Free delivery on deer

In between this morning's episodes of This Old House and Ask This Old House, I had to avail myself of the upstairs facilities.  Scrappy, as usual, went in our room to watch "Scrappy TV".  Soon he was barking, and when I managed to tear myself away from... what I was doing, this is what I found him watching.

Raccoon War I (and an announcement at the end)

It all started about 10 PM last night when Scrappy and I chased Mr. Raccoon off the porch.  Of course, Scrappy gets lauded as a hero and receives a bone shaped biscuit as a reward.  Then about 2:30 AM, he woke us up again, but we chased him off with a few barks/words from the bedroom window.

However, it all broke loose about 5 AM.

We spotted him from the bedroom window again, and this time, shouts didn't faze him.   He climbed up the side fence, over to the shed, up the shed and across its roof to the side with the feeders.  After puzzling how to get at them for a moment, he slid down to the gate and reached out for the feeder.

Yeah, pictures didn't work out so well.

Thus, I threw on some pants and we went downstairs, and Scrappy promptly ran him off again.  But not for long.  As soon as we went to bed again, I could see the little bugger walking the outside of the fence, which is a concrete ledge about 2 feet high.  So I said, "Okay, let's go settle this.

Scrappy and I went out the front door and looped around in hopes of catching him unawares.  He was gone, but not far.  Scrappy tracked him down to the 10-inch space between our outer wall and the neighbor's shed.  And that's when we discovered where he got his sudden bravery.

There were two of them!  One was wedged in high up towards the shed roof, the other sitting on the ledge against which the shed sat.  Scrappy pondered how to get at them, and I solved that problem- I found a large stick in the yard.  The lower one quickly moved onto the neighbors porch; the other one wasn't quite sure what to do, but a couple of whacks and a sore butt later, he joined his comrade in mischief on the neighbor's porch.

Of course, it isn't cool to enter a neighbor's porch uninvited, especially at 5:15 AM.  So we backed up for a while to see what they would do, and they decided to just chill.  All I saw of them was one of them jumping the fence onto the next neighbor's porch.  So we went in.

But not to be fooled again, we opened the kitchen blinds, cracked the door enough for Scrappy to smell any incursions, and we waited.  By a little after five-thirty, Scrappy declared the scene cleared and we called a cease fire.

Which brings us to the announcement.  If you remember a little while back, I gave you a link to Mynx's blog to see the drawings I submitted to her art contest.  If you were too lazy to hit the link and check them out, I think I have them here somewhere...

 

 

 

The top one is based on ancient Chines writer Wang Wei's poem.  It goes like this:

Dismounting, I offer my friend a cup of wine.

I ask what place he is heading to

He says he has not achieved his aims,

is retiring to the southern hills

“Now go, and ask nothing more;”

White clouds will drift on for all time.

A morning shower in Weicheng has settled the light dust;

The willows of the hostel are fresh and green.

Come, drink one more cup of wine;

West of Yang Pass, you will meet no more old friends.

 

 

The other is Attila the Hun's unhappy honeymoon.  Mynx intended to draw one or so from the entries (without judging, because they were all good), and the winner got a piece of her artwork.  Well, I found this e-mail after the battle:

 

 

You are a winner and an awesome artist

Thank you so much for taking part in my giveaway

Can you please send me your address again so I can send you your art?

Big hugs

ARE YOU KIDDING ME!!??!! was my response (with my address, of course).  And just so you know how good an artist she is, take a look at the prizes here, and you can even vote for your favorites!


Returning to the war-at-hand, this afternoon, we took prisoners, as Scrappy discovered this on the greenway road:

He likely climbed up the nearby marker smelling "food", and couldn't give out.  In the interests of peace between our nations, we tipped the can to set him free...

...but he decided to wait until after we left, choosing to hide in the trash until after we took off.

We did a preliminary perimeter scout about 10:30 tonight, and saw no evidence of further infiltration, but I may well look again later.

In the meantime, here are some other pic to amaze yourself with.

Just another day at the water cooler feeder.

Ran up inside one of the fallen trees and came out here.

