BeetleMania

It rained almost all weekend.
My dedicated scorpion/tarantula hunting time gone.
This really bummed me out because I had the three day weekend to myself and I was fully prepared to hunker down and take as long as it took it try and nab those two.
But Mother Nature said no.
Boooo.
But all the rain did do some good. It brought out an influx of bugs, particularly beetles.

In addition to all the previously caught cicadas, I caught enough beetles to fill the trees in the museum. The atlas, cyclommatus, dynastid, elephant, giant, golden stag, goliath, jewel, miyama stag, saw stag, and scarab beetles all found a comfy home this weekend. Whew. The elephant and golden stag I've seen before but somehow would miss each time I tried to catch them. I think because of the weird angles down at the beach I wouldn't always line myself up right. Anyway, as soon as I started creeping around last night I caught a pocket full of elephant beetles which I promptly took down to the basement for back up in case I don't have enough fish for the next Flea Market.

With all the bugs on trees distracting me, I've only caught one new fish.

I wasn't looking for it but I sure was surprised when he came soaring out of the water. You see, I just happened to be walking by when I saw a shadow that at first glance looked like a sea bass but as I cast my line, I realized was slightly larger than a sea bass. And bam! There was the blue marlin! That was just pure luck.
Thanks to the rain, there were no Fourth of July festivities in Alleria. The closest sign of any holiday occuring was the giant hotdog I wore on my head. Although I don't eat meat and especially detest the hotdog, I was just glad for some new DLC. Personally, it makes me think of 'Hotdog on a Stick' in local mall food courts. Gross!
Avery invited me over to his house for the first time on Saturday.

Avery is a good guy but not such a great host. There were no refreshments or appetizers, nor did he offer to sell me anything. I was also creeped out a bit by his choice of clothing. Pink does not suit him.

Can you feel the uncomfortable silence?
I mentioned having to run an errand for Marcel and hightailed it out of there.
It's not like I lied to him. I really did have an errand from Marcel!

oOoOoOoohh. Chrissy and Maaarcelll, sittin' in a tree....
That's right! The crush/friendship/courtship between Marcel and Chrissy continues! Personally, I think it is absolutely adorable! I hope that Chrissy, being the drama queen that she is, doesn't break sweet little Marcels heart....I mean, come on! He's sending her a gift but doesn't have the courage to deliever it himself! I'm more than happy to be the courier. That means I get to see both sides of the reaction.

Chrissy seemed shocked to be getting a present.

It turned out to be a fluffy shirt which looks absolutely adorable on Chrissy. Oh Marcel, you have such good taste! And Chrissy obviously loved it, too.
Feeling so fufilled for being the cupid I am, I hurried down to Marcels' house to give him the good news.

Awww!
He was ecstatic. The budding relationship is the best thing going on in Alleria right now.

Kiki, our newest resident, apparently isn't sticking around much longer.

Seriously, she just finished settling in and she's already thinking about leaving?!?! Fiiine. Be that way...I don't like your creepy pig nose anyway. Luckily, Cupcake in Lollipop has decided to try to woo her over to her town. Since Kiki started talking about moving, Cupcake has come over to talk with Kiki, send her gifts and try and see if she can get Kiki to take the empty spot in Lollipop. Even though there hasn't been many successful transfers from town to town on purpose, it's worth the try. Cupcake is experimenting with wooing the animal before the boxes are all packed up. So we'll see what happens. Most likely there is already an animal set to take the next spot in her town but it's possible Rhonda or even Kiki may show up down the line. Cupcake promises to keep me posted.
It does seem weird that Kiki is already moving. Her and Merry had really hit it off.

But that's okay. One kitty in town is plenty!
In other 'What were they thinking?!' news, Buck was all excited over this idea he had...

Yeah, Buck. It's called the Fishing Tourney.
That's all from rainy Alleria.

Gossip Girl

Thanks to my earnings from the latest Flea Market I was able to make a lump sum donation to the Alleria Town Fund. 200,000 bells has bought our town a new bridge!

As mentioned previously, I've been nervous about the bridge placement. I've seen pictures of the options in other peoples towns where the new bridge can only be placed next to existing bridges. What a waste! Fortunately, while my options weren't stellar, they were okay.

I chose the one on top. It might prove to be useful, as I don't currently have a pathway where the new bridge will leave the island. (I call the island Merry Island since she seems to think she's special enough to plop her house there, haha.)

