Sometimes it hits you who your true supporters are. Tonight I know.
Gratuitous image of a circle around the sun.
Tonight, as often is the case, the large dogs have been barking. Occasionally, Penney goes out and frantically barks then runs back in. After a couple of hours, I started to wonder what the fuss was all about. I mean, I’ve seen marks from armadillos, skunks, and coyotes near the fenced-in area. I also know the dogs don’t like the owls to come too close.
I looked for “skunk” in the free photos on WordPress. There were three images of this mammal and over 20 photos of marijuana. Hmm.
I was right. When I went out I heard the coyotes in the distance. They’re often closer, so I wasn’t concerned. But someone else was. My great protector.
Not me. I’m sleeping with you.
I looked up and a large, white blur was barreling toward me. It was Alfred. When he got to where I was on the back porch, he placed himself in front of me, between me and the perceived coyote threat. He gently started pushing me backwards. I just hugged his fluffy, matted mass and told him what a good dog he is. I tried hard not to start crying.
The big guy. He’s brave about everything but grooming.
The urge to protect is strong in these guardian breeds! I’ve probably mentioned before that he always places himself between me and men he doesn’t know, like delivery drivers and such. He is indeed my great protector. I admit it makes me feel good to have this devoted companion on my side.
My loyal friend and supporter.
(FYI: once he knows someone, he doesn’t even bark except to say hi. I never know when good friends, my son, my brother-in-law, the pool guy, or the house cleaner are here, because he doesn’t bark.)
Today was our day of rest, so there was no big excitement in Arizona other than a pleasant walk around Bell Rock, where I got to see and hear the beautiful desert-dwelling Scott’s Oriole. So, I’ll finally write about the most recent book I’ve read, Prodigal Summer, by Barbara Kingsolver (2000).
Nice spot for a morning walk – only minutes from our condo
The reason I read this book was that Jay, one of my old online/IRL friends noticed what genre of books I’d been reading and felt strongly that if I hadn’t read it, I should. So she ordered me a copy and had it mailed to me.
I think this copy has been resold many times, judging from its stickers and velvety-soft pages.
I particularly enjoyed reading this pre-loved copy, because I felt like I wasn’t alone reading it. Some college or high-school student must have been writing a book report themselves, because there are many notations and bits of “analysis” written on the pages. It was fun to see what they were getting out of the prodigal summer.
Ah yes, that sums it up, my friend.
As for my analysis, of course I enjoyed Kingsolver’s writing – she’s as great as everyone says she is – I just hadn’t gotten around to reading anything by her yet. And as my reading buddy noted, her characters are just great. I like them as much as I like Maeve Binchy, the Irish novelist. Each one of them is fully developed, and I especially like that they grow and change and admit their mistakes. I like a realistic protagonist instead of an all-knowing one.
One reason Jay wanted me to read the book is that one of the lead characters is a naturalist who likes to be by herself with nature. Who does that sound like? This woman is very protective of a family of coyotes in the mountains in Eastern US, where she lives, since they had been pretty much extirpated in modern times. When I saw my healthy suburban coyote yesterday, I recalled this book, and had to smile knowing how well coyotes are doing in Texas and Arizona today. What an adaptive animal!
I love my golf course
However, my favorite character is an older gentleman who is really fond of his traditional farming methods as he tries to resurrect the American chestnut tree. He gets himself all worked up about tree-huggers who don’t mow or use pesticides, and is particularly suspicious of Unitarian women from the next down over. I enjoyed his internal monologues so much I kept reading them aloud to Lee.
Writing in the copy of book I read aand a tiny sample of the thought process of Garnett, my favorite character.
Prodigal Summer is worth reading just for this one character’s story, but hey, there are other main characters to enjoy, including a woman who takes over a farm and does a lot of canning while experiencing personal growth.Of course there’s an old hippie woman, as well. And you get the bonus of learning a lot about Appalachian plants and animals along with the humans.
