Month: June 2017

 

https://youtu.be/IlcbeuF0ylo

Look at this crap:A turtle delicacy platter that Harold won’t eat (just the meal worms in the blue scoop), kitty kibble garnished with taco meat and pork chop, cut into bite size pieces for tiny kitty mouths I might add, and milk of course. Plus there is the black oil sunflower seed to be put out for the squirrels and the birds, and thistle seed for the finches, and nectar for the hummingbirds, and banana and a peach for the turtles, and the water bowl and “pond” to flush and fill… I have been feeding or caring for somebody since 7:30 this morning, and cleaning the hummingbird feeders, and Harold’s plate, and planting for Lisa in a pot she decorated that I sprayed with sealer yesterday. Pretty, huh?

A turtle that was sneaking down the back wall when I first went out on the patio this morning ate some banana from one of the red plates in the feeding area, but I was busy with cats and didn’t see him. Everybody came in for breakfast this morning, even Stripey Cat, so I am making headway. A couple of the kittens even poked around inside for a bit, including Jackson, Tiny Terry, Pretty Face and Little Tiger. Definitely progress. It will be a whole lot easier to sneak around the house and shut the patio door than to catch them all in that pet carrier at the same time. Once the patio door is shut the fun will begin! You will note that the paper plate and the milk bowl are both magically moving further and further inside. Stripey Cat is looking at the threatening ceiling fan. She got over it.

I am waiting for our favorite boy to poo and get out of the tub so I can get in. Last time I checked he was standing behind the shower curtain facing the rear of the tub stiff-legged, with his head straight up in the air, staring me in my eye.

“Go. Away.”

He has been in there for at least three hours. Some days he does love his spa treatments. Mood lighting. Incense. A nice cleansing, inside and out so-to-speak, and then rubbed down with “sweet smelling oils.” No wonder he won’t go out the open patio door. Now, if the “handmaidens” would just appear… It just started to rain, and they like that, so there is a possibility. Hear that, Harold?! You had best take care of business! I need to get in the shower so I can go get my scraggly self trimmed.

Okay. He’s out, so it’s my turn. You will note he is giving me a haughty look and refusing to eat his din-din as projected.

I hope to be back later to post some pics from an excursion to Loon Pit Sean and I took yesterday evening. My favorite time on the water is at sunset, and just after in the twilight. It was peaceful, calming and fun. Yes. We were playing music.

A Tull tune to hold you over. Listen carefully to the words. It is not what you think.

Accompaniment first as usual…>>>

though it may have distracted you just a bit. That’s okay. Us too. Harold and I have been threatening to play the album for days. For some reason Lisa does not appreciate it as much as Harold and I. Anyway, listen and read, if you would be so kind? I texted her earlier, and this is how we got here:

I am somewhat at peace with myself and who I am today. Have been listening to the birds and the crashing in the bushes and branches and the squirrels barking at the cats and… Some birds out there I haven’t been able to spot are making the oddest babbling noises, making conversation in a language I don’t understand. It must be time to really play The Secret Language of Birds. Finally. I wish you could hear them. They sound like cockatiels or small conures.

And so Harold and I are listening quietly to this wonderful live performance we have not heard before. We must not drown out the source of the inspiration: The Birds.  Atypically we will keep the sound level at 20. It’s usually at 30, 40, 50…

We had been arguing about who would use the tub first, but he is here:

And I can’t reach him. He knows that very well, so the discussion is at an end and I will go first. His Majesty prevails in mortal combat once more.

Need more coffee!

Uh oh. The pot is empty. I suppose a Newcastle Brown will have to do. Hope to be back later.

Harold has pretty much kicked back for the day. Yesterday was bath day, so if he wanted hydration today he could jump in his “hot tub.” He spent most of his day watching squirrels, birds, lawn care guys, (I love the free-standing condo!) and kittens. BUT he says>>>

We’ll see how that goes. (He’ll be down by dark.) Though occasionally he does stay up well past dusk. If the raccoons are busy he’ll stick around.

Do you like the red lights? They see well in the dark. I do not. But now with these I do, unlike most humans, so we are on equal footing and get along very well. These are some of our friends, though the bitch down the street went to the HOA and I can’t hand feed them anymore. Aren’t the babies cute? One of them is Sweety, and she used to sit between my feet while she ate her piece of whole wheat bread so the other raccoons wouldn’t take it, and she’d reach in the webbing of my sandles and play with my toes… She always wanted to climb my leg and sit in my lap. I’d tell her “No no Sweety! We mustn’t get too intimate!” We were both comfortable with that relationship. Unfortunately these aggressive ‘coons were evidently harassing “someone.” The last time I fed her a piece of bread I told her she couldn’t come in anymore, and closed the screen in her face. She climbed the screen to my eye level and looked straight into them wanting to know, “Why can’t I come in with you?”

