DSLR Collection 1

"Window" taken with Canon T3i DSLR.

In this post there will be many photographs, all digital and taken with the Canon Rebel T3i DSLR.  Most are from around the house.  I will provide the photo information underneath the pictures in the captions.  All can be clicked to view the larger image.  Take note of the copyright at the bottom of the blog.  If my images are stolen, plagiarized or used as stock by you without asking, i will sue you for everything you are worth.  That said, if you ask for my permission to use these images as stock, i may or may not request a fee for the image's use.  If you'd like to use one, leave a message and i will get back to you as soon as possible.

Bob Fiddler Crab---taken with Canon DSLR

Neo the Cat Window Watching---taken with Canon DSLR

Neo the Cat with Angry Face---taken with Canon DSLR

Willy the Saint Bernard, Portrait---Taken with Canon DSLR

Willy Portrait 2---taken with Canon DSLR

Bob Fiddlercrab in Aquarium---taken with Canon DSLR

Alert Saint

Branch Chewing---taken with Canon DSLR

Chewing Branch---taken with Canon DSLR

"And If I Go Over There?"

The Canon T3i is the first DSLR i've ever had.  I'm getting used to its functions as the days go by.  All these images were taken in December (2012) and January (2013) shortly after i received the camera. 

The animals in the images are mine. 
The dog is a purebred male Saint Bernard named William Rupert Wallace Sultan of the Snow, but we call him Willy, Clown, Puppy, Mr. Puppy, Willdon, Willers and Wiley.  The dog actually answers to all the names and knows what tone goes with each (the full name comes out when he's in trouble).  He has splash coat markings and smooth (short) coat length with a nearly symmetrical black tear drop face mask.  For his breed he is considered rather tall being 32 inches in height at the withers (shoulders).  He is not fat but weighs roughly 170 lbs give or take a couple pounds.  Willy eats about 6 cups of Taste of the Wild dry kibble each day (which really isn't that much considering his size but it maintains his weight perfectly).  Despite his size he has been a rather non-destructive dog.  His puppy stage had some wild times and he delighted in chewing on us and dragging us places (not gently) by our shirt sleeves or pants legs but he never chewed the furniture and he never chewed up his stuffed toys (and still doesn't).  Most people like to think of Saints as gentle giants, well that gentleness doesn't kick in until they are adults.  Willy was a wild, crazy, aggressively playful (not mean) puppy.  Quite a few of my t-shirts and pants went in holes due to his pulling on me and wanting to play wrestle all the time.  You wouldn't know he was that nuts now, he's still a bit playfully wild but, thank the gods, nothing like he was then.  The little fellow (who was only little for about 3 weeks after we brought him home) thought i was another puppy that he could play with and have a good time with all the time.  He thought that way until he was almost a year old and then all of a sudden he changed and no longer tried to drag me around the backyard by the pant legs and he stopped grabbing my arms to drag me places.  Now he's this somewhat gentle beast that just follows me everywhere.  He still likes to run around the yard all crazy and still likes to play in the house but it was strange, it was like he finally realized that we humans did not like being forcefully taken places.  Anyway, moving on, he's been a great dog, protective, jolly, great on walks and good with other dogs that are smaller than he is.