I’m really glad I had the chance to read this book, though I must be getting old or embracing my inner Ace, because I could have done with less extra graphic sex. Still, I might even have to read it again, just to enjoy the old dude. Thanks, Jay!
Life is hard on the animals around Walker’s Creek these days. And life is hard on humans everywhere these days. After dealing with the animals and watching the Parade of Dead People (the national television news) this evening, I lapsed into an anxiety attack. I have just about had enough of death and sadness.
Sunrise, sunset, yadda yarda
Those of you who are my Facebook friends know that early this morning there was a very big boom, which scared Penney half to death. The power proceeded to go out, but I tried to keep working until my phone hotspot gave up the ghost. We discovered my son’s power was also out, and Mandi’s, but not Sara’s. So it was local.
A good day to sit outside, which we did
It wasn’t too long until it came back on. Then, one of the nice people from the electric co-op came over to check on us. He said a squirrel caused the issue, across the road. I didn’t think much of it, because well, squirrels are always doing that form of suicide by transformer.
I spent much of the rest of the afternoon trying to resurrect my router, which was also killed by the squirrel. It is SO frustrating trying to get online customer service…but I did it and got a repair scheduled. Go Suna!
Once again, I went outside to breathe. The woods is my friend, long as I’m careful.
I was already a bit nerved out by all this, when I went out to get some fresh air and eggs. That’s when I noticed the vultures had found Neighbor Coyote. I’m not sure if I’m thrilled that it is lying in state where I can see it.
We’re the janitors
I went into the chicken house only to find the rat snake lounging across the chicken nests. Oddly enough, though, I got five eggs today (including one from Not Dead Betty!), so that can’t be what’s keeping the snake so thick and shiny…I think it’s eating the mice. If that’s the case, we’re still buddies. That is the biggest rat snake I ever saw, though. I could really see how thick it was today (no phone for evidence).
The circle of life is still chugging along for the rat snake, and it is with the horses, too, even though Apache and Mabel weren’t really interested in the farrier visit today. Eventually Apache came in with me, but I had to take a bucket of food out and rattle it to rouse Mabel. Of course, she was the one who needed to be trimmed the most. Her hooves are cracking and it’s hard to trim them, because they aren’t growing too much. On the other hand, Apache’s heels are growing like crazy from the grass, even though I’m rationing him. That’s stressing me out, too.
Mabel had her eye on those vultures
The thing that got me in the big downward spiral was finding out that it wasn’t just any squirrel that killed the power; it was the neighbors’ pet squirrel, Sandy. They’d been feeding and taming her for three years! These folks really love their animals, too. That sounds almost as bad as when I lost Stella and Brody and could do nothing to help them.
I have a sinking feeling this squirrel that visited last week was Sandy. Sniff.
So, Sandy and her friends across the road are also in my thoughts.
I do wish I hadn’t come home from buying horse food to try to relax, only to have Lee watching the news. Young man killed by cops. Multiple people killed by some messed up person. That’s in the US. Then war and more war and starvation. I try so hard to have a good perspective on the balance of good and bad in the world, but it’s just one of those periods where my balance is off.
Penney says she will cheer me up
It doesn’t help that I keep falling down. I’m either having a clumsy period or still getting used to my new glasses prescription. Nonetheless, it’s annoying. No, I don’t think I’m sick, have MS, or have Parkinson’s. I did JUST have a checkup!
Warning: If the circle of life doesn’t go over well with you, skip this one.
I’m sort of sensitive, as you may have figured out, and while I have a realistic view of life and death, I’m still vulnerable to caring about the life around me.
So much life around here.
So, last Thursday, when I went to get in my car to go to my Master Naturalist meeting, I heard strange noises in the garage. I wondered what the heck my little dachshund mix, Vlassic, could be doing back in the tool area. I called out to him, and heard “grr” in response.
What’s back there?
I carefully approached the work area, where some things had been pushed close together to make it easier for my brother-in-law to get around with his walker. Lo and behold, something was wedged in the space between the work bench and the shed. It was not Vlassic.
