wildlife

Critters, and the day so far

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Of course, there is always the cuteness of the kitties, but this morning we had something extra.

Our bathroom window opens into the sun room and this morning, I was hearing some strange noises. I checked the critter cam, but couldn’t see anything. The noises were still there, though, so as soon as I could, I went to see what the heck was going on.

What I found was a pair of little raccoons, squeezed between the top of the counter shelf and the wall shelf above!

As I came in, they dove behind the counter, against the window.

There was more than two.

I can make out at least three of them. This is a litter of four that comes visiting – the mom must of run out of the sun room before I got to the door – so I’m pretty sure there is a fourth one mashed into there!

That insulation is against a double pain window that lost its inner pane. After cleaning up as much of the broken glass as we could, we put the insulation there to both protect the window from extreme temperature differences and any kittens and cats that would go back there.

Also, baby raccoons. 😄

We had more rain last night, and very small amounts of rain off and on, so after they had their breakfast, the cats curled up in their favorite spots.

Nosey found himself a nice little bed in the portable greenhouse. At the same time, Grommet was chilling on the garbage can heat sink (in the last picture). I also got a picture of Grommet and Eyelet snoozing together in one of the cat beds in the shelf shelter. Grommet really likes that cat bed!

Late this morning, after my daughter loaded the truck for me, I finally made it to the dump. It’s been a while! When I got there as saw the pit area, it was clear that they had finally pushed the huge build up on garbage at the edge of the pit, in. There was actually room to drive in and turn to back up to the edge.

Which was already filling up with trash on the edge. A lot of people make no effort to toss the garbage into the pit, and just dump it at the edge. Which gets to be a problem when it’s odd stuff like construction garbage (which isn’t supposed to go in the pit; there are areas set aside for that) or like what I saw today; a large pile spilling into the lane of what looked like rectangular pieces of foam. Picture mattress foam, except definitely not from mattresses.

I’m glad to finally make the dump run, and that they did clear the pit area since I was last there, but it has already gotten so bad, so fast, again, it’s really a problem. I’m not the only one worried about getting a flat, driving into the pit area!

After I got home, I did some stuff in the garden and got things going for the crock pot, as on one wants to cook in this muggy heat. I had to stop to go to my mother’s for her med assist, so one of my daughters finished that for me while I was gone.

Today makes 5 days this week, where I had to come in to do my mother’s med assists, because they were short staffed. The first two were mornings, the rest were evenings, where I have to set out her bed time meds for her to take herself, later.

When I got there, my mother had just finished her supper. Which was also her breakfast! She had stayed in bed all day today, which means she didn’t have food with her morning meds. She probably had a few crackers with them.

I remembered to grab our callous grinder from home, so after she took her meds, I checked on her toenails and smoothed them out a bit. Since I am taking her to her doctor next week, I brought up having the doctor take a look at her feet, just to make sure she doesn’t have any fungus, because of that one weird toenail.

Since I was there anyhow, I also did her dishes and put away her laundry, which was still neatly folded in the basket on her couch, where my sister had left them for her. The wheelchair I brought is still sitting in her living room. I don’t think she’s even touched it. Which really doesn’t help us any, when she’s asking us to buy her a new one and we don’t even know if she can use a manual chair to begin with.

I hope my mother is feeling better tomorrow, though. My brother has a surprise for her. We’ll be meeting up at a particular restaurant, with his grandsons, and then he’s going to go get my mother to have lunch with her great grandsons. We haven’t said anything in advance, as my mother’s behaviour is so unpredictable, it’s just safer not to say anything. I’ve been asked to be there partly because she behaves differently when I’m there, and is less cruel to my brother and his wife. With her behaviour around kids, it’s really hard to know how she will be. She wanted nothing to do with her grandsons when they were little, and the only interest she had with my daughters was to “test” them and get them to perform for her, in between making false reports against us to the home school office.

We never know, though. She might have one of her good days, and it’ll be a great visit and one her great grandsons will remember in a positive light in the future.

We shall see.

The Re-Farmer

Morning Trashpandas

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Well, today went not at all as planned. I’m actually going to be able to stay home today!

I was expecting to be picked up by a friend at 8am this morning, and was starting my morning routine a bit early. Before making the kitten soup, I popped into the sun room to grab the one bowl for it that I knew was still there.

Opening the doors created a massive scramble, with all sorts of crashing and bashing.

A BIG raccoon ran out the sun room door, but her four babies all squeezed themselves into the space between the counter shelf and the window.

These are not small babies.

