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.

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.

A five-deer walk

And the funny thing is, after the first sighting, I said to myself, "One deer sighting tends to beget others".  I was right for once.

Last nights walk delayed by Mr. Skunk- the light spot in the middle of the pic.

This morning's first duo were just off the first turn on the new trail.  As you can see, they were the bucks.

They are hard to get into one picture.

Saw a few patches of these flat-topped mushrooms.

The next pair were a mom-and-daughter set.  Mom was on the trail when we turned back into the woods.

Her fawn was just off the other side of the trail.

Here's the money shot- this was so sweet.  I couldn't believe I wasn't hit by lightning just before I took it.

On down the trail, fawn was peeking around the tree at us.

Number five was along the ravine trail, still just laying around.

To my amazement, Scrappy didn't explode when the mom appeared in the trail in front of us.  He did try to follow, but no war-hoops.  He knows Dad's doing something with that black thingie to them, and just lets it go.  But he watched them all the way around.

A Scrappy Fathers day weekend.

First comes the Thursday afternoon pics.  You see, the weekend came early.  By last break, almost all the racks were down, a good 80% of the fabric was ready to ship out, and the plant manager gave us a choice; go home now, or at usual time.  Same choice for Monday.  We simply don't have enough left for 33 people, especially given that at least a third are lady sewers not especially suited for the remaining tasks.

So we went home.  This time.

And Scrappy got an early walk.  It was hot, but a strong breeze was going.

I have gotten so fascinated by all the different flowers I find.

Scrappy examining a den near the Green Hole.

For you newbies, this is the Green Hole.

Despite the breeze, Scrappy was struggling.  We took a break here at the barn, cut through the woods, and headed across the field home...

...but about halfway between here and there, Scrappy decided to drop dead. (Actually, we just took a ten-minute break, with me providing shade.)

And when I say halfway, here's what I mean....

...this is where we came from...

...and this is where we were headed.

We made it home alive, and went Friday for an early morning jaunt.  I swear, it was so quiet, you could hear Scrappy trip over a bush (which he did.)  At last, we saw a chipmunk to indicate that we weren't the only things alive out there.  Then a buck that saw us and we didn't see him ran past. 

Just pretty scenes...

...and orange berries!

Mr. Bunny Rabbit...

...and a ground hog or two. At least I think this is what this is.  A second before, he was standing upright in the lane like a prairie dog!

Saturday morning we left a little earlier.  We saw something scurry behind a tree.  It peeked around it as we aproached, and then ran up it.  Guess who?

Yep, Mr. Raccoon.  Unfortunately, he went so high up it was a job to capture him well.

Her, I almost missed.  It's amazing how much a deer can look like a tree trunk when it wants to.  Fortunately, working with this camera is sharpening my ability to spot them (even if my "right in front of my nose" vision is deteriorating.)

That brings us to last night, when we took my son (y'know, the one with the fine analytical mind augmented by the moon) with us.

It was ground hog city!  Everywhere I looked, I was saying, there's another one!

This is #3 of about 5 sauntering across the lane...

...and this is Scrappy emerging from the hole he followed him into.

Then on the back trail, we saw this guy...

...just sprouting his antlers!

And that brings us to this morning.  Both I Scrappy, and the camera were worn out by this point ( I had enough juice for ONE picture, as it turned out. ) So we opted for a short trip along the river.  Now, the greenway trail overlooks the forest floor fo the first part of our journey.  There, with the dam shut, a channel that carves an "L" shape into the woods fills with water.  Past the L, its a large treeless patch of mucky grass before the woods resumes all around it.  I heard something walking through the water, but with trees between us and SOMEBODY insisting that there was an interesting smell ahead, I couldn't get a good look.  But as I moved up to a better vantage point...

I saw her, lying in the moist grass looking up at me.  Obviously her mate was the water-walker.  And that's when the camera gave out.  Not a bad thing, because we were pretty done in, too.