A golden-crowned kinglet- not supposed to be common around here, teeny-tiny, and cute as a button!

Tearing down the old sewage station on California Road.

Stony Run close to its entrance into the river.



The birds and the bucks

A few days ago, Mynx asked me about the feeding of our cast of birds during the wintertime.  Well, that's a topic I will be learning along with you.  A story to tell you where we are at right now.

Wednesday night/Thursday morning, we got to bed just before three, only to watch the big ol' buck wander into the woods behind us.  Which kept Scrappy awake a while, and meant an additional few minutes got added on to the next day's self imposed sleep deprivation.  After all, I had to finish research and type Time Machine when I got up, because Friday morning I had an early appointment for a wheel alignment.  And when you add on working 3:30-midnight ( and a night that was like an inverse hurricane- long intense waves of boredom interspersed with three periods of absolutely nuts activity), it was going to catch up with me.

It did so about 11:30 AM Friday.  Me and my faithful Booogle companion went up to take a nap, but mind was not as willing as body to collapse.  Somewhere around one when I started to doze off (and Scrappy was already out)  I heard that telltale TAP-TAP-TAP that told me that a bossy woodpecker was letting me know that we were about out of bird food.  They have only EVER done this the couple of times we ran out!  So groggily I looked out the bedroom window for the offending avian spokesperson.

What I saw astounded me.  In the eight minutes that followed, I observed:

3 sparrows and two ruby-breasted nuthatches taking turns at Laurie's feeder, with additional sparrows on the fence waiting a spot.

At leats a dozen more sparrows on the ground underneath, picking up whatever dropped.

The nuthatches get into an argument and chase each other off repeatedly, usually scattering the various sparrows.

The woodpecker- who turned out to be the big "red bellied" one- flew to a tree, then to the ground- and then, just as Scrappy woke up and sat at the window to watch, lighted RIGHT IN FRONT OF SCRAPPY on the window edge (no ledge, just edge) just long enough to make him come lean against me for comfort.

With woody on the fence, sparrows everywhere, nuthatches arguing at the feeder, and Scrappy whining,"Daddy, he scared me!", a dove lands on the top of the shed, blue jays began to fly back and forth between the two trees on either side of our porch, and Mr. Squirrel came ambling up from the woods.   All at the same time.

So, while I cannot yet answer what will happen this winter, I can tell you that the dinner bell is still ringing- in fact as I type (and eat McDonalds), both woodies and the nuthatch have made appearances this morning.


And here's what life in the woods and fields look like nowadays.

As you can see, most of the leaves are now down.

Mr. Nuthatch in the woods.

Leaf raft in Stony Run.

Woody in the woods, too.

Weird, caught him taling off here.

River is way down for the year.

Thought it odd to see shelves that high up a tree- in the swamp.

Scrappy's favorite spot turns into Scrappy's favorite beach when the water's down.

Of course there were 10,000 screaming socceristas out and about, so no deer or anything bigger than a squirrel today.

Chaos at work, Scrappy in flight, road-kill at the resturant, and Loko at the top

Well, last night I put in my first full shift at the new job.  It was neatly divided into four parts by breaks and lunch:  Utter chaos, steady to slow, can I take a nap, and somewhat steady.  It is still slow season, but holiday doom is fast approaching and, unlike my last job, they believe in getting people up to speed before throwing them in the deep end.

Of course, right off the bat, I can't find my name on the "where you go today" list, and my trainer puts me in a slow spot to start.  Then he sends me to another spot where all hell is breaking loose, and we spent the next hour fighting desperately to get to reasonable.  Along about lunchtime, my trainer learns that we couldn't find my name because the Maker Of Schedules decided to use my last name instead of my first this week.  The Land Of Chaos was where I was supposed to be from the start.

Next, I'm trying to text Laurie about the football games I am now missing, and noticed I was about out of minutes. (actually money, it's a pay-as-you-go, but you know what I mean).  In the midst of feverishly trying to text her to refill my phone at home, she sends me a text and wipes me out.

