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.

Just a lot of little stuff

Starting with thanks to all of those who commented encouragement to me over the two post-election posts.  There is a time and place to be tolerant, and a time and place to stop the insanity.  I had to stop and remember that I don't control other people's opinions, ignorance, or selfish immaturity, nor am I able to legislate God's morality to an immoral world.  Anyway, I am standing a little straighter now, and I have polished the rusty mail and the corroding short sword.  But I'm not going to be a tilter at everything.  I have seen already sites that are keeping track of each layoff since the election in order to pin them on Obama whether they are his fault or not.  And at least FoxNews is keeping fire to the feet of the liberal media, pointing out every real an imagined prejudice they report under the guise of news.  Good for them.  I'm not going to do that.  But I do have a set of rules I'm going to use as far as what I grill this man some people think is Presidential on.  I'll discuss them at a later time.  Suffice it to say, I am not done with this man.

But I am done for this post.  Moving on, I mentioned to one of my commenters that "the little commedian in the back of my head is back".  The first example of this came that next morning as Scrappy plastered himself on me to be scratched.  You see, when I stop scratching, Scrappy thinks it meet to remind me by scratching my face.  So I thought, "Too bad he can't do this for himself."  And from that thought came...

Whaddya think?  I'd say it's a winner- now we just need some intrepid soul to design it.


So another one of those weeks at work.  Back in September, they projected this week as the start of the busy season.  Here's the reality:

Sunday- spent the whole night at the trash compators.  Smashed ten gaylords worth after 5 PM.
Monday- Worked in the dot.com box making area.  My job was to keep the new "multi-line" stocked.  First shift seemed to have done nothing, and despite the fact that the line seemed to be stopped far more often than it was moving, the box makers were so far behind that many times I was passing processors getting their own boxes, fighting for boxes with processors trying to get their own boxes, and having boxes taken off my cart by processors trying to get their own boxes.
Tuesday- Same thing, except first actually had gotten ahead.  I swiftly found out that was because there was virtually no work.  They put out a go-home-at-5:30 sheet (which nobody told me about), but not enough people signed up and all the temp workes got sent home at 6:30.
Wednesday- Got called during a nap and told to stay home.  Apparently, they decided that they would keep the newest 50 temps home that day, and the fifty most senior on Thursday.
Thursday- The plan was to spend the first half of the night training as many people as they could on the multi-line.  I was in the first wave, and was moved afterwards to the pick-mods.  Just before lunch- a three hour period in which I saw just 19 boxes- the lead said, "Christopher, I have a project for you."  That turned out being scraping old aisle line tape off the floor on the shipping dock.  A go-home-at-ten list was put out, and by the time I signed, about 50 people were on it.

So now that you have a framework for when I was home and don't have to say, "is this doofus still working," I can get on with some of the neat stuff that happened.  One of the work nights, we no more went to bed and we saw Mr. Big Buck wander down the trail into the woods.

Tuesday night, we were watching the MLS soccer playoffs (sure can tell baseball season's over!) when Scrappy detected an enemy incursion on the porch.  We went out, and Scrappy searched everywhere for our enemy, but he was not to be seen.  I was just about to go in- and then I looked up.

He was on top of the shed, lying as flat as he could to avoid detection (woulda helped if ya didn't hang your nose over the roof), and scared spitless.  I tried to encourage him down with the door stick (Sliding door block), but his difficulty was that he was afraid to jump from the roof- he wanted to clamber down to the fence and jump off.  He came down the gate side, and I thought I would encourage him with the stick, as Scrappy was not on his chain and I REALLY didn't want the little bugger landing on our side.  The Coon, however, failed to grasp my intentions and climbed back up on the roof.  Whereupon I acquired chair and broom, and he finally decided that it wasn't that big a jump after all.  Seconds later, Scrappy declared the area secure, and went back in without another bark, so I declared case closed.

Scrappy, however, is not limited to nighttime manouvres.  He has developed an amusing and adversarial relationship with our usual daytime attacker:

I'm not really against Mr. Squirrel's presence, but since he can devour half a bell in an unopposed sitting, Scrappy gets to chase him about every other day.

This morning, we walked north up the greenway trail, thinking to cross at the road and follow it back into the complex (see the map page).  There is a gate at the north end to prevent stupid motorists from thinking they can drive it (for you out of towners, we just had a guy drive almost a mile down an elevated railroad track, so yeah, we have 'em), and when we were about oh, 20 yards from it, we watched a buck (well, I watched, Scrappy was sniffing his butt or something) cross just on the other side of the gate and head for the bridge construction.  By the time we got up there, he'd taken the better part of valor and shot across the yard of the guy who lives up between canal, road, and river, presumably towards the river according to Scrappy's nose.

Laurie decided to walk with us this afternoon, and despite the lack of photo-willing subjects lately, I always seem to have good luck with her along.  Even then, I almost missed these guys:

I just caught a glimpse of mama's tail, and almost walked past.

Then Laurie spotted the two young'uns bringing up the rear.

Of course, one of them has to be butt sniffing when I snapped the shot.

"Mommy, who are those funny looking deer up there?"

And so, now you are up to date on the daily minutiae of the Scrappy family for another week.

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.



Since I have nothing better to post Friday...

(That being a reference to my accidentally posted Time Machine on Thursday.)  I thought I would take you through some of the head-scratching antics of the place I work for.

