WTH am I feeding outside?

Ok – so here’s the deal…

We have yet another new cat in the house. 

Remember a while back I had Bubba (after my old cat Felix) and he disappeared?  Well, I got Cinder to replace him about a month after Bubbi left for parts unknown.  We still had the yard sale kitty, Lightening, but I prefer having my “own” cat since she is\was Hunter’s.  Plus, I had never seen her catch a mouse…

Yes, you heard me correctly, I said “was”.  Grrrrrr!  I’m not sure what the heck is “taking” my cats but I am willing to bet that it is the pair of owls we have seen around here over the years.

It got to be where every time I turned around Cinder was slipping outside.  She was completely black so I didn’t worry a whole bunch since she is hard to see at night for the owls.  But, she was mildly retarded and thought everyone was her friend and there just to pet her.  Lightening was a calico and even though she was easier to see in the dark I usually didn’t worry about her because she “always” came back before dark.

I think that these two girls got to fraternizing with those feral barn cats and who knows what those bad kitties taught them.  Cinder & Lightening stopped coming home sometime after the 4th of July.

I gave them several days to return home before I started worrying about mice in the garage.  On the 14th of July I decided that I needed to go looking for a cat.  Hunter & I went to the Humane Society of the Ochocos and looked at several – it is so hard to pick an adult cat when they are all kind of freaked out.

There was one huge black male that I was thinking about but all I could picture was getting my hand shredded if I opened the cage.  The nice lady (I am bad with names!) that works there all the time came over and got him out of the cage and then proceeded to flip him over and start rubbing his belly!  She says that he came from a home that had dogs and that he prefers dogs over cats.  OMG – I was so shocked I caught a little floating cat hair in my mouth when it dropped open – yuck!

She then tells me that he came in with the black female in another cage (who is almost as big!) and that they are having a two for one special!  Oh, what a bargain, especially when my husband sees two behemoth black cats inside the house!  I maintained my stance with one cat and Pip came home to live with us.  He was huge when we got him but he is even bigger now.  We call him Pipper and he does whatever the hell he wants to do.  I just weighed him and he weighs 15.5 pounds – I could have swore he weighed at least 18.  I’m sure that he has gained at least 2 pounds since we brought him to paradise.  So, my question is this…is he too big for the owls to lift off the ground?  I am going to try and keep him in the house for sure…

He plays with Peaches all the time; they fight over toys and chase each other around the room constantly.  Boone totally tolerates him but will get up and leave if Pipper gets too close.  Pipper loves to get into Brandy’s bed on the couch and Brandy gets up and leaves (remember the do whatever he wants?  They let him!) And at last, we have Maddie who seems to be totally oblivious to the rest of the world unless it has shiny things.  Pipper loves to play with Maddie’s tail and she doesn’t really notice until he sticks a claw in it and then she wakes up!

Here are some pics for fun and for the memories of past cats…

Pipper under my desk with Peach

 And sprawled out by the dog food bowls And nappin’ with Peaches

Cinder Kitty

Lightening…  Bubba  Felix  So quickly the years pass…

And let there be cake!

As I mentioned earlier, my wonderful husband had a birthday on July 31st.  Since we were otherwise engaged we had his birthday party the next day.  I made him the peanut butter ice cream cake for the third year in a row.  I also made a regular cake for those of us not so fond of the ice cream cake (like me).

We had BBQ hamburgers and Jethro was a great help to me for minding the grill and keeping Warren busy.  Thank you so much Jeff!

Unfortunately everyone was scattered from hell to breakfast that weekend so we had a small crew and a lot of cake.

Mom & Dad, sister Sheree and nephew Jethro made it so we all had a good visit.

Even though he never seems to look any older the calendar says that Warren turned 45.

I hope you enjoyed your cake sweetie!

And the 3rd load…

It just so happens that the 2nd load was not to be the last – apparently the third load is a charm…

Jeff & Jenn were almost out of wood also.  We had talked about getting wood but the timing never worked out.  Warren finally says that we have to get the racks off the flatbed so we can get hay and that meant that we needed to go.  He called Jeff up and we headed up on 7/31 (Warren’s birthday) to get the kids lined up with some heat for winter.  We would eat cake the next day instead…

Here’s Jethro limbing up ahead of Warren.Hunter is clearing limbs and Jeff is making progress… Meanwhile – Warren is slicing the trunk up. The loading went really well with the extra hand from Jeff.  We thought we had enough on the ground but Warren had to go in and cut a few more. And then we ran out so we had to get a few more off of a tree down the road on the way out – I think we were getting tired…

Even the dog was tired….  And so was Hunter…We all worked hard but it was worth it once we got everything unloaded at the Warren household and they almost didn’t have enough room for all of it!