“Because the lady down the street doesn’t like you, doesn’t understand you,  or your kind. Sweety. I’m sorry.”

Okay then. Nasty Lady. Raccoons on the rampage! Want to see what happens if I jump out in the middle of this pack of aggressive beasts and yell “BOO!” and shoot them with the flash? This:

Ferocious beasts. And regarding ferocious beasts…

I am making tangible progress in taming the kittens, and even Stripey Cat!

Breakfast:

Dinner:

We’re getting there. Hopefully can soon get them corralled in Harold’s Room and into that carrier so I can get them to the Humane Society. Supposedly I need an appointment. Last time I called best I could do was a week out. ??? Eight feral cats loose in our sunroom for a week? Wish us luck, and pray Harold survives seven kittens!

My son and best friend Sean.

Not much shade here.

Clark’s best friend Fred.

Some ugly old shit in a canoe he loved.

Oh my. The ugly old shit has a flask.

Yes, that is a catamaran sailboat on Loon Pit. Clark wants one because it looks like less work, but he’s too damned cheap to buy one.

But you can see why he would like to have one.

He does like to fish.

Lisa did better. Does she look surprised?

Now, does she look pleased?

And the next sequence is just the joy of being in a canoe on a nice lake with inlets and islands and gravel bars and birds and animals and…

 

This sequence is of three mink cavorting on the shore by Clark, and in the water five feet away from me.

And it’s supper time!

My middle son Ian and I went to Loon Pit yesterday. It was the first time just the two of us have paddled together, and we took Lisa’s Saranac 146 tandem canoe. It’s a neat little fourteen foot-six inch family knock around boat. It has bucket seats front and back, and a center bench for a third passenger with a storage box and a dry safe in it. She’s not fast, but quick enough with two paddling, turns and handles well, and stable as all get out. It’s just a great little boat to just fart around in, fish out of,  and whatever else you might care to do I reckon. They are relatively, inexpensive and very tough. The only drawback of the poly boats is the weight. She comes it at seventy-nine pounds dry weight. It takes two people to load and unload her, but given the price, durability and overall performance/stability for a boat that length that is thirty-six inches wide, it is well worth the effort and we’re glad we bought her. Now if Lisa’s hip replacement will just heal…

Loon pit is in Blue Grass Fish & Wildlife Area, which is old strip mine property. It is in the process of being rehabbed, and the larger lakes are very popular with fishermen, kayakers and paddle board enthusiasts.If you can read it, that should pretty much cover everything I know about Blue Grass. The only problem is that it is still in early recovery, so there are no large trees around the lake. That’s great if you’re a sun worshipper and want to paddle your board in your bikini or man thong, but for fishermen and casual paddlers in self-propelled craft like kayaks and canoes it can get a bit bright and hot out there. The best times for us are dawn to 10:00 AM, and around 4:00 PM to dark. And of course a paddle on a wide open lake like Loon under a full moon is just absolutely splendid. I have to run off for a bit now, but I’ll add some pictures from previous trips to Loon Pit when I get back so you can get an idea…

Man. This would be a great evening to spend at a Dave Matthews concert. It is beautiful out there. Unfortunately, Dave isn’t playing anywhere around here tonight, and my belly hurts anyway. Thank God for technology. Let’s just invite Dave and the band over.

Harold is a big DMB fan. He is diggin’ it. His favorite album is Live in Central Park, but he really likes Big Whiskey and the Groogrux King, too.