15 minutes after last break, third shift starts wandering in.  At that moment it was beyond dead, and we were wondering how everyone would stay busy till midnight.  Well, I found out that there were two answers to that.  Answer one was that shortly after they arrived, business picked up, and by the time it started dying off again it was 11:45.  Answer two was that once it died off, I looked around and saw I was the only one on 2nd shift still in the area.  After having been told many times to work till end-of-shift, I abandoned area at 11:58 only to find I was the very last one in the clock-out line.  Hmmm.

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Next I wanted to tell you a story about Scrappy the wonder-dog.  Thursday night and he's in the mood to play.  His usual way of expressing this is to get one of his "babies" (stuffed toys, generally no longer stuffed), proceed to the middle of the room to chew on it, look up at you as if you want the stupid thing, bark at you for wanting it until you acquiesce, then he brings it to you to pull/throw.  Well, this time, just prior to barking, he smelled something outside.  He jumps up and runs to the back door, looks out, runs back, grabbing the baby as he runs to the stairs.  I didn't see it, but he dropped the baby at the front door as he charged up the stairs.  Jumps up on our bed, barks at something, while I speculate on whether he'll bring the baby back down.  Charges back down, to the back door, and back to me.  I ask him why he left the baby upstairs.  He knows somewhere in his little pea brain that he didn't take it upstairs, but forgot where he dropped it, so now he thinks I have it.  He jumps up on me, sniffs me like I have a pocket full of doggie treats, even as I keep telling him I don't have anything.  Then it dawns on him where he left the baby, and he runs to front door and gets it (much to my surprise).  Tugs with me, then I pull it away, so he jumps up to stand on my lap.  I throw it into the dining area.  In the space of about a second and a half, he looks at it, rocks back on his hind legs, and launches off of me like Underdog flying off the Daily Bark or whatever that TV station was.  Grabs the baby, drops it off by Laurie, jumps up and sits next to me like nothing ever happened.  And you wonder why I call him Doofus all the time.

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Laurie ran out to get us a new seed bell, and got another feeder as well.  To say the least, they have been busy,

Of course, first pig to the trough was Mr. Chippy Munk.

Our latest guests, though, are a pair of what I identified (after about 45 minutes of looking) as red-brested Nuthatches.

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Finally, a little "Fun With News Stories" .  First I'll give you part of a headline that is unusual; then, the full headline, that will go a long way to explaining things; then, the first line of the article, which will make the whole thing crystal clear.

Partial headline:
"...restaurant shut down after road kill found in kitchen"

Full headline:

"Kentucky restaurant shut down after road kill found in kitchen"

First line of article:

"A Chinese restaurant in Kentucky has reportedly been forced to shut its doors after allegedly serving up roadkill."Apparently, a customer called the health department after watching them wheel in a garbage can with a box on top- trying and failing to hide the deer legs and tail sticking out.  Seems the owner's son found the unfortunate main course along I-75; and when questioned, the owner said  "they didn't know that they weren't allowed to” .  So what Chinese dish does dead deer get added to?

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Finally, Lokomotiv has notched 2 more wins, and both of them starred goalie Vitaly Kolesnik.  He posted a 1-0 shutout of Severstal on Friday, with the only goal being Stefan Kronwall's 4th just before the game's sixth minute.  Sunday it was Vityaz, and another shutout as Kolesnik pushed his shutout streak to 157 minutes and 56 seconds.  We weren't exactly lighting up the scoreboard either, and snapped a 100:45 scoreless streak of our own when Sergei Plotnikov got his first of the season at 6:36 of the third; Yegor Averin chipped in #4 with about a minute and a half to go to make it a 2-0 win.

Amazing as Kolesnik's streak is, the KHL is a low-scoring league, and his goals-against average is just 8th in the league, with two goalies under 1.50!  Still our 6 wins, 2 shootout wins, and 2-loss record puts us now first in the conference and tied for third behind Traktor (who is 8-2) and Sibir.  Next up is tuesday at Dinamo Minsk.

