Critters

Morning Mystery!

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As expected, as the snow melted, I found the cats’ missing food bowl.

…

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Now I’m wondering, how on earth did it get there?  It’s not like it got shoveled up there by accident.  It’s under the newest snowfall, and a bowl full of frozen water woud have fallen right off the size of the shovel I was using, not to mention I would have felt the weight of it.

Weird!

I figured the cats would be happy, though.  I already filled two bowls with water, so I knocked the ice out of this one and filled it and the remaining bowl with food.

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They rejected it.

Silly kitties.

They did actually eat out of it a bit, going back and forth between the two, before all of them went to the one bowl, even though it meant one of the cats ended up being pushed into a bowl of water.

Silly kitties.

The Re-Farmer

The Deer Came Back – plus insurance update

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First, an update on my medical insurance situation.

I got a call back from the insurance company “about my rejected claim.”  So that’s how the failure to get coverage on my prescriptions showed up at their end.

When I spoke to them before, they were confused to find that, while everything looked as it should in one area, in another, it showed that my file was closed.  They were going to contact the employer’s carrier company to find out what happened, which is what she was calling me back about.

They were told that I had opted out of the plan.

Huh?

Nope.  I have never done anything of the sort.  In fact, the only thing I’ve ever done has been to use my prescription coverage.  My husband has been the one to deal with them, since he’s the employee.

My guess is that when there was a screw up that affected his coverage, mine got messed up, too.

The insurance company told me I’d have to contact the employer to get it fixed.  Well, I can’t, but my husband can, so he has sent an email off to them.

Hopefully, I will have coverage again, soon!

My thoughts yesterday, of putting deer feed out in a trail past Scary Eunice the Snowman, was foiled when my younger daughter went out to feed the cats ahead of me.  As the deer hadn’t made it to the feed yesterday, she didn’t add more.  So I was going to go out later and do it.

I never got a chance to.

Hungry Girl and Barbecue were already out!

They were still nervous around Eunice, and were giving her a wide berth, which also meant they were coming closer to the house.

Interesting.  The deer were less nervous about us moving around on the other side of the window than a snowman!

I imagine they’ll get used to it soon.  Or the warm weather will melt it down.  Whichever comes first. :-D

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Hungry Girl was pretty enthusiastic about burrowing and digging into the snow to get at the feed.

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And making faces at us in the window.  Not so much in this photo.

Gosh, she’s so cute.

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Barbecue was certainly enjoying himself.

What a difference between those two.  Hungry Girl is all scruffy looking, while Barbecue is so sleek and fat, his haunches jiggle when he moves quickly.

In the next while, we’ll find out if he really is a he.  March is usually when the antlers start to grow in.

Later on, Mama and the twins came by.  They, too, kept well away from Scary Eunice!

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This is one of the twins, coming back after being chased off by its sibling, using the boot trail near the house left by my daughters.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen them go this close to the house before!

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There was a fair bit of digging into the snow in some of the spots.

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And burrowing of faces.

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A bit of aggressiveness, too.  I wasn’t able to get a photo of one of the twins actually kicking at its sibling, enough that his leg even got hung up over the other one’s body.

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But that didn’t keep either of the twins from coming back.

Look how deep that snow is!  This area doesn’t get as deep as other areas, such as the open garden. It’s definitely making it harder for them to move around.

And now a bonus photo…

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One, adorable, fluffy little chickadee!

The Re-Farmer

For the Birds

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Alas, no deer photos today.  None dared go past the snowman to get to the feed.

The birds, on the other hand, had no such issues.

I played around with the preset settings on the camera today and found that the landscape setting seems to address a problem I’ve had with some photos I’ve attempted.

Getting images of the birds when they are sitting in the lilac bush.

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This redpoll is on a branch that broke from the weight of our recent snowfall.  It is at the far side of the bush from our window, so there are twigs and tall grass in the way.  It’s pretty rare for the birds to perch somewhere that doesn’t have twigs or branches in the way of a clear shot. The camera will keep trying to focus on the things in front, and in the time it takes me to get it to focus past them, the birds are usually gone.  But on this setting, it seemed to ignore the things in the foreground and focus on the larger objects behind them.

I’m still at a loss about the purple that is in the photo.  It’s there in the original, unadjusted image.  When I lighten the images for these posts, it brings the purple out just like any other colour in the image.

It’s not in all of them, though.

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This is actually the first photo I took today.  The bluejay is perched lower down on the broken branch.  You can see the shadows of twigs in between the camera and the blue jay.