In there?
It was big and gray. Was it a hog? A cattle dog? A coyote? Yes, it was a coyote. A very sad and scared coyote. I obviously could not help it. It was in pain and could hurt me. So, I ran in and told Lee. He said to go to my meeting and he’d help it get out.
He did that, and saw that it was badly injured, but no one could catch it (a wild animal) to take it anywhere for rehab. We were pretty sad about the poor thing. I admit that I cried.
The guys saw it go into the pond a couple of times, then run off after Alfred OPENED THE GATE and confronted it. Yes, Alfred can open the gate, he just chooses not to. What a great guard dog.
So, all weekend we’ve been wondering about the coyote. This morning I saw about twenty turkey vultures gathered in the pasture by the road next to the house. Was it the coyote?
Buzzard Central.
No, it was a young possum that had gotten hit by a car. I probably over-reacted, but I was sad, because I am pretty sure I saw it combing home Thursday night, snacking away on the side of the road. I’m fond of possums.
Sent good thoughts to this guy, too. One of the weird things I do it say a little “prayer” or affirmation every time I see an animal that was hit by a car. They deserve good thoughts.
Then, this afternoon, I got one of those weird feelings like I should go out behind the house and check for things. I found a beautiful milkweed plant. I kept walking, because I saw a weird “root” in the pond. I’d never seen it before, and I pretty much know what trees are in there, even after the winter storms.
A home for monarchs! Antelope horns!
Sigh, it was the coyote. What drove it into the pond? I don’t know. But it turns out it must have been run over by a car. The poor dear must have been trying to end its pain.
The pond brings peace in many ways, even to animals in pain.
Lee and I are both relieved that our coyote neighbor is out of its pain, because we sure felt bad that were were unable to help it or put it out of its pain. Circle of Life. Ugh.
Life’s a mystery, full of joy and sadness.
Living our in the country exposes you to to the beauty and the struggles in nature. All you can do is observe and do your best. I gave our coyote neighbor a flower and said what passes for a prayer for it.
I threw it a flower.
I’m glad I found it, because it could have messed up the pond by decaying in there. Now it is out (I didn’t do it) and it can feed other beings and the circle life will continue.
You never know what’s next.
It’s actually been an okay weekend, other than pondering life and death. I just had to write this out, because I need to stop processing and get some closure. Sharing the story helps the coyote live on in my memory and the memory of others. That makes it immortal!
I promised to write up notes from the sessions I took at the 2022 Annual Meeting of Texas Master Naturalist, but there was a lot of stuff going on the last couple of days. Now I have a moment! First, I will say that this was the best conference I attended so far in terms of the quality of the sessions I attended. They were chock-full of interesting tidbits. It also helped that the Omni Houston has comfortable chairs. I wasn’t squirming the whole time, except in the one session where I had to sit on the floor. Anyway, here are some notes!
The main meeting room with interesting centerpieces made out of books
Becoming a Land Doctor: Evaluating Land Health, by Megan Clayton
The speaker here had also spoken at the Bennett Trust conference, so it was good to hear her information again. She talked about how to tell if your land was over-grazed, whether it had lost its topsoil, etc. It takes thousands of years to rebuild topsoil if it’s removed.
Grass is your friend if you want healthy land! But you need to let it grow back before grazing again. The ideal would be to imitate bison, who showed up, ate, pooped, and trampled once a year, then moved on.
I found out the speaker does these fun webinars that I will try to attend
Fire and Goats: Vegetation Management Using Traditional Techniques in a Novel Setting, by Stephen Benigno
This one was a lot of fun. The speaker is from the Houston Arboretum, and he shared how they used a flock of goats from “Rent a Ruminant” — what a great name. The goats really took care of the underbrush. They just took a week and we’re great at gnawing down dewberries.
This gave me many ideas, so I had questions about fencing and such. Having just a few goats and rotating them sounds good!
