Watch It Birds!

The girl is on the watch!

Luckily she's stuck inside. For now. She been out a few times, but this girls prey drive is so high I'm sure she won't be allowed to possibly hunt song birds at the feeders. That's just cruel. You should have seen her chase down the fire fly that got in last night. See that pillow? I originally stuck it in the window to keep her off the screen. I don't know when she made it into a settee for herself, but hey, she wasn't on the screen so I didn't get to excited.



I didn't even realize I had this on the phone until I was cleaning up some of my sued space on it the other day. I love how Emmitt just raises is head off the bed in the back as she hits the floor. This was in her first week with us and she had just discovered she could walk across the table between are two chairs. Then she missed...



And speaking of Emmitt and the cat...  She was just learning about these dogs and only wanted to mess with Emmitt as he's the oldest and calmest, and the smallest of the dogs in the house. This was one of the first times we saw them at it. Since then, she has learned to play with them all. I killed the audio and threw on a song for a sound track from the tune library as I was sick when I took this video and when I watched it today, I could only hear my sniffly sick breathing and that was it. It was a little ridiculous.

So, Sarah... Yes, yes I have talked about the chickens before. Starting here, and here, oh, and here too. Are you just skimming my posts? Trying to say something? To wordy? Just kidding. But yes, we have chickens. We used to have four, but some dogs can't be trusted it seems. Or couldn't then. He's decided he likes being in our good graces more than killing birds. I think he was just trying to get her to poop some more so he could eat it. Yes, think about that before adding chickens to the canine of the house. The Guy was out of town not that long ago and here The Girls were on his lounger letting me know they were missing him. I thought Spike here was just too cute not to snap a picture.

We were worried about them being a bit chilly when they first went outside this spring, but we found them keeping each other warm in the nesting boxes.

What is it guys?

This week unfortunately, the guy found we had a wasp nest forming in the upper part of the coop. Poor guy. Then I discovered while starting to pressure wash the exterior of the house in preparation to paint, that we have some wasps under the fake shutters. Little bastards.

Speaking of bugs, I found these neat golden grasshoppers munching on the sunflowers that have blossomed in the garden beneath the bird feeders. He moved from the good spot before I could get a good picture in the sun. But you get the idea. I know, I like critters. What can I say?

The park we often walk the dogs lost quite a few trees in the thunderstorm that spawned are little tornado. And yes, Michigan can get them. They're fairly rare here. Before last summer Grand Rapids hand't had one in 50+ years. This year, we've had 4 in the area. Lovely. Hopefully we're good for awhile now. Luckily, they've all been fairly weak, except the one that hit Portland. It was fairly small and weak, but it did deliver a good wallop to the town.

As I was wondering through the park I had a moment of, "Wha?" wen I saw this tree here. There wasn't a tree here before.

But there it was.

A tall and fully leafed oak.

Then it dawned on me, It's not a tree, but a part of a tree.

See way up there on the trunk? There's a little jagged piece almost halfway between the two bottom forks. There used to be a branch there. A lovely long branch that's leafy ends were woven in to the rest of the canopy. During the storm, it's base connection to the tree trunk broke and while the leafy ends were caught up and delayed in the fall, the big heavy base tilted downward then fell so hard and heavy straight down that it drove it into the ground. Far enough that I couldn't lift it out. I'm guessing that's why a week later it's leaves are still green. There is no broken end that's exposed to the air letting all the moisture out. Kind of neat, if a bit intimidating. Would have hated to be in the woods during that blow.

Well, summer is definitely here. So Hot. And even the katydids and Cicadas are singing. I will try to get a recording of them again this week. Last weeks was very poor sound quality so I trashed it. I'll try.

Have a good weekend guys. I will try to keep up smaller posts, seems to be working.

We Have Eggs!

Well... err... we have an egg, but it's a beginning.

Being not sure how exactly old this egg was, I was a bit trepidatious about cracking it, but I did and it seemed fine so I fried it up to be used in one of our breakfasts tomorrow morning. A fried egg sandwich is always a great way to start the day.  We're not sure how old it is because we've not been on the look out for eggs yet. We were thinking it would be a few more months still.

I knew it was at least less than a week as I put the coop to rights after last Monday nights little tornado. Oh, I think I forgot to mention that in the last post. We had a tornado. It really was a little one, I promise. An EF-0 to be precise on how small. But a tornado none the less and I'm wondering if that's why I'm not sleeping so hot. Besides it's freaking hot for this thick blooded Alaskan. Nerves, though I know logic says we're safe for a few years now. They're kind of like lightening. And for heavens sake, for a state that rarely has them, we've had four now I think, all nearby.

We're safe, fur and feather kids are safe, what little mess we had is cleaned up and put back together so it's all fine, but still... I would take an earthquake any day, let me tell you. Saturday we had a thunderstorm coming through and one of the peels of thunder was so loud and long it caused things to shake, and I was almost as bead as Tucker, wanting to run for the basement. But as soon s it faded and I realized it was just thunder, I was fine. As it was I was probably lucky to wake up at all with our little earthquake. What got my attention out of sleep was the doozy of a thunderstorm. The lightening here is really impressive. When the hail started clacking on the A/C unit in the bedroom window it woke me up. Then I laid there for a bit watching the lightening and as I started to drift back off, the rain and hail just stopped. And I head the wind coming. Thankfully, i had the sense to jump out of bed, grab some clothes on the way past the drawers and shout for the dogs to follow me downstairs. Just as I was snagging a phone and my wallet on the way we heard things start banging around on the porch. We camped down there for a bit. I checked the phone to see the warning had passed and we went back to bed. Okay, I slept what little I could on the futon. Just because. I'm like that.

Despite everything going on, I have done a minute amount of spinning for this years Tour de'Fleece. Not much, but I got this lovely Falkland gradient done. I love it.

And just because I'm a boy and I like bugs, I have to have this picture. Who doesn't like cook looking beetles on the thistles. Makes me feel like i'm in Ireland.

Anyway, that's the first of my hopefully more frequent shorter posts. I'm going to try to build a habit here guys. Now off to do what this little one is doing. Have a great night everybody.

PS: Sarah, Thank you thank you thank you. As I was trying to sound calm and logical I didn't think I could say it how you did, but it's what I really wanted to say. But then I like the V word...