Well, the mom was beside herself. She wanted to run away, but her babies were stuck inside!

The growling noise she makes is so… unique. It’s almost like a deep, throaty barking noise, but it’s a growl. Once of these days, I need to try and record the sound!

Meanwhile, I could hear the babies scrambling. I tried to give them time to leave by mixing up the kitten soup and getting all the bowls and dry kibble ready.

Eventually, two did run out, but two others ran back into hiding. I decided to go ahead and start setting out the dry kibble.

Gosh, they are so frikkin’ cute!

Once the dry kibble was distributed, I same back through the sun room, and heard massive crunching.

They were so, so hungry!

I let them eat for a bit, then tried to get a broom behind their butts to push them out to the door.

They pushed back, wanting to get back behind the shelf, instead. Which was blocked by the broom.

So they just sort of stood up, squeezed between the broom and the table saw the food tray is under.

Looking at me.

With those eyes.

I gave up.

There was so much commotion, I had to let the for socialized kittens into the old kitchen so they could eat their cat soup, while I started setting the other bowls out. The little feral orange kitten has been brave enough to come to the house! Which was great, except he ended up missing out on the kitten soup, as he was eating dry kibble by the laundry platform, instead. Hopefully, he got some later.

Going back and forth, the two raccoons went back to eating. One of them moved out from under the table saw and was eating at another tray. They didn’t stop eating as I went by.

I admit it.

I couldn’t resist.

I pet the raccoon.

Just a little!

They have very course fur.

The raccoon was so focused on food, it just looked up at me, then kept eating.

After that, I did my morning rounds. While coming back from the driveway, I spotted them on the steps in front of the house. They were clearly looking for Mom!

Mom, however, had done the opposite direction.

When they spotted me, they ran up the tree in front of the kitchen window. The one that cats really like, and use to get onto the roof. Yes, there were a couple of cats in the tree, and they weren’t sure what to make of the new additions!

I continued my rounds and when I came back, I found them like this.

At some point, this tree was cut short (it should have been cut down!). Over the years, branches had grown up and around the top, but there is still a flat spot that the cats love to hang out on. I found the raccoons, snuggling each other, huddled up on the flat spot.

Checking later on, they were gone, so I’m guessing they are reunited with their mother.

The morning stuff done, I headed out to meet my friend at the gate for 8am.

She never showed up.

I didn’t want to message her, in case she was driving, but after a while I finally did.

Long story short, she thought her car drop off was on the 28th, not the 23rd. That’s what she had written in her schedule. I’d put it into my own phone calendar. So I looked up the number for her and she called the garage.

It was supposed to be today.

She ended up rescheduling to the 28th.

Okay, that meant I could stay home?

Not really. My mother needs a grocery shopping trip. My sister, however, was planning to visit today, too.

I called my mother and got her up to date on getting the blood work requisition for her, and the doctor’s appointment I made for her. As for her shopping, she will get my sister to do it.

I get to stay home!

Then I got a call from the autobody shop.

I’ve got my eye appointment tomorrow (Thursday), then I’m supposed to drop the truck off for the insurance claim on Friday. They had arranged for a courtesy car for me to use until it could be picked up on Tuesday.

The courtesy car is broken down and won’t be ready on time.

They wondered if I could bring it in on Thursday night, they’d do the repairs/painting on Friday morning, then I could take the truck back until they are ready to install the cover, and I would bring the truck back for that.

I told her about my eye appointment, and that I won’t even be able to drive myself home, because my eyes will be dilated.

As we were talking, and she asked where I lived, she even offered to drive me home after dropping off the truck! In the end, what they will do is have someone come get the truck from here, on Thursday, just before they close. They’ll do the repair work and painting on Friday morning, and will figure out how to get the truck home for me after that. Likely, a drop off. Then, I’ll get a call to bring it back to install the cover. For that, I can just stay and wait until it’s done.

They are really bending over backwards to help me out here!!! Wow!!

So that’s been my morning.

I get to stay home for day.

I’d love to be productive and all, but so much has been going on, I feel totally drained – and I’m still not completely recovered from yesterday’s… reaction… to the lunch I got from the grocery store before our doctor’s appointment. Even my arm is still giving me grief.

Oh, crap. I forgot to take my anti-inflammatories while eating my lunch. Maybe it’s not too late! I’m still full…

Done.

I did take some yesterday, then went to bed early. I did NOT take any painkillers before bed. I did have some pain during the night, but nothing like I normally do, even with painkillers. It’s too early to draw any conclusions, but for a first dose and first night, that’s very encouraging!

I didn’t take any painkillers this morning, either.