June came and went quickly and now we find ourselves in the beginning of July! Wow! Bugs....everywhere! On Wednesday, I got this message on my board:

Even though the rain means no watering, I'll be glad when the hot weather shows up. I'm ready to have an actual chance to catch the tarantula and scorpion! Speaking of the tarantula, I saw him last night as I was moving flowers around. I had the perfect opportunity to catch the guy as I snuck up, watched his movements but I made one wrong step and he scuttled off not to be found again. It was so weird to be standing perfectly still watching the giant spider circle me! I even pulled my net out at one point but chickened out as he started to turn towards me. Argh. I need the courage to just pull it out and give it a chance!
Tarantula and scorpions aside, there are bugs GALORE. It's actually loud in town...when it's not raining.


I caught most of these guys when it was raining and they weren't making any noise. They all look the same!

Chrissy was more excited than I was.
Thanks to the onslaught of insects, the bug portion of the museum is filling up quickly and Blathers is one part disgusted and one part excited.


Now on to the more interesting stuff....town gossip!
Remember when Chrissy was sick and she was being all dramatic, telling me to say good-bye to Marcel for her? Well, Marcel came down with a cold and gave me a message to send to Chrissy.

Is it just me or do I sense a romance between the two? They're on their 'death beds' of their respective illnesses and they both want the other to know....how sweet. I'll be on the watch for more clues <3.
Merry spotted Blanca in town the other day and had a lot to say about the mysterious face-less kitty.

Oh, Merry. Always the fashionista.
And we already have a new neighbor who has replaced Rhonda! That's right, Kiki moved in and plopped herself down right in Rhonda's old spot next to me. When I walked in to introduce myself, she was staring out the window at my house.

Kind of creepy.
She's a cat...but with a pig-like nose.

Yup creepy.
She seems nice enough but I was really hoping my recruiting efforts would pay off and Chevre would move in. No dice.

Fishing buddies
My dear friend Static got a little jealous when he heard about mine and Antonios' photo shoot. So he went out of his way to find a casual shirt (like me) and we posed for a photo. I love this picture.
Avery continues to surprise me with his giant chest. This time, as I was making my way to the museum, I spotted a giant K.K. face staring towards me. Eeek!

I couldn't get a picture quick enough but imagine not seeing Averys' face, just that giant head of K.K.!
Chrissy, the drama lover, came to me and told me she was moving yesterday.

It didn't take any convincing to stay at all before she already changed her mind.

*sigh* Chrissy: The Alleria Attention Whore
Avery made a strange comment to me yesterday:

Whaaaat?!
This made me think...what if I was living in a village of furries?!
AH! EW!
And last but definitely not least, another one to file under the Marcel Adorable Files:

Ohhhhh Marcel. The plague?! Really?
I love him.

Oh! One more! I like this picture just because of it's awful timing:

Kicks and Ticks

Greetings from Alleria.

When I'm not posing in my 1700's get-up, complete with powdered wig, things do actually happen around town!
Rhonda made her final decision and packed up and left.

Even though I was okay with her leaving, her farewell note stuffed into my mailbox left me feeling a little regretful.

Why must these letters always make me feel guilty?
"A friend who means so much to me"?
Argh!
But Rhondas demolition of her home brought a little happiness on my part.

That blue pansy was hiding behind her house and I had no idea it was there! Good thing she moved! But then again, it makes me wonder if I lost any flowers back there....hmm.

There were a couple days that got a little dull in town because of all the rain.
I was invited to the first game of hide-and-seek in a relatively long time.

That's a rag tag group of residents, don'tcha think?
I won, of course, but Merry was nice enough to send me my prize the next day because my pockets were too full of goodies already.

Not likely, Merry.
Things were so bad, nobody had open gates and nobody came to visit, that I ended up wasting time harassing Tom Nook and "sticking it to the Raccoon".

Yes, that's me, kicking the merchandise.
Nook didn't take too kindly to me causing shit in his store. As usual, he followed me around as I ran around. It didn't take long before he had enough and kicked me out when I tried kicking him.

Is it just me or does Nook look a little pudgier?
Thankfully, Static was kind enough to let me lay low in his pad until things quieted down and all was forgotten.

Literally laying low.

The best thing to happen since the last update was the Flea Market! Yes, the one time a month I make a decent amount of money.

