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#1: m2 (mercymercy) on Aug 31, 2007

Hmmm makes me wonder if they float or not.......

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I love a picture that tells a story.
And I particularly like his magicwand hands

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Thanks JC you really saved me a LOT of time!

Anything else about little boy habits? LIke, worms make good friends, they fit in your pants pocket, but they don't do so good there if somebody washes your pants while they are in your pocket. Um, yeah, true story. The worm even had a name.

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The name was Casper. When he first started talking about his "friend", his mother assumed it was one of your typical imaginary childhood friends, and since they are invisible, mama christened him Casper, as in the friendly ghost. He then started calling the worm Casper (hey, an adult gave it the name, so that must be the name, right?), and from then on every worm has been called casper (there have been a few). He just forgets to tell anyone when he's got a new casper.

JC, dare I ask? Who is he?

Cool puzzle, I enjoyed doing it, and I love the final image :)
My son Aiden had a pet slater that he named Bessy, he looked after that slater so good and he loved her so much, he put her in races with other slaters, but she never won because she was lazy, but that didn't matter to him, she was just the best. Then one fateful day, his younger sister, Liana, picked Bessie up and squeezed to hard, accidently of course, but that was the end of poor little Bessie. Aiden was very upset, he shed a tear for her, and he still remembers her with great fondness and love. :)

Marz, you have me stumped. What's a slater? I'll probably have other questions once I know. :) Liana's your baby, right?

I'm sorry, Gypso. And one of my pet peeves is pronoun abuse. He is my nephew, Nathan.

Marz, is a slater a turtle? I guess that because we have red ear sliders or just sliders and it sounds close to slater. But I'm with Gypso, up in the air on that one. Of course if you want to have a local dialect slang contest, that could be pretty fun.

Sweet story JC. Thanks

A slater is a small invertebrate, belonging to the order isopoda, which is part of the crustacea class. It's scientific name is phylum Arthropoda and it's common names are slater, pillbug, sow bug, and woodlice. It is a harmless little bug that lives off decaying matter, has an elliptical shaped segmented body, is usually grey in colour with about 14 legs. Their bodies have a hard covering and when disturbed they can roll themsesves up into a ball for protection. When my daughter, Liana, who is 5 (in answer to Gypso's question, yes she still is my baby) picked up Bessie, instead of picking her up by her sides, she picked her up from front to back, with her index finger and thumb, and because Bessie was use to human contact she didn't roll into a ball and, squish, poor Bessie. You must know what they are now, especially after the alternative names were given, what do you guys call them?
So JC, what is a red ear slider?, we have ear wigs, perhaps they are the same creature. I hate ear wigs, they have pincers on their butt and they just look ugly and dangerous. Do you have silverfish? They don't live in water and they don't swim :)

Yes, yes Marz. A pillbug! We call them roly polys. Harmless and rather friendly. We've had many a roly poly as a pet. Wish that I'd thought of roly poly races. It's not too late! We could have an international roly poly race. Hmmm roly poly olympics. Whoa how cosmic dude (aren't Californians funny?), JC this all ties back in (hence dude exclamatory) to Casper. Roly poly bugs were unfortunately a big catch in my dryer lint tray.
We have earwigs too. I really dislike them. We also call them pincher bugs because the DO pinch! They like to hide inside rose petals, corn leaves, leafy greens and artichokes. I have to clean the chokes really well before cooking as I find steamed earwigs unappetizing.
We also have silverfish. They zip out of the crevices around water sources like bathtubs, basins and bathroom baseboards. This is beginning to sound like the Board of Health needs to close my house down! ^>^

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I forgot the slider Q, sorry Marz. A red ear slider is a small turtle that are common house pets. They are similar to painted turtles, but have red markings on the sides of their heads. Turtles live a long time, get really big and are terrible pets. Kids like them and so stores sell them. We sold them at the pet store because the other stores did, but really tried to discourage people from them. They need an extensive set up, like fish do. In Michigan they are illegal to own as pets, only for educational or research purposes. But you get around that by learning something from the things. "hey, turtles don't eat cheese. I learned something". Oh how I could go on, but short story already long, turtles = bad pets, leave them in ponds.
We did have a woman who came in every few weeks with her kids to buy a single cricket. The kids would beg for lizards and other things, and she would say "Wait and see how you do with the cricket. You haven't been able to keep one of those alive. When you can keep a cricket alive, then we'll see about a lizard" What she knew and the kids didn't was that the crickets only live about 3 weeks. Wonder if the kids ever caught on.

