Turtle Time

It's that time of year again - turtles crossing the roads.  And as usual around here, my first turtle is a Blandings Turtle.

I'm not sure if it's a boy or a girl because I didn't turn it over to check.  I'm not joking - the males have a concave underside.  But girl or boy, at this time of year it's almost certainly out looking for a mate, which makes it pretty frisky for an old turtle.  From the size and the faded shell, my guess is 50 to 60 years old.  That means the turtle and I are contemporaries.  If we'd had time to chat we could have compared growing up in the 1960's and being young adults during those weird disco-70's.  But I was pressed for time and just gave him a safe escourt across the road. 



Deer Friends

I never fed the deer before this year, but with a lack of apples and crab apples and God knows what else after our weird weather, I figured they needed some help.  I get a regular crowd of 9 does every morning, with a few others straggling through after them.  These three are my favorite - a mom and her twin babies - because I've watched the little ones since last last spring when they were tiny spotted fawns, all legs and curiosity.  They are far too used to humans, which worries me, but they're only copying mom, who is also used to living close to people.  The whole herd now recognizes my whistle for calling the horses in, and they come trotting across the neighboring hay field, knowing corn and sunflower seeds will be out soon.

Jets In Fur

OMG, she didn't really put a picture of a steaming pile of poop on her blog, did she?  Of course not!  That's day old poop.  How crude do you think I am?

I knew raccoons had been in my barn overnight because I saw all the dirt and grass they left in the cats' water dish.  Raccoons have a reputation for being clean; that's only because they dirty up every body of water they pass with their filthy, curious little paws.  I don't sound prejudiced toward raccoons, do I?  Just because they slaughter my chickens, poop all over my hay and rafters, and break into the horse and chicken feed.

One raccoon I can handle.  (Although my last Aricauna chicken couldn't.)  But there had to have been more, many more.  Here's your story problem for today - how many raccoons does it take to leave three random piles of poop in a 150 foot span between my house and barn?  I doubt they all got the urge to go at the same time.  So I'm thinking it takes a gang.  A knife-toting, swaggering gang.  Singing and dancing. 

"When you're a 'coon, you're a 'coon all the way, From your first Aricauna to your last dying day . . ."

Nope, not fond of raccoons.

The Rest of the Story

Did you notice the ruffled-looking patch of fur on the chest of the deer in the post below this one?  My neighbor did, which is how she recognized her.  She first noticed this deer two years ago in the herd that comes to eat in her back yard.  This is how she looked then:

That gory tear in her shoulder is where an arrow went in.  An equally gory hole on the other side of her chest is where it came out.  She walked with her head down, glancing fearfully into trees, wary of another hunter in a deer blind. 

My neighbor didn't expect the doe to make it through the winter, as her wound oozed and her skin hung in a raw flap.  The other deer tried to drive her away.  But by spring she was still there, beginning to heal.  Two years later, she roams our area with the same deer herd, often hanging a little apart with another doe when I see her.

Maybe she really does have some hard-to-kill terminator parts.  Or maybe just an indomitable will to live.

Deer?

When I walked by the front door, it looked like the local deer herd was breakfasting on my front lawn.

But it wasn't them.  It was . . .






            Alien terminator deer!

The Burn Pile

My ROCK should start a fan club.  This past week I've been asked if I have my rock out yet, by people I didn't even know read this blog.  What have I gotten into?

To dig out the rock, I need the trailer to put dirt in.  Which means I have to get rid of the moldy hay currently in the trailer.  Which means I need to throw the hay on the burn pile.  The burn pile is in the pasture, so to make sure the horses don't get into moldy hay, I have to burn the whole pile right away.  Easy, right?  Ha!  No.

If my husband did this job, he'd stuff some paper in between the dead sticks, throw the hay on top, and set it on fire.  Whoosh!  Twenty foot-high flames.  A bit outside the fire code, but who around here really cares?  No one. 

Except me.  That burn pile - two of them actually - have been sitting there for a year, drying out.  The perfect shelter for bunnies, mice, skunks, and ground hogs.  No way am I going to have toasted bunnies on my conscience.  So I laboriously move every limb and tangled vine to a new pile, burning them as I go - a nice, responsibly small fire.  (Yes, a girly fire.  Girls are responsible; suck it, guys.)  Going through both piles takes a good hour and a half, not counting forty-five minutes in the middle to recover from heat stroke.

And how many bunnies did I find?  None.  But I did uncover one large garter snake that slithered farther into the pile before I could whip my camera out.  To help you play Where's Waldo, I cropped out most of the burn pile.  If you look closely you can see her yellow striped black body weaving through the brush.

So I sweated in the August heat for 90 minutes to save a snake.  Was it worth it?  Heck, yeah.  (Hello, do you know me?)  And now my trailer is free so I can start digging out that rock.

