High winds last night. Lost the internet a few times. A bit of a storm, later on.
Several times, I took a quick walk around the yard to check on things and picked up downed branches (one of the apple trees in the west yard lost a big one).
I paused to take a short video, during which my heart was in my throat.
Can you see those power lines?
Can you see those branches, whipping about at the power lines?
When we can finally get those cleared, it’s going to be so much better for my blood pressure.
They are also not exactly intelligent creatures, though I know some breeds are smarter than others.
I was sitting in my office when I started to hear the sound of cows, mooing nearby. I realize the renter has cycled his cows back to our quarter section, and they are nearby. Happily, I go outside to see them.
The cows are spread out around the barn, including some in the old hay yard.
The hay yard is now cluttered with a number of abandoned vehicles and equipment. Including several old snowmobiles, I’m told are being kept for their parts.
Hearing an odd sound, I look in between various items.
Can you see the cow’s nose in there?
It took me a few moments to see that the noise I was hearing was of that cow, trying to eat the snowmobile.
To be more specific, the remains of the seat on the snowmobile.
I ended up going through the barn to the hay yard, to get them away from the snowmobiles. Which turned out to be a good thing, since I found the door to the lean to was open. There is a tree growing near it that blocks us from seeing it from the house, so who knows how long it was open!
This is what the cow was chewing on and licking. In the second video, you could see the cow going for something on the far side of the seat, too. That would likely be the foam from the seat that it was trying to get at.
Afterwards, I went out the back door of the barn. Some cows were around where an old shed had collapsed, and I could hear them getting into the metal roofing material that’s in there, so I wanted to check on things.
This is what greeted me out the back door.
Most of the cows and their calves avoided me, but these two were curious enough to stick around.
I then made my way over to the junk pile, starting to pick up and move over sheets of metal that had been blown over by the winds we’ve been having in the last while. As I get around the back side of the collapsed shed, I see…
Yeah. That black cow with its butt facing me is right on the junk. There is no grass or weeds there, so I have no idea what she’s after.
I really look forward to when we can get rid of this pile of junk!!
I continue around, which convinces the one cow to get off the junk. Some move away from me, while others come closer to check me out. I pick up and re-stack some of the sheets of metal siding, finding things to put on top of the pile to hopefully keep it from blowing over again, and make my way around between the pile and the shed.
One of the cows is braver than the others, and starts coming closer to me, watching what I’m doing.
I quickly realized that she was not chewing on grass, nor her cud.
She was chewing on a foreign object.
You might need to turn your volume up to hear this…
Now, this is concerning, because as far as I can tell, based on what’s lying around, she might be chewing on either wood or metal.
I tried to come closer to her, little by little, hoping to be able to see what she’s chewing on.
That’s one heck of a side-eye she’s giving me!
I kept trying to move around and get closer, without chasing her away, still trying to look into her mouth and see what she’s chewing on.
After a while, I start getting really concerned, because she’s got foam around her mouth from the chewing, and every now and then looked to be in some discomfort.
Then the object fell out of her mouth.
That, my dear friends, is a bone.
A beef bone.
I can’t say I was all that surprised. This is not the first time I’ve seen a cow chewing on a beef bone. When I was a kid, I remember walking past one of our cows and seeing her chewing with her head extended weirdly. She was familiar enough with me that I could walk up to her and reach into her mouth, where I pulled out one of the dogs’ beef bones. It was not as thoroughly chewed up as this one, though!
I have no idea where she found it, but I wouldn’t let her pick it up again.
She was displeased with that.
Ooh, this girl had attitude!
I proceed to kick the piece of bone away until I got it to the junk pile.
Once I was away, she started looking for it.
She wanted that bone back! She just kept snuffling and snuffling the area.
At this point, I decided it was time to head out and went back around the junk pile to go to the barn. Where I found…
This was not here, the last time I tried to clean up around the pile. In fact, I don’t remember seeing it just a few minutes before, when I went past here to go around the pile and found the cow standing right on the junk.
It is, I believe, from one of the snowmobiles.
I took it into the barn when I went in and closed up the doors again.
As I come out the front doors of the barn, I look back and see…
Can you believe it? That cow, with company, actually found where I’d kicked the piece of bone!
I’m hoping she wasn’t able to get it out, but she seems quite determined!
I know it’s a running joke that goats will eat anything.