Welcome to Sarahs' House 'o Deals!
Thanks to my two dorados, two or three gars, hammerhead and regular sharks, and ocean sunfish, I managed my best Market yet: just about 300,000 bells. Static, Avery and Antonio - my three Original Villagers - were very generous, paying at or 200 bells away from 3 times the Nook selling price. I also made a personal record selling price for one fish: 44,800 bells! Merry helped out as well but seeing Buck come in as my last customer was a bit of disappointment. Being the newest villager, our relationship just isn't as strong as the others so his buying prices were dramatically lower than others. Strategically, all my high-price fish were already sold so all that were left were rare bugs. He also only made two purchases.
But that 300,000 bells was a godsend. I was able to deposit 200,000 of it in full for the Alleria Town Fund. The rest went into the bank account, saving up for the next donation. That's right, now that my house is payed off I can start my Town Fund donations! Woohoo! We're finally moving up in the world!
Oh and because I forgot to mention this in my last update, Buck leaked some top secret information to me. Apparently, all is not peaceful in the land.


That's right Krategan. Watch yo' backs. Buck is coming for you.

That's all for now. Until next time....

Practicing my dance moves for City Folk: The Musical.

I Heart Fireflys

Saturday night, Static and I met at the Roost. The approaching summer season has us both excited. What's in store for Alleria?


I tried to get him to join me in watching K.K.'s stirring performance of Imperial K.K. but he's as stubborn as always. He seems to prefer to stare at the wall.

On Sunday I decided to at least do something worthwhile and I moved my Jacob's Ladders to a better spot. They looked great in front of my house for awhile but slowly the numbers outgrew the space I had. It started to look really messy.

Couldn't even capture all of them.
I decided the best place for them was to line them down the path from the gate. I think it looks a lot better.


Blaire spent the weekend being sick. I dutifully brought her medicine until she was feeling better. She was so happy, she literally jumped for joy.

Flying squirrel?

Also on Sunday, as I was doing my routine watering, I found something moving on a flower:

It's hard to see but it's the orchid mantis.

I was lucky to see it since I've only been able to catch one. So I decided to keep it for the storage room. I'll look it up and see if it has a good selling price. If it does, I'll keep it for the Flea Market.

I was super excited to find out that Nook's spotlight item was the lucky gold cat. It was the only one missing from my collection.

One day, they will be in a much better looking room!

As per usual, I've been listening in on neighbors' conversations. Rhonda's long time dislike of Marcel seems to be continuing as he gets on her nerves more and more.

Rhonda stomped off angrily. I thought it was pretty cute that Marcel was complimenting Rhonda on smelling good but I think he went about it the wrong way. When I thought about it later, it did seem odd. Rhonda doesn't have any visible hair.

Marcel took it pretty hard. He thinks it has to do with his own hygiene.

Monday brought about the start of a new month. Yay! I always look forward to the arrival of new bugs and fish. But it also brought the arrival of a new resident, Merry.

Sheesh.
Not only is this human-looking cat snobby but she made a big no-no right from the get-go.
She moved onto our pristine, once un-inhabited island. Luckily, her house didn't get in the way of paths or destroy much but it is an eye sore. Why couldn't she have moved into Deena's old spot? We would have been better off with good old boring Deena.

The insect catching has been slow. I caught a darner dragonfly pretty quickly. Later as I was fishing, I saw a tiny little bug floating around. Not thinking much of it, I continued luring fishies. But the damn thing interrupted and stung me!

Argh! Taking revenge on its kind, I caught one yesterday and donated it into life long slavery at the Alleria museum. Ha, take that mosquito! Enjoy your sterile boring life in a museum!
I also saw this guy scuttling around.

EEEEEEK!
As soon as I gained my composure, I went searching for it again, prepared to sneak up and whip out my net. It was all to no avail, though, as I wasn't able to locate him again. I will definitely step up my efforts to catch a tarantula. I'm fully prepared to be attacked.
I also saw a giant moth that flew off a tree. It actually made me jump when it flapped away.

And my ultimate favorite bug of the century has to be the firefly. The first time I saw it, I gasped at how cool it looked.

It is pretty amazing how much they light up the area. As soon as I put him in my pocket, the path went back to being dark. These things are cool and I spent a good half hour walking around town taking in their eerie glow.


So pretty.

Cool! Two! These guys are everywhere!

Three? Really?

He's so bright, I need sunglasses to look at him at night.
Oh fireflys, how I love thee. I could make an entire scrapbook with pictures of you.