The One That Got Away

I forgot to tell a funny story yesterday.  Sadly, it happened so fast by the time I thought to get my camera out it was too late!

Here's what happened...

When Hubby mowed the brush the other day he went over a couple of prairie rat compounds hidden by the weeds.  Apparently this frightened and confused at least one of the little creatures.  When the mowing was all done he took the dogs out to show them the new field.  

The dogs loved it and were running around.  Then it was time to go in and when Hubby whistled for the dogs to rally he saw Gus dart down and grab something in his mouth.  Then he sprinted for the front door.  Just as Hubby opened the door Gus dropped his "prize" and pranced inside the house, so proud of himself.  At that same moment Hubby saw something dart behind the wood box.

We both went out and saw the trembling creature between the woodbox and the wall.  It was a little prairie rat.  We finally managed to get it out but then it went darting around the corner and down the deck towards the back.  We ran after it and found it under the bbq.

Then we managed to get it out from under the bbq when it suddenly made a beeline for the edge of the deck and it did a lemming imitation.  It went sailing about 12 feet to the ground below.  We rushed to the rail and saw it take off for the far beyond, aka across the driveway into the unmowed area.

Unfortunately I don't have the photographic proof, so you'll have to trust me.  We giggled all night about it.

Well, maybe you just had to be here, but it sure was funny at the time! 

Surprise Visitors

Not much was going on this week, which is why there haven't been any posts. The only thing we did was fill out applications for health insurance as our COBRA insurance is due to run out next month and it doesn't have a portability plan. Considering Hubby's last year health history and my ongoing type 2 diabetes keep your fingers crossed for us. If either of us gets denied we'll probably have to go to the State insurance. The Oregon State insurance available to "otherwise uninsurable" is even more expensive than what we are paying now!

Since we filled the bird feeder and put it on the deck rail we have had more and more birds coming in. You can always tell when all the little birds take off that something "sinister" is in the area.

This red tailed hawk has been hanging around. We've also seen another, with the two of them swooping through the air circling and sparring up above. It's very cool, though I'll bet the little birds aren't happy.

Mr. and Mrs. Mountain Bluebird have found a home, though not in the house I built for them. Shortly after I put the house up we saw the bluebirds and a pair of mountain chickadees checking out the house. They seemed to be squabbling back and forth over which couple would get to be the occupants.

In the end neither pair took the house and it is empty for now. However the bluebirds have taken up residence in one of the vent holes in the shop.

We get a lot of these wild finches.
And we think this is a Wilson's Warbler.

Our true surprise but welcome visitors called Tuesday to see if it would be okay if they swung by to see our new house and stay for a night. They were on their way from their home in Washington State to Wyoming to pick up a tractor and would be on their way back. We checked out Google Maps and figured they would be heading this way by Thursday.

It was good to see Chris and Michelle again. Chris had stopped by the rental in Roseburg a few months ago but it's been many many years since we saw Michelle. We knew them from Bakersfield and my husband was Chris's training officer back about 20 years ago.

Anyway after touring the house Chris actually fixed our central vacuum system. Here he is showing us how to work it! Then he tried to fix the instant hot water faucet but determined that the heating element was broken.

I enjoy having visitors and the ones that fix things and do stuff around here are even more welcome!!!

Next month my friend Vicki and her mom are hoping to swing by on their roadtrip. My daughter is planning another visit (Dad's birthday is next month). And my sister in Bakersfield was going to swing by early in the month after attending a wedding in San Francisco.

Next month will be a great one for visitors for us and I'm looking forward to it.

Wild Life

The week started out nice and chilly. Isn't it supposed to be spring?

It melted and snowed off and on.

On a trip back from the grocery shopping we passed this field. It's kind of hard to see but there are about 30 elk in there! I took this with my phone and can't blow it up any more or the picture would be all fuzzy. Click on the picture to make it a little bigger and easier to see the elk.

Yesterday and today we had some deer wandering through. (Picture taken through the window.)

And now that we've filled the bird feeder and put it out on the deck rail we've had lots of little visiting wild finches and sparrows.

Happy Good Friday!

First Kill And A Blankie

We have an abundance of these little gopher-like creatures around here that are sometimes called sage rats by the natives. They look like a cross between a gopher and a giant chipmunk and they are just as pesky with all their hole digging. We think their real name is "belding ground squirrel".