So far so good!

I think I’ll actually try lying down for a bit, then see how I feel before trying to get some work done outside. I really need to let that arm heal.

We’ll see how it goes.

The Re-Farmer

Fuzzy friend, future soup, and cat status

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I am so glad we don’t need to go anywhere for the next while!

When I headed out yesterday evening to feed the outside cats, we had freezing rain on top of the snow.

We also had company.

Looks like the big, fluffy beast hunkered down as soon as I came out. I stayed where I was long enough to take the picture. As soon as I moved closer, he ran off.

I love how casual Driver is, sitting next to the racoon!

When I saw him this morning, he was still favouring that front paw. I still can’t see any obvious signs of injury, but I’m not able to get a closer look, either.

We got snow again, after the rain, so things were pretty crunchy, crispy out there! We’re supposed to both get more snow, and warm up, over the next few days. I’m sure the cats will enjoy the warmer temperatures, and the snow melting away. Of course, the long range forecast of up to 8C/46F have changed, but it’s still saying we’ll have several days of 6C/43F next week. My main concern right now is for the 11th. I’ll be bringing the cats in to the clinic quite early in the morning, and the forecast currently calls for sleet. More on that later!

This morning, my older daughter was planning on making a soup today. Using these…

That’s one of the big Pink Banana squash, a Red of Florence onion and garlic. The Sweet Chocolate and Cheyenne peppers were all green when we harvested them, but have been ripening up quite nicely! They’re also dehydrating a bit, too.

I don’t know what else went into the soup, besides shrimp, but my goodness, the house smells amazing. I’m told it’s not very spicy hot, which means I should even be able to do more than have a taste! 😁 I don’t handle spices very well, unfortunately.

I popped outside again not long ago, to get a meter reading, when this strange noise started coming out of my pocket. It always startles me when my cell phone rings! 😄 It was the Cat Lady. She’d been hearing from the clinic about our bookings. They are quite concerned that we might not show up. With all their no-shows last time, and with us having 6 slots, I can’t blame them! She said she assured them that we will be there. I told her to go ahead and tell them we went out and bought 2 more carriers, just to make sure we could bring them all in! If we don’t make it, it’ll be because we’ve gotten into an accident along the way, or the house has caught fire or some sort of emergency like that.

The Cat Lady is going to be in town that day anyhow, and will be meeting me. She’ll be going in for another MRI at the hospital just across the road from the vet clinic. All the kittens will be coming home with us. Currently, all her own cats, except 2, are being boarded as they prepare to move. Unfortunately, every offer made for their house fell through because the potential buyers couldn’t get financing. It’s adding an insane amount of stress to their lives! Meanwhile, the two cats that are not being boarded are also the two calicos from us, that both hate her for some reason! Cabbages came back because she refused to eat. I don’t think Muffin (who now has a different name) ever left. She is wildly attached to the Cat Lady’s husband, and goes off to job sites and coffee runs all the time. She’s good with the kids, too, but the Cat Lady has never even been able to pet her. She walks by and gets swiped and growled at! She’s never had a cat act like this before! Still, with only the two cats in the house, and one of them gone out for coffee with her husband, the house is amazingly quiet! At this point, I would not be surprised if Muffin has become a de facto sales cat! I can easily imagine potential clients and contractors being happy to see the guy with the cat come around. It is strange that she is so nice to everyone else, but not to the Cat Lady!!

Anyhow. I hope the next offer they get actually finally pans out, and they can finish moving to the new house they bought – a house with a whole other heated building that will be dedicated to cats! It would be awesome for them to be able to celebrate Christmas and New Year’s in their new home, without the added burden of two mortgages!

Oh! There was something else she told me that just blew me away. The last time we got a female done at the nearest vet clinic, it was $350. That included getting a tattoo and… something else I can’t remember right now. Things like vaccinations, etc, are extra. Males were half that. The Cat Lady was talking to the clinic with the cheap spay day about the possibility of bringing in a stray cat in their area and get her spayed. The vet told her that they’d be able to do it at the discounted price, since she is a rescue.

$408

!!!

She asked what the regular price was.

$497

That includes a wellness check, vaccinations, etc, right?

Nope. Just the spay. The other stuff she mentioned would be extra.

Good grief!!!

She did find a place that would give her a much better discounted price, but it involves a much longer drive. At under $200, though, that’s what she’ll be going!

