We’ve returned home from Alison’s Not-Too-Wild Animal Park with beaucoup llama poop and the vision of having seen, petted and/or fed docile Scottish Highland Cattle, baby llamas with their mamas, myriad geese, ducks, turkeys, emu and three deer, which raced across the top of a hill.

Cait & Marty bonded with the llamas, burros, sheep, ponies, dogs and baby kitties without adopting any and bringing them home to the backyard of their suburban duplex.

Of the eight kabillion photos Cait took today, she liked this one best, seen up top, of a female llama with attitude to spare. The one below is of Cait feeding a goat with a ear from the farm’s dried corn bins while our friend Courtney, who lives at the farm, lends support.

“Junior” - shown here with the squash in his mouth - is the low-dog-on-the-totem-pole among the four dogs we share. Somebody else always has the toy, or the chew, or the ball. So when Junior spotted the squash - unattended - he went for it, wedging it in his mouth and holding on for all he was worth.

Our three pet hens having a little siesta among the melons and squash we have planted in containers in the Gimpy Garden. The “girls” are very social, co-exist nicely with our dogs and do a great clean-up of pesty insects and slugs.

They’re also very alert to when we leave the sliding-glass door open on the patio and adept at silently sneaking in the house. This has happened more than we like to admit.

Cait calls them Mensa chickens because they are uncanny at evading detection. Once I found the three of them in my linen closet, settled down and ready for a nap. They clearly have a broad definition of “free range.”

Many cities and towns outlaw the raising of backyard chickens. Our city, fortunately, has a more progressive outlook. Click here to learn more about backyard chickens and remember:

“Wherever chickens are outlawed, only outlaws will have chickens.”

Eds. Note: One time - and one time only - Rex - the yellow chicken nestled down in the front of the photo - got into Marty’s back seat and rode undetected most of the way to the mall while standing on the passenger arm rest and looking out the window behind Marty’s back. It was only when other cars pulled alongside and started pointing and laughing that Marty figured out Rex (the Mensa Chicken) had come along for the ride.

Milo, shown here, bested 500 other canine contenders to take top honors for bravery in a British competition.

Milo was seriously abused by a former owner, leaving him with damaged legs. Despite his injuries, Milo is credited with jumping into the sea to save a spaniel who was drowning.

Click here to learn more about Milo.

(via Arbroath)

Eds. Note: Cait’s going to drill this story into her dog, Hailley - also known as “The Empress” for her sense of entitlement. Hailley, a border collie/bassett hound mix, is a wonderful hog dog but has a tendency to flee the scene when there’s trouble.

Cait tried to teach Hailley the old Lassie routine of “Bark. Bark. Timmy’s in trouble. Hurry. Bring a ladder to the well.” But Hailley just grunted, rolled around in the dirt and ate some compost.

In the best of all worlds, every Gimpy Dog would have a ramp and/or stairs to ease the pain of getting in and out of the car and on and off the bed.

Between their two households, Cait & Marty share four dogs - one still in his youth, two in middle age and the fourth, Piglet (seen here), our official Gimpy Canine who was rescued from a ‘kill shelter’ in Tennessee. (These are the people who saved her.)

Piglet has a set of steps to help her reach the bed, but she dreams of getting this deluxe Indoor Ramp for Christmas, these Ultralight Pet Stairs for her birthday, and one of these fine car ramps just for being a Good Dog.

In the meantime, Piglet is praying she never gets put in one of these!

Learn how to choose a dog ramp

From time to time, we foster dogs who are too abused, sick and/or disabled to go right to permanent “forever” homes.

One of our favorites was Merv, pictured here, who had the body of a wiener dog and the coat of a soft shaggy lamb. Cait called Merv a “lap-seeking missile” because you couldn’t sit down without Merv joining you.

In the eight months Merv was at The Cait & Marty Rehab Camp, he blossomed from an emaciated weakling to a strong little hunk, as seen here.

Merv’s transformation made us think of this quote from The Dog Says How by NPR commentator Kevin Kling, who is Gimpy himself: “When I get depressed, I just take a look at our two wiener dogs. You’ll never see more of a can-do attitude - in a more can’t-do body - than a wiener dog.”

Eds. Note: Merv found his forever home with a lovely couple in Appleton, Wisconsin, where he has become the canine mayor and greeter of his town. We hear Merv is so popular he is contemplating a run for the governor’s office in 2009. Go Merv!!!

An engineer in Idaho teamed with rescuers in Alaska to save a bald eagle who was starving to death from a bullet wound to her beak.

“Eating with her beak was like using one chopstick. She also had trouble drinking and couldn’t preen her feathers,” said Jane Fink Cantwell, who found the eagle dying in a landfill in Alaska.

Click here to learn more.

We are not Spring Chickens, but our three hens are a different story - having survived a difficult winter where deep snow kept them in their coop for nearly four months.

Their coop is a simple wood-and-wire structure large enough for them to roam around. In late fall, we cover it with a plastic tarp and insulate it with about 25 bales of straw around the sides and the top. The girls have an electric light for day and get a heat lamp on the coldest of nights.

They’re quite comfy in there, and have no desire to step into the snow, but as soon as they hear wild birds starting to sing in late winter, they get antsy to be free and roam the backyard, as you see here.

From now until next winter (ugh, shudder), they’ll roam from dawn until dusk chowing down on bugs, slugs and greens from the Gimpy Garden. Each night at dusk, they take themselves back into the coop, where we lock them up until morning to keep them safe from the neighborhood raccoons.

Eds. Note: The girls - one Wyandotte and two Buff Orphingtons - also give us great eggs - if we can beat our dogs to them. Didn’t Willie Nelson have a song about Egg Sucking Dogs?