Beginnings and Endings

I finally wrote The End on the second book in my Barringer's Pass, CO series!  (Wait, that calls for a few more !!!!!!!  There.)  I wrote it figuratively, anyway; they really don't want the words on the manuscript, but after 370 pages I have to have some reward.  I write it, then delete.

I'd show you a picture, but it would be a photograph of my computer screen showing a 790 KB Word file.  Yawn.  So I have two photos of other beginnings and endings I found this week.

These cute little buggers are baby barn swallows, on their mud-built nest that hangs on the rafters of my barn.  The nest was built last year, so I figure the parents are either lazy or smart, skipping the tedious step of patching together straw and mud.

I took this picture Monday as the babies crouched just beneath the metal roof, scarfing down bugs from Mom and Dad and thinking about flying.  I strung a rope beneath the nest so they won't flutter down to the barn floor - cat territory.  Tuesday they were gone and the parents were dive-bombing the barn cats, so the kids were obviously nearby.  They returned that night.

This is, unfortunately, an ending.  It's a luna moth, about 4 inches across, the first one I've ever found even though they're considered common.  He was just inside the horses' run-in this morning, able to feebly move his legs, but nothing more.  You know I had to Google him, so here's the relevant fact: lunas only live about a week.  They have no mouth.  Their only purpose at this stage is to mate, lay eggs, and die.  I assume this guy wore himself out romancing the lady lunas and has laid down to die.  It was about to be a horrible death by horse hoof, so I moved him to the side.  RIP.

Life in The Trench

For several weeks now my husband has been working on a project to fix the drainage problems with our sump pump line.  It was backed up and gushing water along the foundation of the house.  The assumed culprit is tree roots, since the first owner of the house planted a row of maple trees DIRECTLY ON TOP OF THE LINE.  If he still lived here he could be cursing himself out right now.  But don't worry, guy, we're doing it for you!

The easiest fix is to re-route around the trees.  My do-it-yourselfer husband began by renting a trencher, then laborously adding a slope to the line by hand with a post hole digger.  Since he can only work on it during weekends, it's become a lengthy project.  And an obsessive one.  All other chores must wait until The Trench Project is complete.  There were unforeseen problems and obstacles, and completing The Trench has been like withdrawing from Afghanistan, with reported progress that's hard to believe because the thing is still there.

The latest news flash from The Trench is that MUCH progess has been made and the end is in sight.  (If that sounds familiar it's because you've heard it from the White House for the past ten years.  I'm trying not to dwell on that ten year part.)  But water is beginning to drain downhill toward the pasture - our version of victory.  Everyone will soon be happy, except, of course, for residents of The Trench.  The thing has been there so long that frogs have moved in.

You know what this means, don't you?  Now I have to be concerned that all these little lives are safely removed before The Trench is filled in.  I can see it now - refilling will be a slow, careful job with me adding shovelfuls of dirt, making sure the frogs jump out of the way, as my husband walks away shaking his head.

Sixty and Pregnant

Not me!  This lady:

According to the Almightly Internet, she's a Blanding's turtle, about 55-60 years old judging by size.  She might live another ten years or more.  The odds are good as long as she stays away from roads. 

I met her a couple years ago, but posted it now because this is the time of year she came through my yard.  It's also the time of year we commonly have to stop to move turtles out of the road around here.  (Unless they're snapping turtles, in which case I just wish them luck.  Not going near those suckers.)  Turtles in the road are so common in June that I had to research this one.  As suspected, they are most likely females, on their way from one pond to another to lay their eggs.  (Mixing the DNA to avoid inbreeding - nature's smart that way.)  This particular turtle has probably been doing it since she was between 14-20 years old, taking a quarter mile hike to the closest pond to lay her eggs.  No small trip on turtle legs. 

Every year!  A quarter mile each way!  What do you want to bet she's cursing the male turtle who knocked her up every inch of the way?

Spring Peepers

If you're a frog, this is prime real estate, baby.  Stagnant water, rotting vegetation - the perfect place to dine on bugs, romance a few hundred of your fellow frogs, and raise your tadpoles.

Flooded lowlands are common around here; this one is just down the road, a couple of acres of marshy wetland.  Home sweet home for spring peepers.  Forget daffodils and crocuses.  This nighttime chorus is the true sign that spring is here. 

Blogger makes it difficult to embed an audio file, so just play the video and turn on your speakers.

Spring Pond

The land is a bit hilly around here, crossed by streams and dotted with ponds.  The natural run off crosses our front pasture.  In the summer when the ground is hot and dry, that low area is still moist and green.  In the spring when the ground is saturated with rain, water gushes through the culvert under our driveway and spills into the pasture, and the moist low land becomes a pond.

Two days ago it poured, and our spring pond is back.  A couple of mallard ducks decided it looked like a good place to settle down, maybe raise a dozen kids.  They were out there all day, swimming and checking out their new digs.  Good neighborhood, tasty weeds, lots of room for kids to play.  If they decide sharing the pasture with three horses isn't a problem, they may stay.