Sunday notes

I know some of you out there have wondered where my Sunday messages have been.  Well, I have some pretty stiff criteria on what to post on this subject.  First, It needs to be based on something I had to learn.  Second, it has to be something that I am taking to heart.  Third it has to have the proper period of digestion.  Lately, I have either struggled to have myself in the right mind-set, or haven't been led by something compelling enough, or haven't been compelled enough.  Today, I heard a strong, compelling pair of sermons- but digestion is still working on them.  In other words, if I am to give you the lesson I learn, two things must happen- I must learn, and I must be able to tellit in a beneficial way.  On the bright side, you all aren't paying me for insight, so no one's getting short-changed.

This morning, I read an excellent blog post on Surviving Boys about what it means to be an independant voter.  I'd like to make two observations before you check it out, though.  First, though Juli and I sometimes disagree on the candidates' "level of morality", we are pretty much in agreement on everything else, and I thought she did an excellent job on this piece.  Second, I guess I hadn't really given much thought to the "levels" of being an independant voter.  For example, with rare occasions of exception (many of which I came to regret), I have generally voted Republican.  But being independant for me has always meant that, while voting one way, I had the freedom to vote the other on occasion without the broccoli gods smiting me for "betraying the party line".  I believe that the other end of the spectrum for me are those who claim independant status because of an axe they wish to grind, whether they are a minority party adherant (say a communist, libertarian, or neo-nazi) who claim independance to deride all parties, or the system, or what have you.  Juli clearly shows what it means to be an honest-to-gosh independant- one who does her own thinking, weighs what is said on her experience of what has been done, and votes her conscience.  Okay, no go read her post, I promise you won't be missing anything.

Okay, in the meantime I thought I would bring up that the battle between myself and KC over who picks college football the best goes on. This week, he picked 46 winners to my 43 to win his first week out of four.  So far this year, I've picked 206 winners for a 74.37%, and he has 203 for a 73.29 %.

In other news, as we speak I am keeping one eye on the text summary of the ongoing game between Lokomotiv and Dinamo Riga.  Friday was out last game and we managed to snap a two game losing streak with a 4-2 win over Moscow Spartak.  They took the early 1-0 lead in front of 9,000 screaming Yaroslavlians, but Alexei Kalyuzhny tied it with under 15 ticks to go in the first period, his 3rd of the season.  We went on to score 4 straight times, all but one of them in scrambles out front like the first one.  Mikelis Redlihis got #2 6 1/2 minutes into the second; Yegor Yakolev, a member of last years' VHL team, got his first at the game's halfway point; and Yegor Averin tallied his 3rd on a breakaway 4 minutes into the final stanza.  Spartak got a goal late in the third, but came no closer.

Todays game has been a tight affair, and as I write is just now going to OT tied at 1-1.  Andris Dzerins scored at the halfway point to put the Lithuanian visitors on top, but Stefan Kronwall bagged his third at the 7:04 mark of the third to tie things up.  Despite a seven-shot advantage in the third, that's all we got.

While we're waiting for OT to get going, here's a new pick of Mr. Woody Pecker.

Geez, I used to be neat and entertaining; now, I'm just halftime entertainment.  What an upside-down world!

I guess while we're waiting I could mention that NHL star Alex Ovechkin scored his first goal of the year with Dynamo Moscow in a 3-1 loss to SKA St. Petersburg.  Another NHLer, Ilya Kovalchuk had an assist for SKA in the win.  Also, I see Martin Thornberg, a Swede in his second season with Torpedo after 12 years with HV71 in Sweden's elitserien, scored three times in a 10:04 stretch of the second in the ongoing game between Torpedo and Spartak. Wow!  In the meantime, the 5 minite OT is finished with no scoring, so we go to the shoot-out.  Our first two shooters are stopped, so are theirs.  Jamie Johnson, a Canuck who spent last year with Grand Rapids of the AHL, scored for Riga on their third try; Niklas Hagman ties it back up with a score for us. Our goalie, Vitaly Kolesnik, stops their fourth shooter.  And then Emil Galimov, one of last year's stars, beats Maris Jucers for the Lokomotiv win!  It's only the second game he's gotten into, and he was hot late, with two of our four OT shots to go with his game-ender.  That puts us at 3 regulation wins, two shootout wins, and 2 losses.  Next up is Tuesday against Donbass, who just got a score from would-be Philly Fyler Ruslan Fedetenko to beat Spartak in a shootout.

