16 deg. at dawn
three inches of snow yesterday
In all the excitement yet another tree keeled over, right across the road. They just don't make trees like they usta. One wet summer and a bit of snow, and they just go all to pieces. This was from last summer, with his beloved BobCat, clearing a bigger tree out of the road...
Cold this morning. Why does this always come as a surprise?
Tried to take Toby to the vet this week, he wasn't eating or drinking and spent most of his time walking (not running) from stove to stove, getting as close as he could. "Tried" is the key word there. I have the scars to prove it.
So, after traumatizing him I decided, hey, I have this appointment... I thought I'd give Charlie a chance at it. It was two days before he'd stay in the same room with me. Now the two of them are eating, grooming each other, and watching me very carefully. Toby seems to have forgiven me, but Charlie is still giving me that side eye. Charlie is claustrophobic. He won't even sit in an open carton that has more than two sides. I suspect he may have spent most of his young life confined, and being a sensitive blossom, never got over it.
Amazing how totally different every cat is from every other.
and in other news, this woodpile was the stack left over when we filled the shed. I've been pulling from this for about a month, and easily half is gone. That means the shed is still full and will be less empty come spring...=)
It appears I'm not the only one who has noticed the disappearance of our New Hampshire birds. Friend emailed me to ask if I had seen any ruffed grouse lately, and I realized it had been years. most of our game birds are totally gone or diminished, the nighthawks, vultures, ravens, even owls and swallows are scarce...
then I read that over three billion birds have disappeared from the country in general, and they are starting to come back, but very slowly. That is truly scary.
https://1drv.ms/v/s!AhkY_Hqk1gwcjQ9F--UCUWMvZ7DN?e=qclq3X
ignore the 'sign up' thing at the top. that seems to take you elsewhere.
Looked out the window just before sunset and saw a bobcat in the field stalking two very large turkeys. This must have been a young one, since no grown bobcat in his right mind would try to attack turkeys like that. Either one of those birds would have winged him to death, but he was determined, and when he lunged they both took off with a great rush of wings and feathers...
And me without the camera. Sigh.
I looked again, and here comes a very large, very annoyed-looking doe, stamping her hooves and snorting at him. This time he realized, I suspect, that he was indeed outnumbered, and when she went after him, barking and huffing, he took off into the woods. I could hear the doe barking all the way, and it sounded like she chased him all the way to the road.
Five minutes later she was in the field again, and this time with a much younger deer, obviously her mostly grown fawn.
I suspect the bobcat is somewhere denned up, trying to figure out what went wrong. Next time, for sure.
From time to time I begin to really believe that we are losing to the wildlife. Works for me =)