One more reason to really appreciate the cheap day we’re booked for. It just blows me away that anyone would simply not show up when it’s only $75. I found out that the large animal rescue that moved in just a mile away from us had similar issues. They arranged for a mobile spay and neuter unit to come in. They would have been $175, male or female. We never booked, as we didn’t have it in the budget, but it turns out they had a lot of no-shows, too. Which really chokes me, because I saw all the excited responses and people asking to be booked for that day, when they announced it on Facebook. I figured they would have run out of slots and had to turn people away. Instead, they had people book and not show up!

Well, that won’t be us.

Less than a week, and we’ll have 5 kittens and 1 cat recovering from spays and neuters, all at the same time!

It should definitely be… interesting! 😄

The Re-Farmer

A lovely young buck – and I’m finally done!

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The handsome fellow was captured by the gate cam.

Just look at those big antler nubbins!

We had another lovely, cool night last night. As expected, I had a hard time getting going in the morning, so the girls were kind enough to take care of feeding the outside cats. By the time I was pain killered up enough and ready to head out, I didn’t bother switching out the memory cards on the trail cam.

I did, however, get back to working on mowing last year’s grass. It took all day, but I finally got it done! What a huge job it was, but all that tall grass and dried thatch from last year is cut, and almost all the clippings hauled away. When there was just a small triangle of tall grass left, I gave in. I set the mower as high as it could go and went over the tall grass a couple of times. Then I took the bag off and mowed the whole remaining section. I really should have put the bag back on and gone over it again to pick up the thickest areas of grass clippings, but I just didn’t have the energy left for it.

It’s all done, and I now have huge amounts of grass clippings available for the garden. Because of how thick last year’s dead grass was, it’s mostly dry clippings, too. For all that the area looked so green, there actually was very little live grass in there. Now that it’s cut, and most of the dense clippings removed, it will have a chance to recover. All we need now is a good rain!

We have a 45% chance of rain tomorrow afternoon.

I figure, we might get a few drops.

The garden is going to get its watering, just in case. The girls will be taking care of that, though! I’m done for the day.

The Re-Farmer

Captured, and orange sun

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We caught a lovely pair on one of the trail cams this morning!

We’ve got them on the driveway cam, too, running down the road, but the fawn is so small and hard to see against the gravel, it was barely visible.

The girls and I checked on the cats and garden beds this evening. While we were out in the main garden, they called my attention to the sun.

The camera had a hard time showing just how brightly orange the sun is right now. We could look right at it, too, with no discomfort at all. The weird thing it, it doesn’t really seem that smoky out. Certainly not like when we had wildfires all around us during the major drought we had, two years ago. Thankfully, this year we’ve had some decent moisture, though we certainly can still use more rain.

While we were out, we picked a whole bunch of spinach. I’m going to have to remember this variety, because even with the heat we’ve been having, they’re only just now starting to show signs of bolting. So we will probably pull the entire bed of spinach soon. I’ll probably transplant more onions into it after that, since I still have quite a few that need to go into the ground.

I also ended up picking a whole bunch of rhubarb. We don’t use it a lot, but my younger daughter has a recipe for rhubarb cake she got from my sister (who doesn’t even remember giving it to her!) that she wants to make. The girls had gone in by then, and they checked the recipe for how much rhubarb it uses – four cups! – so I went and got another bunch of stalks, just to be sure we had enough.

With how messed up my sleep has been lately, I’m thinking of going to be really early tonight. Hopefully, I’ll get some actual sleep and get an early start tomorrow, and try to make up for the lack of productivity today!

The Re-Farmer

Morning traffic

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Our piebald visitor was back this morning.

She still has a tail full of burrs, after all this time! At least she doesn’t have them hanging off her chin anymore.

The deer quite appreciate the trails left behind by the snowmobilers.

On another note, we’ve spent that last few days working on the cat barrier so we can turn the living room into a plant room. There have been all sorts of problems! For starters, the opening between the divider shelves is wider at the top than the bottom. Which should have been okay. We built the frame smaller, and used self adhesive foam to fill in the gaps and hold the frame in place.

Well, between the crooked shelves and the wonky lumber, we still had problems, with the frame too tight at the top, and a huge gap on one side at the bottom.

Yes. I did correctly say that the space at the top was wider than the bottom, so it should have been the other way around.

Then the door was made to fit inside the frame and should have had a quarter inch space on all sides.

Once hanging the door on the frame, it became even harder to put the frame back in the space. When we finally got it in and opened the door, it would drop so much, it dragged on the floor…

…which also isn’t straight…

… and then we couldn’t get the door to close again. We ended up shaving about a quarter inch off one end of the door – the draw knife made quick work of that! It still wasn’t enough, though. Today, the girls are going to have to take the door partially apart, make it narrower, and hang it again. Which is going to be a bit job, because I was very, very through about attaching the wire mesh to the frame! The stronger staples we got seem to be doing the job, except I ended up having to hammer them all in more securely, after using the staple gun.