The cat in the photos is a standard grey (with faint stripes) domestic shorthair whose name is Neo but he is also called NeeNee and Mr. Bananas.  Like the dog, he answers to his nick names.  Neo is rather special, he came to us by chance through family friends.  His full history is unknown but when we received him in the fall of 2009 he was rather young, maybe 6 or 7 months.  He grew quite a bit after we got him but he never got large.  Our vet was surprised when we took him for a check up a couple years ago that he only weighed 10 lbs.  Neo has always been incredibly active and playful, which accounts for his slenderness.  He's always making up pretend bugs on the walls or running through the house after some imaginary prey.  Every once in a while when we get a mouse he will capture it but he does not kill mice.  The little nut lets them go and plays with them until they get away again.  Once he accidentally killed one and, to our surprise, got somewhat depressed about it.  He spent the whole day moping about the house, not being his usual playful self.  Then we happened to get another not to long after that (we're still wondering just where the mice are coming in at) and that time the cat actually placed the live mouse inside his toy box and walked away from the toy box like the mouse was going to stay in there for him to come back to later.  I actually had to take the mouse outside to let it go, which is what usually happens when the cat goes after mice.  He brings them into the living room and i take the poor frightened things outside.  Moving on... like most cats Neo enjoys looking out the windows at the birds and also enjoys time on the back porch in the summer.  Like the dog, he too eats Taste of the Wild brand (dry cat kibble, roughly 1/2 cup to a full cup a day).  He's quite fond of their canned dinners for cats but also LOVES the Tiki Cat brand canned foods.  Unlike some cats, Neo loves dogs and may even believe he is one.  Since we got him he has enjoyed drinking and eating from the dogs' bowls.  After our Golden Retriever passed he missed her and he also missed her water bowl.  Unless a water bowl belonged to a dog the cat would not drink from it so after our Retriever's passing we ended up keeping her water bowl out for Neo.  Then when we got Willy we tried Neo out on his own bowl of water and he refused it and would drink from Willy's water bowl instead.  The cat now has Willy's puppy water bowl as his own.  He'd drink from Willy's adult water bowl but it sits up too high from the floor for him to reach it.  Since his arrival Neo has been something special and something very different, we love the little fellow very much.

The fiddler crab in the photos is named Bob.  He falls under the Uca Pugnax species of crab and is considered a marsh fiddler.  Bob came from a very unhappy place known as Wal-mart.  He and a bunch of other fiddler crabs were confined to tiny plastic dishes with a small amount of water in them.  The shelf they were on wasn't high up so anyone could come along, grab a container and shake the crab in it all about.  Wanting to save all of them but not knowing a thing about the creatures i opted to save Bob (who was missing a leg at the time).  After extensive research into fiddler crabs (a lot of studying was crammed into a few short hours) the next day we went out to purchase all the necessary items for a fiddler crab.  Well, Bob only cost about $3.00 USD but to set up an aquarium for Bob it ended up costing about $150.00 USD.  Bob became a very expensive little friend (something Wal-mart, of course, doesn't tell people) but i've found the expense well worth it.  After the initial set up Bob hasn't cost us much more.  We had to replace his heat bulb a couple times and get filter media but that wasn't too bad.  All the food, the marine salt (they are brackish/marine water animals) and the de-chlorinator we still have plenty of and haven't had to buy more (we got Bob in April 2012).  Bob has been a jolly addition to our animal half of the family and has been fun to watch.  He has a neighbor, a female fiddler (named Claudia) of the same species, who lives in an aquarium tank next to his.  Claudia started out living in Bob's tank but Bob was very mean to her so she had to have her own tank, which was rather cheap due to the left over sand and other things from Bob's.  Fiddler crabs do the neatest dances.  Males wave their large claw in the air, kind of like they are dancing the YMCA dance, to attract females.  Sometimes the males will do smaller waves as territorial defense and apparently the crabs are capable of sending false signals as well, which confuses we simple humans.  That is how Claudia came into the picture.  We thought Bob wanted a mate so for 2 months we searched for a female only to discover that all any place in Jackson had were males.  Then, oddly enough, Wal-mart gets another shipment in of fiddlers of the same species, most of which were female.  We brought Claudia home, placed her in Bob's tank thinking he would be happy to have a female around.  Well, crabs don't have eyebrows or actual facial expression, but i swear Bob got the most shocked and pissed off look when he saw Claudia for the first time.  He charged her, scraped her shell and chased her into the corner of her tank and would not let her leave the corner.  Apparently Bob did not want a female around, despite his supposed "mating waving".  According to everything i've read, females choose the males and males rarely attack females so Bob is just a bit of a jerk.  After their separation though both crabs have been happy.  In case you may wonder, for food, both eat freeze dried plankton, baby shrimps, algae, bloodworms, microbes (detritus really, but decaying matter consists largely of microbes) and tropical fish flakes.