Today one of them had the misfortune to poke around above ground for a while. It was just long enough for Hubby to grab his .22 rifle and plug it.

Here's one of the holes they make. The holes are everywhere.

"Planting" the little bugger back in his hole. Maybe this will send a message to the others to clear out.

And in other exciting news...

I had wanted to make a fleece blanket for my son and finally got the material. Then my rotary cutter needed a new blade so I got one today. Amazing how nice it is to have equipment that works properly!

Once I got started it only took about an hour to get everything cut out and then tied together. I set it on the back of the sofa and Ollie decided she had to test it. She likes it.

Now to find a box and ship it off.

Freezing Fog

I learned the name of the phenomenon I mentioned on Saturday's blog. Not so oddly, it is called a "freezing fog". We had a good one today. We took a little walk around the property after getting the mail and I brought my camera.

This is a single twig. Look how the fog has "grown".

This is the same twig. I knocked the frost off. You'll notice the background is the same.

I had the dogs pose for a portrait amongst the frosted weeds.
We saw this tree. Something wasn't quite right so we took a closer look.

Maybe a pack rat nest? They do live in this area. Fortunately it was vacant at the time I took the picture.

And finally on this chilly day I decided to get started with the wallpapering. I got two strips up and it looks ok. I'll have to do a little paint touch up at the top because I was having trouble cutting it even. So it's not a totally professional job, but it'll do.

I just hope I don't walk into the room tomorrow and find the strips curled up at the bottom of the wall!

Big Foot

Hubby told me about some possible elk tracks he saw on the northern side of the property so I went out to investigate. I found the area where the big tracks cross the trail. (Click on the picture to enlarge.)

Just for comparison's sake I found these smaller tracks, obviously from deer and put my toe next to the track.

And now here's one of the big tracks next to my toe.
Gus helping me find the tracks.

It would be really cool if I could get a picture of the actual animal rather than just the tracks!

Regis

Today started out as a laundry and college football day. Often on days like this I don't even bother getting out of my pajamas! We often call those "pajama days".

No worries, though. We did actually get dressed. And while it looked like it might be one of those slothly sofa times when Oregon started walking over Oregon State we thought maybe we'd better do something around the house.

We moved a couple of items out of the garage and into the big shop. And then there were some things that were in the garage that needed to be moved into the house.

And so today we got a few more boxes unpacked and a few more things put away. I also managed to do quite a bit of laundry.

When we started moving about we looked out the window and saw this stately creature resting.

They do blend in quite well, don't they. Take a closer look at his head.
He finally got up and moved down the road.


Could this be next years' venison roast, chops, jerky, etc? Or a pet? I shall call him "Regis"!

To Answer A Couple Of Questions...

Originally I was going to post the pictures of the house tonight. But then some questions were asked and I want to at least get those questions answered before I post the bazillion pictures.

Carol asked if I was planning on getting more animals. It is my hope to be able to get a couple of cows. Also I really wanted to look into getting some more sheep, this time dairy sheep in particular. At this time I'm not looking to get a large herd of 20 cows or big flock of 40 sheep.

I would like to start off with one or two cows. As for the sheep they will definately have to wait until the spring or even summer because the fences here are not suitable for sheep right now. I am hoping to start with three to five ewes, similar to what I was used to handling in Bakersfield.

I most definately will have chickens again, but those will also have to wait until the spring when I can build a suitable enclosure for them.

This brings me to a question from Patti regarding other wild creatures.

The neighbors behind us visited my husband while I was enroute from California with the bull. They told him of a collared wolf sighting not long ago. The wolf was not a loose pet, but had a tracking collar placed by Fish and Game or whichever organization does that sort of thing. The neighbor said his son had seen the wolf on the north boundry of our property. He had scoffed at his son until it was confirmed in the paper just a few days later.

Otherwise there is literature that says coyotes abound and there are possibly rattlesnakes in the area, though we haven't seen evidence of either. Yet. And hopefully won't.

The only wildlife we've seen on our property are rabbits and mule deer.

This is a large herd that crossed the property last week.
There were about nine does, all very healthy looking.

Two days ago we saw two bucks, one a spike, and the other was a decent four point.

