Surrounded by critters!

I love seeing people wearing my beads! The other day my daughter was wearing this turtle I made, so I snapped a picture of it (I promised her I'd crop out all but the turtle). She has always loved turtles. Well, she just has always loved animals period! It didn't surprise me one bit when in high school she went to work at a pet store. Which is where she got one of her real turtles named Stupid. The other two she had were Mikey & Twitty. The three amigos stayed with us until they became too big for the aquarium in her room. After that they went to live out the rest of their time in a big pond full of yummy tadpoles at a friends house.

When I sit and think about it, we have had such a wide variety of critters in our family. 3 turtles, 2 gerbils, 2 hamsters, 2 geckos, 14 birds, 6 dogs, and dozens of fish. By the way, most of these were brought into our home by our animal loving daughter I spoke of earlier. There have been so many that I'm sure I'm probably forgetting someone in there! Oh, and we don't just give our pets any ordinary ol' name! Well, some of them we did, but most of them are pretty wild. Like birds named Lassie, Phredd, Fishbait, Zhou, Nipper, Screech. There was a hamster named Roadkill, fish named Tater Tot, Tater Chip, Gnocchi & Sweet Tater. And don't forget the dogs Abigail Von Wag-a-tail(the perfect dog) and Tucker Von F***er.

Yep, I love my critters! Each and every one of them! Which is probably why when I sit down at the torch to make a bead the thing I always come back to making is some sort of sculptural animal bead. I find that it is my comfort zone. The thing that makes me feel the most at home.

ETA: I knew I was forgetting someone in my long list of pets! My daughter reminded me of Elvis the Guinea Pig. How could I forget that cute little guy?