City bound

I'm off to Boise for the day. I have a few errands to run, supplies to pick up, possibly a movie to see. I should stay the night, but these hummingbirds are seriously OOC and I'd feel bad if I abandoned them to their own devices. I'm having to fill the feeder twice a day! (I actually have two feeders, but one of them they completely ignore.) This morning when I went out to retrieve the empty, preferred feeder, the greedy whores actually landed on my hands and divebombed my head. I'm being bullied by creatures the size of my thumb. I guess it makes a change from being bullied by the cats. Tomorrow I'll try and take pictures. They sure aren't shy so the the only problem will be my skills as a photographer.

In other news, I actually mowed the entire front lawn on Sunday. It was . . . exhausting. I'm ready to pave the whole damn thing.

GORGEOUS!

It's a beautiful weekend here in the mountains, and today provided two interesting sights in addition to divebombing hummingbirds. First, Freckles killed and then presented me with an ENORMOUS garden snake. I shrieked and generally freaked out even though I knew it was perfectly harmless. Second, while reading on the lawn I looked up from my book to see a young gentleman leading two white goats loaded up with panniers. There were PACK GOATS. In my driveway! He gave a cheery wave and packed right on up to my neighbors' house. PACK GOATS. DRIVEWAY. So so so odd.

Hummingbirds!!

I was just minding my own business, looking out the window, and saw a bright green hummingbird dart right up to where the feeders usually hang, give a "WTF!?!?" look and then take off. I feel so guilty! It's not very warm and heaven knows there aren't a ton of flowers out to keep their energy up. But it really hadn't occurred to me that it was already that time of year. In less than five minutes I had put up a feeder with the last of last season's store-bought nectar. I really hope it comes back. And I hope the damn thing doesn't freeze.

OOC

Ok, these elk are seriously out of control. I looked out my window this morning to see that SOMEONE had taken a big chomp out of my chives. Now, since my chives are planted exactly 12 inches from the wall of my house, I was curious. Surely an elk wouldn't get that close to my house for a little snack? Maybe my neighbors saw that they were getting a little bushy and came down and snipped a few? No. When I investigated I found more hoof prints the size of dessert plates right next to the house. As well as some neatly trimmed grass in front of my living room windows. And more battered and abused tulip bulbs in the flowerbed under my eaves. When did elk become so bold!?!? And how could I possibly have MISSED them being so close??

Drat!

You know when elk aren't so charming and decorative? When they leave a big pile of droppings in the middle of your lawn and tear up half your already struggling tulips with their big fat hooves trampling through your new flowerbed! That's when.

Spring. Ew.

Yesterday was the first day of spring and it was completely gorge. The sun, the little birdies, the temp, it was perfect. I worked. Today? The day I don't work? The sky is grey, the wind is howling, the temp is back in the 30s, and there are even MORE bugs outside. (Speaking of: I am alone in this invasion. Pauletta doesn't have these bugs. No one has these bugs. I don't want to talk about it.)

I've gotten back into making jewelry this past week. I'm really enjoying it even as it destroys my fingernails and aggravates my old wrist injury. But it's a little creative outlet I really enjoy and might bring in a few dollars here and there so I'm hoping the inspiration lasts for awhile. So today, with spring doing it's worst to irritate me and make me miserable, I'm going to enjoy the fire, try not to kill the cats as they literally climb the curtains with excess energy, and work on another necklace. It is a small life, but it is my own. And summer will show up eventually. Yesterday was a promise.

The Horror!

My neighbor Pauletta dropped by to see if I wanted to walk down to our other neighbor's currently empty house with her to check on a flooding situation. I didn't have anything better to do, so I went. And when we got back . . . it's like I'm living in a horror movie. We couldn't help but notice that the snow around the porch, that had been white when we left 20 minutes ago, was now grey. Looking closer . . . the snow was covered in millions of tiny black insects. And they are completely surrounding my house! They seem to be coming from the foundation maybe? Pauletta, who's lived around here for years, has never seen anything like it. I'm completely and totally freaked out. She said she'd call when she got home if there weren't any around her house. She hasn't called, so I guess that's good?? That I'm not alone in this mysterious and nauseatingly horrifying infestation? I'm afraid to go back outside in case I accidentally bring the invasion inside with me. EW!