He also talked about doing a controlled burn at the arboretum. That required lots of permission and publicity to keep people calm about the smoke. It worked out well but didn’t quite burn as much of the meadow as they wanted. All learning experiences in an urban woods and prairie!
No photos from this session, so here’s a beautiful Polyphemous moth that was on a window at the hotel.
Birding with Today’s Technology: Utilizing eBird, Merlin, and Other Online Resources, by Kelsey Biles
I took this one to learn more about eBird. It was worth it just to learn about how you can ID birds just by sound using it. So, if you don’t know, this is software that lets you identify birds and save your sightings online, all going to science. You don’t need photos, and it’s easier for folks who aren’t great with online image stuff. Many people I know contribute to it daily by just watching their feeders.
One of the resources I learned about
There was a lot to learn, though, so I was glad to be there. Plus the speaker had a very cute bird skirt on.
Conservation of the Night, by Cindy Luongo-Cassidy of the Dark Sky Network
This was the lunch speaker. She got us all fired up about eliminating light pollution and keeping the dark sky available for people, animals, and plant life. We all need it. I learned how to modify light fixtures to direct light downward rather than outward from simple things you might have on your property.
I feel pretty good about our place. We have a couple of rogue lights, but most of them stay off unless needed, which is a good practice. I don’t want to confuse moths and migrating birds, after all!
Speaking of the dark, we sure enjoyed the darkness of the whiskey bar at the hotel later in the evening.
Feral Hog Biology and Impacts: What We Know and What We Hope to Learn, by Mikayla Killam
This one was pretty depressing to me. It sure is hard to get rid of feral hogs. I did learn a few trapping techniques that aim to get as many hogs as possible into traps, like using funnel feeders and trip wires at the furthest end of the traps.
Of course, hogs are very smart and figure many kinds of traps out, as we know. The speaker recommended that the best way to remove the greatest numbers of these invasive animals all at once is to hire professionals in helicopters to get as many as possible, and to go in with as many neighbors as possible, since hogs don’t know land boundaries. Once that is all done, you can then more easily pick off individuals by trapping or shooting.
I discovered this lovely nest for the hotel’s black swan pair. Cygnet making is preferable to piglet making.
I learned that if you just get some of them, they go into piglet-making overdrive to get their numbers up. There’s a scientific word for it that I forgot.
Living in Harmony with America’s Song Dog, by Karin and Roberto Saucedo
My last educational session for the day was very popular. The presenters are a couple who really love coyotes and have studied them extensively in urban environments. I had to sit on the floor for this one, but it was kinda fun.
We learned how the coyotes interact with human habitation, which is often caused by houses being built around their traditional territories. We saw how they helped some of the coyotes get over mange by putting out medication for them. They knew not to get too friendly with them and showed a sad video they made about a coyote that people kept feeding even when asked not to (and even when they knew game cams were set up that would catch them). Sure enough, being tame was its downfall.
A lot of the coyote stories were sad. But an interesting thing I was reminded of in this talk was that in parts of Texas there is a lot of red wolf blood in them, which makes them a bit larger. I think that is true here, as ours are often quite large and healthy (I don’t see ones with mange out here, but they also are wilder and avoid people and our dogs).
Keynote: Kjell Lindgren, Astronaut
The last talk of the day was the dinner speaker. It started out with some Texas Parks and Wildlife or AgriLife official talking about how cool it was that a Master Naturalist spent time on the space station recently. They showed some photos and a nice message he’d recorded for us about how being a Master Naturalist had helped him in his work. We were all happy with that, but then they surprised us with Kjell, the astronaut, coming onstage and talking to us in person.
Kjell Lindgren
This is one impressive fellow with an MD, a PhD, and a degree from the Air Force Institute or whatever that is in Colorado Springs. And of course, he’s a Boy Scout leader and such. He seems genuinely nice, kind, and humble, too. My favorite part of his talk was all the photos he shared of the earth as seen from the space station. The auroras, the volcanoes, the rivers, etc., were fascinating to look at.