Another question asked was how the animals were taking the quick change in the weather, from the upper 80's in Bakersfield to the sudden freezing nights (and the snow) here.

I got the horses blankets so they are nice and toasty warm. They had started growing winter coats but probably still not enough for here. I'm sure they appreciate their blankets.

The bull on the other hand has been on his own. The Dexters are a hardy breed and regularly have babies in the snow. I've been keeping an eye on Dakota to make sure he isn't suffering and it is surprising how fast his hair has grown! If it looks like it's getting to be awful weather then I will build him a quick three sided structure and stuff it with straw for him.

And here we are with some sort of skeleton. We were walking the property line when we found this. Our guess is it's a road-killed young deer.

So there you have it. If you have any other questions let me know and I'll try and answer them.

Tomorrow I'll start the series of photos of the house.

Sunday

Sunday we had breakfast with friends and then took a drive towards Eugene. I find it surprising that these daffodils seem to be just growing willy-nilly alongside the freeway, like some Johnny Appleseed Daffodil sprinkled the bulbs about.

Sorry about the quality of these photos. I did what I was told is a "no no" in my photography class: I took photos through the window of a moving vehicle.

But take my word for it, these are some sort of daffodils just growing wild on the side of I-5.

After showing me the tiny house where he used to live in Marcola when he was about 18, my husband and I then went to his sister's house and we had a nice visit with her and her son and daughter-in-law. We are sort of parallelling their lives right now in that they are living in a rental after having sold their home. Like us, they just purchased a lot, and where we are having a manufactured home put on our lot, they are building a "real" house.

As we left to go on our way back home we saw a couple of deer in the yard.

As I've told a few people we seem to be "moving at the speed of Oregon". Our contractor was to call the sellers to get permission to get his excavator on the property to check the spring. I think he was going to do that today, a relatively dry day, as he was concerned about making tracks through the hay meadow.

I'll be happy when escrow closes and we can actually start on the construction. And then I'm sure I won't be able to wait until it's all done and we are moved in...

Icky Ticky

We found a tick on Gus.

I'm guessing he picked it up from the last time we went for a walk at the North Bank Ranch. I first noticed it as a swelling above his left eye. Upon closer examination I found what looked like a wart.

I know it sounds kind of silly but there are warts that will grow really fast and I thought that's what it was. But in the back of my mind there was a suspicion...

I even went so far as to Google warts and found something that sounded like what Gus's new addition looked like.

But a few days later the swelling over his eye didn't go away (which I thought might have been from the dogs playing together in a rough manner like they sometimes do). At least the "wart" seemed to have stopped growing.

Then I did what I should have done in the first place: I put my reading glasses on, got a flashlight and took a good look at the thing. That's when I noticed the little black strings at the skin line. And then the little black strings moved!

AAACCKK! A tick! Another Google search and I found a site that showed how to remove ticks from dogs using a special tool. You can use tweezers if you don't have the tick removal tool. The thing about the site was the tick it showed looked exactly like the one over Gus's eye.

So lacking the special tick removal tool I got my tweezers and tried to carefully remove the tick.

As you can see I was successful.

It left a nice little hole over Gus's eye.

Lacking any rubbing alcohol I swabbed the hole with my Sea Breeze cleanser.

I am happy to say that today except for the little hole left behind the swelling is all down and everything is back to normal.

Looks like I'm going to have to invest in that special tick removal tool.

Crabbing

Today we took a little trip to the coast to try our hand at catching crabs.

It was a little colder than we expected. It didn't seem to bother the numerous surf scoter ducks.

Pulling up the crab rings.


Too small.

It's not a lot of fun when it's barely 40º and the wind is blowing. I had to do something so I got a couple more pictures of the sea ducks.

We had two crab rings. One has a bait basket that locks the bait in a cage. The other ring just has the bait pinned to the ring.

We discovered this fellow was having an easy lunch with the unprotected bait. (Look at the middle of the picture. It's a seal.)

More sea ducks under the pier.
Sea gull.
Coast Guard chopper buzzing around.

Well, the crabbing didn't go so well. We got a total of three, so we didn't get totally skunked, but they were too small and we had to throw them back.

So to make up for it we stopped at the oyster place and got a few fresh oysters! Can you say Oysters Rockefeller, Oysters Casino, Fried Oysters, and Tina's Favorite Oysters? YUMMY!