The Bats of August

I don't like it, but I have no problem understanding why and how mice get into my house. Crawlspaces, foundations, vents . . . there are ways. And while I do my best to keep my house clean there are crumbs. There are incentives. But bats? How the HELL do they find their way in? Certainly not through the crawlspace, and last summer we sealed up all the holes we thought they might fit through. But, more importantly, WHY? There is nothing for them here but panic and death and perhaps a little torture if Freckles catches them before their little hearts give out.

For whatever reason, bat season officially began yesterday when I came home from the spa to find two bats. One already dead, the other flitting, panicked through the loft. I've already shared too many horror stories here, so I'll spare you the details of what happened when Freckles caught the second bat. If last summer is any guide, this is only the first wave of a months-long invasion. I will be pulling my mosquito netting out of storage before bed tonight.

Intermission

I got a plea from a relative to post again, but I just don't feel like I have much to say.

My grocery budget has doubled as I gorge myself on cherries and nectarines and blueberries and any other fresh, reasonably local, fruit I can get my hands on. It's one of the greatest joys of summer. Although, sadly, it's not all good. Today I spent $13 on inferior cherries and I'm very bitter about it.

The weather has been fabulous, much cooler than last summer (in a good way), and significantly less smoky (in an even better way). I've gone for three hikes since Saturday, and one yoga class. I've seen twin spotted fauns and an enormous five point buck crashing through the underbrush. I've watched several really big birds (osprey? some kind of hawks?) circling above the pines, riding the drafts. I read half of Friday Night Lights sitting by the river on a particularly hot, Summer-2007-style day. I just kept dipping my feet in the icy water and splashing my arms and applying sunscreen because I didn't feel like being inside.

I think I might be a little depressed. I'm sleeping a lot. I still haven't looked for a job that pays more than $10/hour. I do have a complete cover letter, edited by a real lawyer and everything, but I can't bring myself to send it out. I just can't see an upside. The first option is that someone will want to hire me and I'll have to go back to real work, and work scares me. I don't want to go back to crying all the time. Alternatively, maybe no one will want to hire me and I will be destitute with no prospects. And . . . that doesn't sound so great either. So things are on pause right now. I'm reading books and eating strawberries and sitting on warm rocks. I'm listening to the wind in the trees and smelling the scents of an Idaho summer, old pine needles and newish mountains and the very faint sweetness of huckleberries. And I'm generally OK. Just not quite OK enough to think more than a day or two ahead. I've pushed pause, because this, right here, is good. Thanks for understanding. And not worrying.

Cat(s) and Mouse

Apparently there's a regular Thursday night mouse convention at my place, because for the second week in a row we had mousetastic adventures on a Thursday night/Friday morning. Luckily, this has not (yet) ended in tragedy. When I came downstairs this morning, both cats were stalking and sniffing and generally behaving oddly in the vicinity of a certain leather club chair in my living room. I peeked beneath, and sure enough there was a scared (but fully alive and uninjured) little mouse taking refuge. The cats and I spent the rest of the morning trying (with completely different intentions) to catch the creature as it darted from chair to sofa to behind the TV. Eventually I had to give up and go into the spa. But I knew for sure Freckles would eventually eviscerate it, so I locked Freckles in the laundry room before I went, and left older, slower, and de-clawed Sugar circling the sofa. I haven't found a mouse carcase since I got home (and believe me, I looked everywhere), so I can only hope that it made its escape out of whatever little hole in the foundation it found its way in through. I'm too soft for my own good. I'd rather the mouse took up permanent residence under my kitchen cabinets than know one of my cats killed it. Of course, I'm not looking forward to any sleep tonight. I'll be bolting awake at each scuffle and thump of Sugar and Freckles on their nightly rounds.

Ooooh. In real wildlife news there are six bucks grazing not 30 feet from my living room windows! How pretty.