Of all the outside cats, Beep Beep is notably the smallest, in every way. Yet, now that she’s got kittens to feed, she is proving to be a Mighty and Prolific Huntress.
Case in point.
Earlier today, I was hearing an odd meowing outside my office window. A very unusual sort of meow. So I went outside to look at see what was up.
It was Beep Beep. Doing this.
The odd sound I was hearing was her meowing with a mouth full of dead chipmunk. Usually, I see her with a vole, sometimes with a bird. This is a first I’ve seen any of the cats with a chipmunk.
Then, this afternoon, my older daughter noticed some odd meowing and went out to see.
Yes, it was Beep Beep again. This time, with a bird.
Both bird and chipmunk remain beside the bowls of cat kibble.
As the kittens have starting coming around the house to the food bowls, I am no longer going to be putting food out for them by the garden shed. Which means, kitties have a meaty lunch waiting for them when they come around.
Butterscotch seems to have moved her kittens again, and from seeing her yesterday evening while I was clearing the bush, I am afraid she may have moved them off our property entirely, and to the neighbour’s across the road (no one lives there, as far as I can tell).
This evening, I brought food and refilled the water for Beep Beep and her kittens, by the garden shed. There was no sign of them, and I went on my way around the yard. As I made my way back, I found Butterscotch and all her kittens!
I had to zoom in with my phone camera quite a bit, as they did not seem comfortable with me coming closer.
Eventually, I came around again and saw Beep Beep at the food.
Except it wasn’t Beep Beep! It was her grey tabby!
I sat at the picnic table and, before I knew it, I had all 6 kittens around! Butterscotch was still around, some of the time, too.
Here is some video I got while I was there.
Just before I was ready to leave, I did finally see Beep Beep. She was carrying a bird in her mouth that was almost as big as her head! She didn’t come close, though. Her tuxedo saw her and ran after her, wanting that bird, but she continued carrying it through the garden.
It looks like she may have moved her kittens across the road, too. :-( This concerns me. While we are pretty isolated, that road is a main artery West from the highway, and is quite busy for a gravel road.
At least they know to come back here for assured food and water!
It’s been a much cooler day today, so I took advantage of it and continued working along our west fence line.
In all, the before and after photos below represent about 2 1/2 hours work. This includes pausing to take some video, and also pausing to drag away the branches and tree trunks I took down.
What a job!
Let’s start at that group of three maples, where I left off last time. Continue reading →
Yesterday evening, I went out to rake out the leaves and twigs where I had cleared away earlier. There are too many twigs and pieces of wood to use to layer onto the garden by the house, so I got the fire pit going.
I also discovered the Butterscotch has moved her babies to the log shed by the fire pit.
I was watched, but none came near!
Later on, I did a walk around the yard and noticed the setting sun was an incredible red colour. I wasn’t able to capture it adequately in this photo.
Imagine the deepest red you can see was the entire ball of the sun.
The redness was because of the smoke of fires burning. There are none burning near us. The smoke may well be from another province!
That pile of wood in the foreground is part of what I’d cleared away earlier.
As I headed back into the yard, I discovered one of Butterscotch’s kittens in the area I had raked, dancing around.
I don’t think it ever did catch the moth. :-D
I raked up 3 wheelbarrows full out of that area. I’m going to have to clear the ashes out of the fire pit again!
I’ve started a routine of putting cat kibble out for the kittens in the evening, when we tend to see them out more often.
When I came out through the sunroom, where we keep the cat food and bird seed, I startled Butterscotch and the one kitten that followed her to the food bowls by the house, so I made a point of putting kibble out near where her kittens are, first. Then I went around to the garden shed, where Beep Beep has her kittens, and put more there.
I never saw Beep Beep’s kittens, but in the time it took me to move from one area to the next, Butterscotch and her babies were hungrily eating together!
The bigger orange tabby couldn’t squeeze her way in, so she went around the other side.
Too cute!
If it weren’t for the size difference, we probably couldn’t tell the orange tabbies apart!
I also got video. :-D
That was about as close as they would let me come, though Teeny Tabby did let me touch her (his?) back while eating, a couple of times. I’m not sure if Teeny was being braver than the other kittens, or hungrier! :-D
Some video from the storm we had a little while ago.
Though we had quite the light show at midnight, we were very fortunate. Across a lake to the west of us, a tornado touched ground, causing quite a bit of damage, and resulting in one death. The Reeve of that municipality declared a state of emergency to deal with the damage.
The Re-Farmer 