Spring!

And my header finally reflects it!  If I see another snow flake, it had better be October.

Good news on the writing front - THIEVES LIKE US is a finalist in the Award of Excellence contest for best contemporary romance novel of 2010.  Just being nominated is an honor - you can quote me.

I took a walk after a wild downpour today and found this broken egg shell on the lawn, blown from a nest:

It seems like the robins just got here a couple weeks ago, but they've already hatched the first babies.  It's officially spring.

Someone Doesn't Like to Share...

This is part of the local deer herd, nibbling on feed put out by our neighbor.  One doe is a little bitchy about sharing, and a few of the others don't seem to mind giving her a hard time about it.

A Deer of a Different Color

In my current WIP (work in progress), the heroine is most comfortable in business suits.  Naturally, the hero is strictly cowboy boots and jeans.  Without telling you anything about them, you have an idea of their personalities, because the outside reflects the inside.

Sometimes.  And other times it's just a crazy mistake!  This deer is part of a herd that visits my neighbor's yard daily.  She snapped the picture on her phone.

I looked it up - the coloring is called piebald, the same term used for horses.  They're just as rare as you'd think.  She's pretty well camoflaged now, but I'm worried about when the snow is gone.

Turkeys

If I hadn't stopped working on my new book today to answer the phone, I never would have been looking out the window and would have missed this group of turkeys crossing my pasture.  It was eight hens, all walking in a row.  I grabbed the camera and raced outside, through the barn, and stepped quietly out the back barn door.  I got there in time to see the leader stop, let the others bunch up while she consulted Mapquest, then lead them in a U-turn into the tree line, back the way they'd come.  I don't see them often - they seem to prefer heavy brush and trees to open pasture.  Someone should tell them that a week before Thanksgiving isn't the time to take a stroll out in the open.

This is the lady in charge, looking back to see what's taking the others so long to cross the pasture:

These are her friends, milling aimlessly while the leader re-thinks her decision to head across another field.

Romance...of a Sort

I recently finished writing a romance novel, the first in a two-book contract.  I've just started writing the second romance novel in that series.  And in between I've been reading.  Yes, romance novels.  So I'll admit it's on my brain a lot.  But I'm not the only one.

Yesterday I spotted a big doe in our side yard between the barn and the house.  Does and fawns walk through there all year long, cutting between one field and the next, so it wasn't unusal to see a deer there.  But this one was alone, and didn't seem interested in nibbling the grass or checking out the apple trees.  She stood still as if listening, very alert.  Then she trotted quickly toward the house and cut into the field next door.  She wasn't gone fifteen seconds when I looked up and saw another deer standing exactly where she had been.  This one was a buck.  Despite all the deer around, we rarely see bucks except for brief sightings in the fall.  And never near the house.  Although I'm not sure he really cared where he was; that wasn't what he had on his mind.  He stood as still as she had, sniffed the air, then started forward at a slow trot, looking around as he did and showing off his perfect, if modest, three point antlers.  As he neared the field where the doe had gone he must have spotted her because he suddenly broke into a run and was gone.

Obviously, the doe knew he was following her.  And although she was coyly leading him on, she wasn't trying to get away.  I wouldn't even call it playing hard to get.  Just making him work for it a little.  It's not like the heroines I write about, but it's still the same game.  Romance.

Babysitting

These two were on my front lawn - again - for several hours yesterday, with  no sign of mom.  Apparently I am still babysitting while their mother is off cavorting with some handsome buck.

Parenting by Luck and Darwin

I'm a mom.  I know that sometimes you can't turn your back on kids, not if you want them to survive.  There are just too many bad things that can happen.  That's what I think about every time I see something like this:

These twin fawns showed up on the front lawn at dusk (hence the poor quality photo).  They're pretty young for this late in the year - still covered with white spots.  I never saw their mother.  Did she say, "Go hang out under the crab tree until I get back?"  Or did they sneak off while she wasn't looking?  Are they two of those suspicious kids with a can of spray paint behind their backs, or are they the responsible kind who wave goodbye to mom, lock the door, and settle back with a good algebra book?  Is it just luck that fifteen minutes later they wandered off into the trees without having been spotted by a coyote?

The same with that mother turkey I accidentally scared out of a tree in my back yard.  She left five or six baby turkeys scrambling around and finally flying off in different directions until the family was spread out over several acres.  Do they have an unerring way of finding each other again?  Or is it natural selection, culling out the ones who are too stupid to live?  I like to think it's the former.  But nature can be heartless, and bad things happen.  Keep an eye on those kids, damn it!

They don't ring the doorbell...yet

This half-grown fawn was with its mother, who was just to the left of the picture, munching on crab apples.  The dog thinks these visits are SO EXCITING!  She barks at them from her fenced yard, while they stand fifteen feet away, trying not to choke on crabapples while they laugh hysterically.