for miles. Here’s a video I took, belatedly due to the fact that by the time the shock wore off and I thought that I should be taping it, they had pretty much finished their “bath.”



If you long to see more, here’s a link to a You Tube video that will give you more of an idea of what is involved, just in case you were thinking of buying a chinchilla.

http://exoticpets.about.com/od/chinchillas/youtube/chindustbath.htm

Not only do chinchillas bathe in dirt, this is specialty dirt that you must pay for. Amazon has cucumber melon-scented chinchilla dust for $8.99. For those chinchillas with sensitive skin and prefer organic products, you can buy the 100% volcanic mountain pumice for $3.99. My kids get their dirt for free in the backyard.

On another peculiar-things-I-discovered-yesterday note, Proverbs31WomanWannaBe directed me to an interesting site called My Heritage. Under the Face Recognition tab, I uploaded a picture of myself which the site used to inform me of which celebrities my appearance most resembles. Coming in with the highest percentage of features that match mine is…the envelope please…Barry Williams aka Greg Brady. See the resemblance? Watch me morph into Greg Brady and you will:


A little scary, no? My husband will never look at me the same again.

I was pleased to see that there were some female hotties on my list as well, and not just scary males:



If you don’t have too big of an ego and won’t be crushed if the site says you look like, well, Greg Brady, give it a try. I ran it on my son, Jack, and he had only females as a match. I always knew he was pretty.

5 comments:

Bea said...

Wow - the likeness is uncanny!

Shalene said...

Oh how funny! You know, I did it with I don't know how many pictures, all to see what they'd come up with. The pic on my site is the only one that came up with Grace Kelly, but I'm still keeping it! :) I got LeeLee Sobieski a couple times too. Did you see the male on my list? Talk about scary! :) Glad you had fun! Blessings to you!

Unknown said...

Hamsters love to take dirt baths, too, just in case you ever decide to get your boys a hamster.

So, did you start your boys on fish for a particular reason?

Kathy said...

I had no idea that chinchillas took "dirt" baths. Good thing I have no plans to buy one any time soon. lol

www.kathy-iamwhoiam.blogspot.com

Freddie L Sirmans, Sr. said...

Just browsing the internet. You have a very, very interesting blog.