Grumpy

I am in a foul mood today. Practically poisonous. The day started really crummy, when at 1 am I was woken by little claws scratching my arm as a tortured mouse ran across my body trying to escape from Freckles. I found the poor creature, critically injured, trapped between my mattress and the wall. There was nothing I could do. I wrapped it in a paper towel, struggling the whole time. When I tried to open the door it escaped, flopped out of my hands, performed these horrifying death spirals on the floor until I was able to get it outside, on the porch, where I left it to its fate. Then I cried. And tried to go back to sleep. Every time one of the cats jumped up to the bed I freaked out, turned on the light, and made sure she was alone this time. It was not a restful night, but the mouse had it much much worse. Oh god, I'm tearing up again just thinking about it. Now I know, worse than finding a dead mouse on your bed, is finding a dying one.

The day has gotten significantly less tragic, but not necessarily better. I'm bitter about being stuck at the spa when other people are relaxing (which, given my schedule as described in my last post, I know is completely ridiculous.) I'm annoyed and angry with one of the therapists, a friend, who was horribly unprofessional today and stuck me in an awkward position as a result. I just wrote a sentence saying that I was probably being unfair, and excusing her, but I deleted it. Because I'm not being unfair, and today, being tired, and grumpy, and sad I'm not in the mood to be accommodating. And did I mention that it's cloudy?

Ok, so it's still not spring but . . .

For the last week or so, every time I've passed over the bridge across the reservoir, I've seen trumpeter swans gliding through the black water between blocks of ice and snow. I mentioned them to my mom, and she asked if I remembered the spring storm when I was a child that brought an entire flock of migrating swans to rest and regroup in a neighbor's field. I do remember, but in seeing the swans over and over this week I had forgotten that they don't come every year. One more unusual, wonderful event to add to my tally for this (first?) adult winter in the mountains.

And last night, as I was driving home, a pair of long-legged foxes kept pace with my car for awhile, yellow and orange darting between dark trees, brightening an otherwise monochrome landscape.

Today it snowed from daybreak until 3 pm. Small, dry flakes, that fell quickly and didn't last long.

I'm trying to focus on what I have, what I see, and not what I'm missing.

Another Mini Breakdown

Last night, as I was driving home after my second straight 9.5 hour day, I slammed on my brakes to narrowly avoid running down a beautiful red fox who'd decided to dart in front of my car and I was barely able to hold back the tears. It's not like there's anything horrible happening, and the good news is I did NOT kill a fox last night, but I'm tired and a little overwhelmed. And more than the feelings of exhaustion and stress, what really made feel that panicky flutter in the depths of my chest was this fear: If two long(ish) days of work, an upcoming bar exam, one sick cat, two cats who hate each other, and the prospect of a job interview are enough to make me feel like throwing both cats into a snow bank and crawling under the comforter for a few (many) days, how the HELL am I going to go back to working 50+ hour weeks? Can I really do that and not lose my mind? In stronger moments, I think of course I can. People do it all the time. Most of my friends do it and sure, they complain, but they're still mentally intact. They enjoy their lives if not their jobs. But last night I wasn't so sure I could. Or more accurately, if I can do it without chemical support. Not that there's anything wrong with that of course. It's been so nice to be happy without them, but I'm not clever enough to come up with an alternative that doesn't involve defaulting on my student loans.

Eeek!

Around 5:30 on Saturday morning, Freckles began an odd little routine. She ran upstairs, jumped up on my bed, batted her paws at my legs, jumped back off the bed, ran downstairs. She did this four or five times before I decided to give up on sleep. I turned the light on during an on-the-bed stage of the procedure and found that she wasn't batting at my legs, she was batting at a DEAD MOUSE. A DEAD MOUSE. ON MY BED. Sadly for Freckles, she didn't get the praise that I'm sure she was expecting this feat to bring. I shreaked, she took her prize back downstairs, I followed her (having carefully checked my slippers before putting them on), stole her precioussssss, and chucked what was once a really adorable little creature (the mouse, not Freckles, although on second thought Freckles didn't seem quite as adorable at 5:45 on Saturday morning as she had when I went to bed on Friday night) unceremoniously into the garbage bin on the porch. I'm not sure which bit of knowledge is more discomfiting, that there was a DEAD MOUSE on my bed, or that, before it was dead, there was a mouse LIVING somewhere in my cabin. I'm not so hardened by my 7 months in the mountains that I don't find both thoughts upsetting.