Two of my sons, Sean and Ian, and my good friend Clark, took me to paddle at Hovey Lake for Fathers’ Day. It is a beautiful place. Last I heard it’s still the northernmost stand of cypress trees known in the US.I hadn’t been there in forty years. We had a great time. There’s just something about paddling around amongst the trees.And it’s shady and cool on a hot summer day. We were paddling and joking and laughing and listening to my little JBL Charge 3 waterproof speaker system having a grand time. (Sean helped me verify that the first one I had was indeed waterproof by dumping me out of my old Mohawk into Loon Pit last summer and sinking my boat. The JBL kept right on playing.) The boys and I were in canoes: I in the sixteen foot purple Columba solo that Benjamin at Nighthawk Canoes was kind enough to loan me until he gets my new Cygnus finished, Sean in his fourteen foot Mohawk Jensen solo like the one I used to have until recently,  which I bought for him when he was around six or seven, Ian in Clark’s little thirteen foot white boat he gave to Sean because he wanted something more stable, and Clark was perched on top of his highly modified blue sit-on-top kayak. Clark likes to be comfortable these days, and he likes to tinker. He really comes up with some good ideas.Clark was telling Ian how stable his kayak is, and how far he can lean in it without it capsizing. Drum-roll and accompaniment, please!

A gust of wind caught him broadside just as he demonstrated.He will never hear the end of it. We were out in the middle of the lake with no place for him to get out and get back on, so we helped stabilize his boat so he could crawl back up on it. We all shouted at him, “Makin’ memories, Clark! Makin’ memories!” The rest of the day went flawlessly, aside from the fact we found out Hovey is now home to the infamous Asian Flying Carp. They are a lot of fun to watch, but they can take your head right off. They are big fish. Fortunately we didn’t stir them up with our boats, but as we were headed back to the ramp we watched a pontoon boat headed in, and they were everywhere. They literally jumped over a fairly large craft. You’ve probably seen videos. At any rate, with them in there the fishing at Hovey has certainly declined. None of us had a strike all day. We didn’t really care. Mostly, we just like to goof off and paddle. And it is a beautiful place.Some days life doesn’t suck.

https://youtu.be/6OCQjG3hzKw

Stripey Cat and the kittens are very, very happy the rain finally stopped. Now they can eat out in the open where there’s more room and they are more comfortable. It is supposed to be a beautiful day, and they are taking play breaks during breakfast as you can see. They are getting more and more used to me running in and out the door, which I am doing on purpose to try to get them accustomed to it in the hopes that I’ll be able to corral them in the extra large cat carrier I bought for that purpose and get them to The Humane Society. Lisa, Harold and I would really love to keep them, but having seven wild cats in the house doesn’t sound like it would fit very well with our current lifestyle. Harold can pretty much take care of himself when we’re not here, but the cats would be an entirely different matter. It’s coffee refill time! I also need to go get a bag of black oil sunflower seed out of the garage. The storage can on the patio is empty. Back in a bit I reckon.

It is Friday night. The sun has departed. Stripey Cat and the kittens are gathering. The raccoons have come in for supper. Harold has gone to his hut. Lisa is tired. It is time for

https://youtu.be/hXxITFYetcE

https://youtu.be/AfuQPnJ33ZI

Yup. Nice, slow, quiet rain. Dark. Moody. I “modified” the patio for Stripey Cat and her feral brood so they can get in out of it.

They spent the night under the table, but are now out roaming the woods. I expect them back if it starts to rain harder.

I only put half of a banana out for the turtles this morning. A nice gentleman ate one half yesterday morning, so I replaced it and was half a banana short today. Unfortunately a young lady showed up and was looking at the wrong plate. She then became fascinated with the stick people.

I went out in the rain and broke the banana into two quarters while she watched me, but then as I headed back for the door she vamoosed into the brush. Some do, some don’t, and some, like the one I call The Watcher, take off as soon as they see me come out the door. We’re all different, yes we are. Even Turtles. Back in a bit. I need more coffee.

I’m back with my nice, hot cup of coffee. Harold is roaming this morning. He loves it when it rains because it brings the other turtles out. He does like to have occasional lady “visitors” and watches for them through the floor level windows. The back door is standing wide open as it frequently does when it is cool, but Harold is not interested in escaping. He has grown quite fond of his five star turtle resort. The sun room is his. The whole room. No terrarium. No tub. This is his domain and he goes where he pleases. He is a big music fan, and his taste is impeccable. He has ways of letting me know if he approves or disapproves of my selections. We frequently put one of the playlists or the entire computer library on shuffle and let Ruby decide what we hear. More on Ruby later. Harold and I have been working on a book off and on for the past two years, appropriately named Harold’s Room. He told me that if I started a page I would be more inclined to write, and he never gives me bad advice. Harold is a very clever fellow. Need more coffee. I am addicted to it.

Stripey Cat (yes, I know it’s a dumb name) is back with the kids.

It is much drier under there, especially if you’re lying on a nice ventilated chair seat.