There is another load in our near future.  As soon as we get bow season and rifle deer season out of the way we will be up there filling up once again.  It looks like it is shaping up for a bad winter so we need a little more to be safe and we need to get it done before it becomes to mucky in the mountains.  Plus, maybe we won’t have to go next year ;-)

The Second Outing for Wood

The punishment for not having to cut any wood last year is going more times this year!

Our second outing was a little better.  We got up there much earlier in the morning of 7/10 and it just went much smoother.

Here is the photo journal…

This is Warren just cutting away.

At some point the root wad is starting to shift and he keeps taking slabs off…

And then he decides to take a big slab off and get it over with…

It’s time to refuel

And then Hunter gets to learn a little about using a chain saw.

 Good job Hunter!

After the boys were done with all the hard work of cutting I wiggled my nose, crossed my arms, blinked my eyes & nodded my head to make everything jump in the back of the trailer so we could go home.  That’s the only reason they bring me - ya know?

Yeah right – the wood didn’t buy that fairytale either!  So, we loaded and back home we went.

The Swallows Returned

Our little swallow couple returned again this year but it was a bit different because they brought another couple with them and we had two nests to watch this year.  The second nest was not as easy to photograph so i just stuck to the original nest. Not only did we have two nests but the original couple had two batches of babies back to back!

This is the original nest but you can see they made it much bigger this year - from the feather up there is new mud.There are 5 babies in this nest – check out the close up…And here is a couple of pics taken during feeding time. The feeding pictures were taken on 7/11 and on 7/22 all we had was this little guy who wasn’t ready to fly just yet out of the second nest.  He must have been hatched a couple days later than the rest.  In this picture you can see how much smaller the second nest is.

At this point, I thought we were done.  A couple weeks ago I go out to leave and a see a couple of little eggshells on the patio again….what?

We had more baby birds in that nest…  A few days later I see a little dead baby on the patio and now the nest is down to 2 babies.  I rarely saw the babies until 2 days ago when they were out on the ledge.  I am assuming that next was pretty roomy for two babies so no wonder I didn’t see them like when it was crowded with 5.

Here they are just hangin’ out waiting to be fed on 9/10 in the morning.

And the parents keep flying by…  And finally there is food…it looks like a big tasty barn fly! When I came home late in the afternoon on 9/10 there was just one little baby in the nest. It was just sitting there watching the parents go by and then I noticed the baby hanging out on the rod in my flowers.  It was in flight training and the one in the nest wasn’t ready yet. The less mature baby was still being fed.

And it looks like the parent is having a little pep talk with it… It must have worked because they were all out flying early this morning.

I think they are actually done nesting this time and will be flying off to warmer climate soon.  It is nice to have them here eating all the bugs throughout the summer but they sure do leave a mess behind.  Double or triple the birds makes for a real mess at the edge of the patio…

 I better get the hose out before it starts freezing solid up here at night…always something to do.

Random Animal Sightings

One of the things I love to do is watch animals.  I would have loved to go to Yellowstone or Canada this year to animal watch but it wasn’t in the cards.  So, I settled for my favorite part of the year here - the spring and summer months when they have their babies.  This is a picture of a doe that had twins with her; unfortunately one of the twins got really spooked and took off while these two stayed to investigate me.

I loved keeping an eye on the 2 does with their 2 fawns down by B&S logging this year.  I could always spot at least one baby each time I drove down 7th.  It is all fine and good until the little dumbheads start playing in traffic and the car wins.  It is always crappy when I see one that has been hit.  That is a typical occurrence up on the canyon and it has never stopped bothering me to see one that should have zigged instead of zagged.  Thankfully, I have never hit one of the deer who are always parading down the pavement on our canyon.  Plenty of people have and a few have hit elk; I just consider myself lucky.

Hunter spotted these 2 bucks on the neighbors property early one morning this past July 16th.  The pictures are bad because there wasn’t too much light yet at that time of the morning.  They are good enough to tell that these boys will be a good size since they have over a month of growing to do.

Here are some antelope we spotted out just past Paulina in the pivots.  They seems to get inside of the elk fencing all of the time.  I would love to see the tunnel they have under the fence.

We have a really nice heard out here on Dry Creek Ranch but I have yet to get them on camera.  They showed back up on the last day of Antelope season – a little later than usual.  Maybe next week I will stalk them with my camera…

Maybe next year – Yellowstone :-)