Johnny Appleseed Festival for out-of-towners

Since I've mentioned the JAF here a couple of times, I thought it would be considerate of me to show out-of-towners what it's like.  Fortunately, it's about a slow half-hour's walk from my door to the park.  Unfortunately, Laurie was under the weather this morning and opted out.  But this is the one place on earth I can be both comfortable in a crowd and entertained on my own.

First up is the military camp along the river.

A Confederate tent with Confederate money.

Lots of re-enactors at JAF.  Here's Robert E. Lee.

Cannons.  We'll get back to this.

Yup, a real live Gatling gun.

Continentals to your right...

...a union patrol to your left.

This dude was a magician/comedian.  Here he is magically proving to a man in the audience that his $20 bill was real by incinerating it.

After several false attempts, the bill is "found" inside a lemon he sliced in two.  I could have taken twenty pics here.

Music is all over the place, with travelling groups, three stages, and the medicine show.

A song about Skeeters at the Pioneer Stage.

One of Chris' must dos- hang out with the bagpipe band.

The festival is kinda divided in threes.  This first area has the hand crafting demonstrations.  Weavers, potters, blacksmiths, and this coppersmith.

Examples of the coppersmith's art.  So shiny I wasn't sure how good the pic would turn out.

Popular with kids are the alpacas. 

Moms like all the things these people make with alpaca wool.

The man himself- Johnny Appleseed.

The #1 place to be at JAF- BUFFALO BURGERS!!! And turkey legs darn near as big as your arm.

The second area has the crafty stuff and antiques.  No big winners for me today, but always fun to check the tents of antiques out.

The stage in the second area.  One of the best acts over here is this chorus of violin playing kids, with littler ones clogging on the stage below.

Buffalo Burgers and Turkey dogs!!!!!

Re- entering the first area, I smelled that smell that told me maple candy was at hand.  Another Chris must-stop.

Celtic music at the folk stage.  I do love to listen to the harpsichord...

Apple-mashing for cider.

There's a patch of woods separating the first two areas.  Here the local wildlife wait patiently for their turn.

Johnny is a fabulous storyteller, and does a couple shows a day.

The third area is the Indian camp.  Not near as neat as it was when I was younger, but still some neat things to come across.

One of the two fife and drum corps that wander the park.

This is the other.  This was moments after they shot off a musket.  Fifteen people in the assembled crowd dropped over dead.

This little guy wanted to shoot me.  I told him I'd shoot back.

He liked the idea so much, he had me do it twice.

Cannon demonstration.  Ready, Fire!  (Um, Chris, it's called a "slow wick".  When they say fire, count three.

One, two, three...BOOOOM!!!

I decided to go home by way of the woods.  And for 2:30 in the afternoon, that also was surprisingly entertaining.

Just because I thought it was a neat shot.

A butterfly, just because the first one I tried, some doof who wasn't looking almost stepped on it, and the second one met up with its significant other just before I could snap, danced a jig over my head, and flew away.

This dude with the nut in his mouth was so funny.  He came bounding out the ravine trail and stood there.

Took a pic, said, "Thank you." He turned around, posed, turned to look at me, and bounded back down the trail.

Just as I came up to dead tree road, I heard something going bump in the day.  Sure enough, the fawns were out and about.

Every two steps you heard a crash or a rustle, and there would be a squirrel laying on fat.

Ground hog way up the road.  I was clicking these when Laurie texted to find out if I was still alive.  She hadn't heard from me since I sent her buffalo burger pictures.

'Munks were all over the place, too, but behind every tree and around every corner...

...there was a squirrel.

There you have it.  Now you know what it's like to spend a day at JAF, and I am reminded what it's like to take a walk without being attached to a scent-driven outboard motor.