No purple in sight!

Any camera people who can explain it to me?

I also got a nice shot of a blue jay in the sun.

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Oh, those colours!

I think I could happily paint the entire house in that blue on its head, neck and shoulders.

Hopefully, tomorrow, the deer will be brave enough to emerge from the trees and I’ll be able to get some photos of them, too.

The Re-Farmer

The deer showed up, too!

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One last post for today!

This morning, I was quite surprised to see Hungry Girl show up on her own.  This was early enough that the feed wasn’t quite covered by the snow, yet.

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She was very skittish coming in.  I wouldn’t be surprised that all that snow would have made everything sound very different to a deer.

Gosh, she still looks pretty rough, doesn’t she?

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Though the feed was still visible, she nuzzled pretty deep into the snow as she was feeding.

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I just couldn’t resist posting this goofy photo of her!

Later on, well after the snow had covered the feed, Barbecue came by, too.

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He had to dig his nose down pretty far to get at the feed by then, but he had no problem finding exactly where the food was!

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He gets a more dignified profile picture. :-D

I saw Hungry Girl come along shortly after, but they were both very nervous and ran off before she got to the food again.  They did come back, but not for long.

They at least got some food, though.  I’m hoping that Mama and the twins come by at some point, too, for a bit of a snack.

The snow has stopped falling now.  My brother who lives nearby was kind enough to come and clear our driveway out.  He’d fired up the tractor to do his own driveway and just popped over to do ours as well.  I’d seen the snow plows going by the main road earlier, so I’m hoping they’d already gone through the road past our place before he came over.  The last time the snowplows went by, they left a windrow across our driveway.  Not enough of one to be more than a bump, but having another one on top of that now would be much more than just a bump!

After doing the driveway, he came in for a bit of a chat.  During the conversation, he mentioned last winter being one of the coldest in many decades!  He feeds deer with hay at his place, and he said he was feeding 39 of them!  I just can’t imagine that many deer crowded around by his place.  He trained his dog to leave them alone.  He said that they were pretty mean to each other, too, attacking each other with their hooves.  One young orphan deer was small enough to jump up into the round hay bale and get some food while avoiding attacks from the other deer.  After a while, he broke up the bale to spread it out, so they could feed farther apart and not be attacking each other so much.  Sadly, one night, a pack of coyotes killed a young deer, right there next to his house!  They had heard their dog barking like crazy, but by the time they saw why, it was too late.

Coyotes can be a real problem.  Especially when the population is high enough for them to start forming packs.  That’s one of the reasons I want us to get our firearms acquisition certificate as quickly as we can, and get at least a .22 rifle.  Being on the farm without a gun feels very wrong.  It’s a vital tool.  Especially if we do start getting farm animals over the next few years.

This has been a pretty mild winter, though, so there is less chance of a hungry coyote showing up and attacking anything in our yard.

It’s supposed to be just below freezing over the next few days, then creep above freezing again.

Time to keep a close eye out on the roof, and for any more leaks that might show up!  Hopefully, once the roof is shoveled off, that won’t be an issue.  We shall see.

The Re-Farmer

Blue Jay Antics

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I had a blast getting pictures of the blue jays today!  They were dashing in and out of the trees and to the seeds so fast, it was a real challenge.  Many of the photos didn’t work out at all because of that.  More than a few times, by the time I took the shot, the bird was already gone, and I was left with a picture of a pile of seeds! :-D

These photos were taken before the snow completely covered the seeds, and I fiddled around with the settings on the camera part way through, to try and better capture flight images.  Unfortunately, one of the down sides of using the zoom lens is that it makes for darker photos.  Between the two, I had to do a fair bit of lightening of the images.  Hardly the best photography, but they were fun to take!

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I just love that little head tilt!

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Out of focus, but gosh, I love this one!

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It wasn’t until I cropped and lightened the photo that I could finally see what was really going on here – that blue jay in front plowed right into the soft snow at landing!

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It then immediately turned and hopped the other way, again, sinking into the snow on landing!

The other bird seems to have a “this guy is nuts” expression going. :-D

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Another poor photo, as far as image quality goes, but I think it’s my favourite of the bunch.  Just look at those wing feathers!

The Re-Farmer

In the snow

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The predicted snow finally arrived last night. While other parts of the province is storming, we have had a gentle snowfall.

The feed I left out this morning has been buried, but that is not stopping the critters from finding it. Like this squirrel.