Later today, I’ll make the barrier for the shelf that’s open on both sides. After I’ve headed out to pick up a BBQ meat pack and run a few errands. Like stop at the post office to pick up the cat-proof screen for the window screens they’ve made holes in! I really hope this stuff is actually as good as it’s supposed to be.

The Re-Farmer

Not the only one!

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Checking the trail cam files this morning, I discovered our piebald deer isn’t the only one that got attacked by burrs!

These had gone by just before I got to the camera, and I never saw them!

That one deer not only has a tail full of burrs, but more stuck on its face.

I also saw our piebald caught on the gate cam, but only going in, so I couldn’t see if her tail was still full of burrs.

In other things, I’m still hoping to get a call of approval about financing the vehicle, so when the phone started ringing this morning, I was quick to answer.

I should have known better, considering how early in the morning the first call came in.

It was one those recorded “I’m Dave from Amazon…” scam messages. It’s bad enough that they call so early in the frikkin’ morning, but we got the same call again! It was the exact same recording, but call display showed it was from a different number.

*sigh*

Meanwhile, I’m happy to say that we now have two more drum gourds germinating, both in the same pot. They’re not quite free of the soil, yet, so I haven’t tried to take picture, yet. The first two are looking nice and strong. We also had a new little pepper sprouting in the pot with the first one that sprouted. There’s still one cell with no sprouts at all, and still no sign of the zucca melon. They can take quite a long time to germinate, but with how cold the house is, even on the heat mate and under the lights, I think it’s still a bit chillier than they prefer. We shall see.

I’m not going to spend the rest of the day with the phone chained to my hip… 😂

The Re-Farmer

What happened to that tail?!

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After yesterday’s gorgeous temperatures, doing my rounds this morning was feeling downright brutal. As I write this, we’re still at -22C/-8C, with a wind chill of -31C/-24F. I was more than happy to be back inside and checking the trail cam files.

Where I found this.

What on earth?

I tried zooming in on the full size image, but it’s just too grainy to tell. Normally, I’d say burrs, but find it strange that burrs would be all caught up just on her tail like that. I’d expect them to be more spread out. I suppose another possibility is her fecal matter somehow getting stuck, but that doesn’t seem right, either. They lift their tails well clear for that to be a possibility. Plus, some of the pieces look the wrong shape and size for that.

Very odd.

Whatever it is, I hope she’s able to get it off!

The Re-Farmer

Look who’s back!

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I found this while checking the files on the gate cam. Such an elegant lady!

This is cropped out of a much larger still, so the date and time stamp is gone, but it was taken shortly after noon. So brazen! In the video clip, she was just bouncing up the driveway, like a thoroughbred.

I think this is the first time I could see that she has white patches just above her hooves, too.

While feeding the outside cats, someone else was back, though I couldn’t get a good photo of him. The Distinguished Guest was among the 25 cats I counted this morning. He is still looking in very rough shape, and the tip of one ear is flapping around. He still looks bedraggled and he’s moving slowly, but he’s not limping like he was the last time I saw him. I tried not to move too quickly and spook him, though he did still move away as I put the food out and refilled the water bowls. Mostly, he went from food tray to food tray, and even stayed under the water bowl shelter, eating, while I refilled the heated bowl. As I went around other paths, he started making his way up the path to the compost pile, then stopped part way, watching me. As I continued, I’d look over and he was a little bit closer… then a little bit closer… By the time I was done and tying off the sun room doors, he was almost back at the kibble house. What I was somewhat encouraged to see was Rolando Moon walking past him, and there was no altercation. It may be that he’s just too beat up to start a fight, but I’ll take what I can get.

I would feel much better if he were able to assimilate into the yard cats, and no longer be picking fights. Even better if Sad Face would stop fighting, too. I haven’t seen him in a few days, which is probably why TDG is back.

Well, we’ll see how it goes.

The Re-Farmer

Spotted!

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Yesterday, I mentioned that I’d spooked our visiting piebald deer in the yard. I had been unable to get a picture, but it turns out, we got a decent shot of her making her way towards our place, on one of the trail cams.

That old trail cam takes some pretty decent pictures.

I’d left some roasted squash in the compost pile for her yesterday, and today there was no sign of them at all. I hope that means she got a nice meal out of it!

The Re-Farmer