Friday as we were coming home from an afternoon walk, the temp company sends an automated message.  Basically, "Due to a lack of work for the pickers, those of you who work the Sun-Thurs schedule will work Mon-Fri next week."  Cool, three day weekend!

Sunday afternoon, my phone rings.  I say to myself, "Watch it be work telling me to come in anyway.  It WAS work- another automated message saying the system (either the computer system that runs the conveyors or the conveyor itself, they didn't say which) was down, and NO ONE would be working second shift Sunday.  I wasn't anyway, so I didn't care.

Monday, I go to check where I was working, and the chart has a handful of us at the bottom under "comments".  WTH?  Soon, we learned that:
 -Sunday they had been finishing the final adjustments to the new conveyor "multi-line" they'd been constructing apparently all summer.  Now it was operational, and they'd be staffing it with 20-30 people they'd choose and pull over after the shift started.

-With this new line and the upcoming holiday rush, they'd brought in another 13 temps who'd be training in the order picking areas (the "pick-mods") that night.  As a result, those of us in the "comments section" would be assisting the pick-modders, opening and breaking down boxes, sweeping, and the like.

-There weren't going to be a lot of orders, and with getting the new lines open, things were going to be "slow".

So we set to work, roaming the mods openning up boxes all night.  And with few boxes being picked from, we had to use our imaginations to stay busy.  Then, I found out that some people HAD been told to work Sunday. Oh, and one other thing:  We have company-issued clips that we get at the beginning of each shift that we use to clip the box we're picking for to distinguish it from the others on our line.  Somehow, these had all disappeared over the weekend.  Thus, those who were picking orders were forced to manufacture "clips" out of scrap cardboard.  Nothing like the marching backwards of technology.

Tuesday, I was back as a picker, and it was even slower.  Especially given that we had so many boxes openned the night before and didn't have that to fall back on while waiting.  Virtually the entire first half of the night was nothing; then in the second half it varied between dead, steady, and a couple little seiges of really busy.  It was like an inverse hurricane, with large swaths of nothing with chaotic "eyes" of total catastrophe. Plus, I discovered that something had been messed up in the setting up of the new system.  Where before, to scan in a given area, you had to scan your badge to log in, now, you had to scan your badge AND THEN scan a bar code on the area you were in.  Just lovely.

Wednesday was even worse.  The supervisor made it sound like it was our option whether we wanted to "make up missing Sunday" on Friday.  A lady told him, "(the temp agency) told us we WERE working Mon-Fri", to which he said, "Well, let's go with that."  So now we're wondering if we have to work Friday or not.  In addition, the one real buddy I'd made out there announced that he was moving back to Texas and this was his last night.

Slow doesn't cover the night; between start and last break, we had by my estimate a 15-minute period and a 10-minute period which might be considered legitamate working.  I would hide in one of the walk in bays, then look across to the other mod and see someone hiding in their bay, too.  Finally after last break we got fairly busy.  At 15 minutes to quitting time, I said to myself, "it looks like we have enough work to keep us busy to the end of the shift."

Exactly then, the computer system went down.  Stand around for ten minutes, hide in the restroom for four, get in line at the clock and leave.

Thursday, I heard someone say on my way to clock in that "the new line only had three boxes all day."  Geez.  Then I get up to where we have the shift meeting, and saw a sign up sheet.  "Hmmm, " I say, "Perhaps that is to sign up if you actually want to work Friday."

It was a sign up to leave voluntarily, IMMEDIATELY.

The supervisor explained that first off, there was extremely little work, and that was truly a sign up sheet to leave right now.  And there would likely be more opportunities to leave as the night wore on.  Then, he told us no temp employees were required to report Friday, but those that wanted to could sign up on another sheet. 

A lady asked, "Is there a chance that we could get sent home if we worked Friday?"  The supervisor said, "Well, we aren't anticipating a rush of orders, and at 8:30 we'll be shutting down the line to work on the new conveyor's spiral, so my answer would be 'very likely'."

I told myself, "stay till lunch, at least pay for your gas out here."

Then a forklift driver said, "Be sure to tell the pickers don't open any more boxes that you don't need, since we'll be moving a lot of them to new locations."

I said, "I am NOT sweeping for four hours."  So three day weekend again!

Won't be surprised if I get another call this weekend.

And yet, in about a week and a half, the holiday rush will start, and we'll be on mandatory six-day weeks until the first week of January.  Whaddaway ta make a living, eh?

________________________________________

Here's some more of the photographer's best efforts.

Mr. Pain in the butt by Laurie.

She also got a pic of Mrs. Cardinal!  They NEVER sit still for me...

Tag team munching.

Our little $#!thead.

The... Three... Amigos! Slap, slap slap, COUGH!

So pretty out today with Sandy finally dead.

With the river so low, many of the little coves and inlets are now mudflats.

Scrappy decided we should take advantage of the one that leads to the jungle above the "Ends of the earth" (see here)

This is a true jungle, with no established trails, and a lot of weird growth.  The bad thing is, you are spending so much time working your way through, that Scrappy is ahead of you playing "Scrappy's choice"...

..and that means he goes one way, sees you struggling, comes back, and gets tangled.  And when you catch up and attempt to untangle him, he's moving on to the next tangle.

When we finally fought our way out, this is what we faced...

And here, on the way home, we see more of those robins that have left the area.



 

In the spring and summer, this is a lovely little duck-filled inlet along the IPFW tree-walk.  Now, not so much.

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.