Also, our satellite internet is having troubles due to the weather. My husband has been able to get enough signal for a wifi hotspot. Let’s see how long before I can upload and post this video! It’s already failed to upload twice as I’ve tapped this out on my phone.

The Re-Farmer

Catching Up With Old Friends

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Today was one of those weird days.

I woke up this morning, feeling like I was coming down with something – sore throat, stuffy nose, and my entire body aching.  Even all the knuckles in my fingers hurt.  So I took some pain killers and went back to bed.

I didn’t wake up again until 11!!

I was feeling better after that second sleep, but now I’m feeling exhausted, while having done nothing to warrant such fatigue.

My old daughter was a sweetheart and took care of the feeding of critters this morning.  She posted photos of a couple of cats on her tumblr, which are just too funny.   She even got photos on the big camera for me.

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Rolando Moon was on her favorite spot on the old barrel.

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Beep Beep settled herself in one of her favorite spots.

And yes, that is most definitely grass growing through the snow!

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I’m guessing this is Nasty Crime Boy, up at the top of the dead spruce tree.

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All those cats make the deer nervous! :-D

I was out for much of the day, heading into town to visit with an old friend from high school.  We’ve been trying to connect for a couple of months, now, and finally have!

It was so good to see her again, and there was so much to catch up on!  Too much for just one visit.

We’ll just have to get together again.  :-D

When it comes to playing catch up with old friends after so long, I have been finding it difficult to maintain any sense of order or time.  We start talking about one thing, which leads us to jumping ahead a few years, or back even more years.  Or saying one thing would remind us of something else, only tangentially related.  One big change in playing catch up these days is something I appreciate about or technology.  We were both digging out our phones, able to share photos and video about so many things!  When we left this province, the first smart phones were still just coming out, and texting hadn’t even become that big of a thing, yet.  Very few phones had cameras, and none could take video, yet.  It’s much easier to share things with each other, now!  It’s pretty awesome!

One thing I definitely noticed, as we went through photos, a photo album and even an old high school year book (I could barely recognize our own faces!), is how many people we are now talking about in the past tense.  We’ve both lost siblings and parents, and an amazing number of people we went to school with are no longer with us.

I always knew we’d be reaching that point in our lives, but somehow I didn’t think we’d reach it quite so quickly.

After a wonderful visit, I took advantage of being in town and played a bit of Pokemon Go.  One of the new things about the game is that it reflects the local weather.

Or at least what the forecasters say should be the current weather.

We’ve had all sorts of storm warnings for the Southern half of the province.  We are just on the Northern edge of the forecasted storm area.  I figured we’d at least gets some snow, but we didn’t even get that.  Yet, according to the game, we should have been in the middle of the storm, and the game opened with an extreme conditions warning, where you have to tap a button that confirms, “yes, I’m safe” to continue to play the game!  It was rather funny.

While I was gone, the girls decided to bake some sourdough bread, and make some sourdough “piggies in blankets” – sourdough bread wrapped around wieners and baked.  They even kneaded some shredded cheese into the dough for the piggies.  Hmm.  They were made with all beef wieners.  Maybe they should be called beefies in a blanket? LOL  One of these days, I’ll get some good pictures of them to share.  They’re a nice supper treat. :-)

I have a wonderful family.

The Re-Farmer

Do I See What I Think I See?

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I just finished going through my photos of the feeding station today.

Mama and the twins came by nice and early, and even stood together in a lovely grouping that allowed me to get photos of all three of them, at once.

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How considerate of them. :-D

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“Hey!  Hey, Mom!  Look at me!  My nose is all tickley.”

I got a couple of good ones with a blue jay.  I really liked this one.

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Something about that tilt of the head makes me smile.

Then the sun started shining on the feeding station, and Wow! did those feathers start to shine!

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The camera just does not do justice to how must those brighter blues gleamed and glittered.  It was amazing to see!

Then a squirrel posed nicely for me.

It wasn’t until I was cropping the photo that I spotted something…

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Is that green grass growing in there?!?!  There are so many little spruce tips on the ground, that’s what I thought it was at first, but no…

I think that really is new grass!

It’s only March.  We’re nowhere near done winter yet.  There’s a storm predicted for tomorrow evening, though we’re at the very northern edge of the expected path.  We should get a few centimeters of snow, at least.  While the long term forecasts are for warmer weather, there’s almost always at least one last blizzard in April that hits, before spring finally arrives.

Seeing that green right now is very interesting.  What it likely shows is how much warmer the darker areas are, even with snow under the dust and debris.  Little patches of micro-climates.

Cool!

The Re-Farmer