Rivers and farms
I have to say, though, that Friday’s sessions were a LOT of learning all in one day. I’m glad we got to go relax afterward in the lovely bar. The hotel had great restaurants and bars. No complaints about that!
Today was quite a workday, so I decided to go for a nice walk when I was done. The sun was shining, and the snow all melted, so I broke out the new hiking boots and off I went.
Going up! The clouds are so close!
I had planned to just walk along the road leading uphill, but I saw a sign saying there was a stable a mile thataway. I thought that would be fun to check out.
Well hidden, they are.
Unfortunately, there were no further signs, no roads, and no hints about where to go, so I just followed a muddy road heading up. It turned out to be the access road for the skiing on Peak 10 (that’s the names of mountains here, numbers) and the really, really big resort down the road. It’s as big as a town.
Genuine ski lifts
I decided that, since someone ahead of me had climbed the hill I saw, so could I. So, up and up I went. The trail was actually a ski slope, as I discerned from the snow-making machines I saw everywhere. I had a good time tromping through the snow, until I hit the deep parts that were higher than my shoes. I didn’t have on good tucked-in pants, so snow got in my boots.
I followed those footsteps.
But, panting as only a Texan in the Rockies can, I kept going. The scenery was pleasant and stopping to pant let me look at it. I kept going up about halfway, and then I saw this sign. I liked that sign. I’d climbed enough of Peak 10.
Easiest way down? I’ll take it!
So I turned around, just like Stevie Nicks, and headed down that trail. I was rewarded with a new bird I’d never seen before. It is apparently a Canada Jay. It was pretty and flew around a lot so I could see it well. What a treat!
A fine new bird for me.
I continued down the little trail and saw wildlife tracks everywhere. I saw rabbit tracks in more than one place, deer tracks of some kind, and what I am pretty sure were coyote tracks (no human tracks going beside them, and they were later joined by another canine). I don’t think it was a wolf, because the tracks weren’t very big.
Rabbit and coyote tracks
I enjoyed looking at a little mountain stream, which was primarily snow runoff, but sounded pretty. As the trail ended, I tromped through a snowy area that must be gorgeous in the summer, because it was full of native grasses and wildflowers. By the time all that tromping was over, my feet were soaked, but I was quite happy.
Where I tromped
I also spotted a disc golf course I might try going down later.
This looks less snowy.
As I made my way back, I went into the Beaver Creek Resort, which was dismal and sad as far as I can tell, but I guess it’s not “the season” yet, so no one is there but a few workers. There were a lot of areas under repairs. Maybe it’s on hard times since the pandemic.
Back at the Lodge (which still features the screaming child and its door-slamming relatives), I plan to enjoy a nice delivery dinner followed by knitting and a bath in the jacuzzi. That will get me all energized for tomorrow. My shoes and socks are drying and will be ready for more fun tomorrow.
I climbed pretty high!
I know I do weird things on a “vacation,” but I like just doing one thing a day and really enjoying it, rather than rushing to do a lot. And it’s been quite nice working here. No complaints, other than it rained all day at the ranch, so no pool work got done. Rain is good, of course.
I have a lot to write about from yesterday, but I’ll quickly share this morning’s nature sighting. Alfred the Giant Dog started his alarm barking (different from his “I’m on patrol” barking). The Spousal Unit looked out the window and saw two of what appeared to be wolves checking out the tank/pond behind the house.
We hear them often, but have been seeing them more and more lately, usually at night. This was in bright sunlight, which gave us ample opportunity to get an idea of their size.
The coyotes I see in Austin are usually smaller than our cattle dog, Brody, and look hungry. These were much larger, and very healthy looking. They weren’t as big as Alfred (an Anatolian Shepherd), but not much smaller. They looked over at the house, then just walked into the woods.
As soon as Alfred got out of the fenced-in area behind our house, he did a big patrol of the area. A few deep barks, and there have been more signs of our coyote friends. I hope they are eating lots and lots of mice.
The Hermits' Rest 