Thanx JC, here in Australia you need a licence to keep turtles and other reptiles, which is good as it discourages pet owners that are not too serious about keeping these kinds of creatures. I like the story of the crickets, funny, but I wonder if the kids grew up with some kind of personality disorder, "Well, if I cant keep a simple little thing like a cricket alive, what use am I in this world, I think I will go and buy that book about suicidal bunnies" Lets just hope they did catch on and grew up as adults with just a deep and lasting grudge against their mother. Reminds me of a story my mum told me about her father. He told her that he would get her a horse, he promised her, she was so excited, she has and always will have a deep love of horses, she is a sagitarius also, so you can imagine her absolute and total heartbreak when one day he gave her a matchbox and told her to open it, only to find a dried up, dead seahorse inside it. That was his idea a joke, I don't think she ever forgave him of this. He never did buy her a real horse. She owns two at the moment, so she did make her dreams of owning a horse a reality :)

Am I the only one who's started choosing puzzles to do based on how many comments they have?

No I've started using that to choose too.

Okay, you two, now you've put us all in a catch twentytwo in that by replying to your replies, it makes the puzzle more appealing to someone using that logic to choose a puzzle. Realize of course that sometimes the comment strings can wander a little astray of anything whatsoever to do with the original image...

I think one of the most capricious and humorous effects of wandering comments is taking a peek at the puzzle description while you read. :D

Yes I've noticed lol. But you need not worry since I plan to do them all even if it kills me!

Remind me of a puzzle with a toomstone by one of Marz daughters that end up being the place to tell every one about our kids. it was kind of offbeat but that the kind of thing that happen a lot in that kind of forum. ( and that part of what we love isnt it?? )

Yes Sylvain, we love it. It reminds me of when I was a young girl at primary school, we would all sit in a big circle and pass on a message by whispering it into the ear of the child sitting next to you, by the time it got through all the kids it would be totally different to the original message. The teacher who started the message would ask the last child to say the message out to the rest of the class and then the teacher would read out the original. It was usually so bizarrely different to the original, it made us laugh and wonder how it could change so much, a bit like our discussions on this site I guess. This is how brilliant conversations are created and amazing ideas are formed. I have noticed users getting ideas from discussions we have had for puzzle creation, and this is great because I dont know about anybody else but I often get puzzlers block, so our discussions can help a lot sometimes :)

I used to play the same game Marz. We called it "telephone". I think it got its name from when the telephones were party lines which meant many people shared the same phone line even though they were on different phones at different locations. Hence you often had someone else listening to your conversation. The courteous thing to do of course was hang up until the line was free, but there were gossip mongers throughout town who liked nothing more than to eavesdrop and then spread rumors. By the time the information would wind its way through the rumor mill and get back to the original speaker it was often quite different than the initial conversation. Played as a game it's quite entertaining!

Back in the day it was also known as the oh-so-politically-incorrect Chinese telephone. And don't even ask about the little licorice candies we had.

JC, I just re-read #28. Why was it call Chinese telephone? Am I just thick right now? And what's this about your licorice candies?

I have no idea why. Maybe the same source as the Chinese firedrill/teenage automobile game. The candies had a negative racial term in them.

I'm wondering if you are thinking of the old slang name for Brazil nuts (see the entry in Wikipedia). I think there was also a candy that went by that name.

Jan, you are right on. Except it was babies, not toes.

Because they were shaped like little babies. Or 3/4" fetuses to be exact.

I'm not touching this one guys.

Touch it or not, it what was printed on the side of the box by the manufacturer, not some street parleyance.

Yike-a-rama!

wow ... what a conversation I missed

LOL. Turtles actually make GREAT pets. Well, tortoises do, anyway. I have had a Russian tortoise for several years, without any problems. She eats regular lettuce, carrots, and most green vegetables (and occasional cooked chicken), so we don't have to buy extra food just for her. It really doesn't cost much to keep her, other than the bark in her cage that we change regularly.

Would you tell me a little bit about your Russian Tortoise Adam?
How big is it? Does it stay indoors or out? Does it have its own turtle house (besides its shell)? Etc. :-)

Yes, her name is Torpedo. She is 4 years old, and is about 4 and 1/2 x 6 inches in size. She lives indoors, in a decent sized reptile tank, with bark on the floor for her to bury herself in/dig in. She has a large water dish (we sometimes stick her in it for moisture) and a smaller water dish for drinking. She sometimes buries herself in the bark under her water dish. We tried to give her a "house" once, but she never went in.

Sounds cool.
Thanks Adam.

Very cute puzzle.

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