Winter Wildlife

On Friday evening, just as it was getting dark, I got an excited voicemail from one of my neighbors telling me to look out my window because there were six elk grazing in the pasture between our houses. Unfortunately, I was working and by the time I got home they were gone. But yesterday I went for a walk and just as I was approaching a bend in the road, two elk leaped across my path. I stopped and watched in awe as a steady stream of them came bounding up from the river and started climbing a ridge where my mother pastured horses before I was born, and where, when I was a child, we had a memorable encounter with a black bear while picking huckleberries one fall. I lost count at 15, and they just kept coming. There must have been at least 40. I was both too startled and too slow to get a decent picture. Can you even see them in the trees?

On a smaller scale, but just as startling, I saw this tiny creature skittering through the snow 15 yards or so from my front door when I set out for my winter walk. Guess what direction he was traveling? It had never occurred to me that spiders could survive in the open in such cold. He made good time. By the time I saw him on my return trip he'd covered about half the distance to my significantly cozier home (where, sadly, he'd find plenty of other creatures to keep his strength up until spring when I wouldn't feel so evil about banishing him back outside).

Cows!

I looked up from taking some cookies out of the oven to see three cows (!) in my front yard. They're not supposed to be there. But I can't say I mind. I like cows. I think they're kind of decorative. They're even better than a grouping of pink plastic flamingos. Plus they're useful; they keep the grass from getting too long. Really, it's a win-win.

More signs of Fall

I woke up this morning to ice on the windows, and the sounds of Canada Geese migrating south.

Action Shot (Almost)

A fair few intimations of mortality today.

Geckos are one of the cooler things about tropical living, or at least I think so. I mean, as lizards go, aren't geckos pretty darn adorable? And they also eat bugs. Which are one of the less cool things about tropical living. So it's a win-win. I'll choose more cute geckos and fewer biting insects any day of the week. I was taking this shot of a gecko and moth and mosquito for a friend who likes such things and just as I pulled my camera down the gecko made a lunge and took a chunk out of the moth. Of course, I couldn't capture that on my crappy camera. This last moment of the moth will have to satisfy my photojournalist urges.

My parents' place has plenty of little geckos scuttling around the walls and on the ceilings. They used to have a lot more before they got a cat named Emma. This morning I saw Emma skulking into the house with something yellow, little suckers on its toes. That part of the predator-prey cycle makes me sad.

This afternoon the crypt that was being built next door by the digger singing Goodnight Irene was filled in a traditional Garifuna ceremony, there was a blocks long procession from the church to the cemetary with chanting and singing and just a little wailing. I didn't take any photos of that - it seemed a little insensitive. The Australian medical students sitting around the pool didn't have a problem playing voyeur however. Maybe I should have just given my camera to one of them?

Highlight of My Day

Tomorrow I'm leaving on vacation (is it really a vacation if the rest of your life is spent pretty much only doing what you want to do anyway? is a vacation just a trip at that point?)and I've been spending all morning working on really annoying chores preparatory to a fabulous jaunt that will take me to Portland, Alabama, and Belize. One of those chores had me tied to my computer, and what did I see when I looked up a few minutes ago? A big red fox limping across my front yard. Look. Photographic evidence.

Chipmunker

Every once in a while I let Freckles roam around outside for a little break from the kittens. I let her have just such a mini-vacay this morning and when I let her back into the house she had a LIVE chipmunk in her mouth.

My neigbors had been planning to take one of the kittens to keep as an outside mouser, but now I'm wondering if I shouldn't let them have Freckles, who is obviously skilled (those chipmunks are fast), and keep one of the kittens myself.

There is a happy ending to this particular incident as I quickly pushed Freckles away from the chipmunk and let the tiny victim run. It didn't seem injured, just a bit moist. Freckles, however, is pissed.

Quick note on the new fire: the smoke cloud is gone, just a light haze over West Mountain.