So we have simple pleasures, like the playground...

...and more challenging ones, like our habit of "tagging" the rigs we are assigned by attaching miniature devil duckies to the AVL antenna.

For the record, both of us are equally proficient at climbing onto the roof to attach the ducks.

We dress for success, both gloves...

...and caps

My partner's strangest habit is that he licks things. People, other rigs... his current goal is to lick every piece of apparatus in Seattle Fire Department's fleet. My rule is that he's not allowed to get caught... we're still working on a plan for getting the fireboat. He also chews on things. My greatest sorrow is that I didn't have the camera to capture his expression the night he drank the bottle of Tabasco sauce. With some of the things he eats, I truly expect that sooner or later I'm going to be transporting him to the ER with abdominal problems.

The rubber chew toy that started it all...

...the battery for our portable radio...

...the infamous tennis ball...

...and of course our pencils.

Sometimes entertaining Mike just takes too much time. So I devise games to keep him out of trouble while I try to do things like read. This particular Houdini game was made more entertaining by the appearance of one of our supervisors, with a thirty second warning that left me just enough time to toss Mike the trauma shears and run back to the front of the rig to divert said supervisor.