Shirley's Puppy Bumper and Consequences

For every action, we are taught in Physics, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Last week we sold the kid goats. This week I'm swimming in milk that the kids are no longer drinking.

So today I made custard and ice cream. The mint chocolate chip ice cream is wonderful. The butter walnut not so much. As usual, I burned the walnuts. Burnt Walnut ice cream is nowhere near as tasty as unburned butter walnut ice cream. Plus it didn't occur to me that adding a cup of burned walnuts to an already full ice cream maker would make everything ooze out the top. Normally I don't mind messes of that sort because I eat them. But I've now eaten more burnt walnut ice cream than I needed or wanted. I'll have to wait to start on the custard.

But to get on with Shirley's Puppy Bumper... Shirley, our llama and sheep guardian dog, believes she owns the neighborhood and goes through our fences to patrol "her" territory. Unfortunately, she also likes to chase cars while she's out and about. Consequently, I am continually patching the latest hole she has made through our ancient woven wire fences. Sometimes my patches keep her in for a day... or part of a day... before she creates a new hole.














When I run out of fence panel pieces, or enthusiasm for hauling them all over the farm, I weave tree branches and whatever else I can find through the woven wire.



In desperation after a neighbor came to tell us our black dog was on the road again chasing cars and he'd nearly run into her, I searched the web for a solution and found Puppy Bumpers. http://www.puppybumpers.net/

"Stuffed pillow collars keep dogs in fences."

They had pictures of cute little foofoo dogs with stuffed pillow collars around their necks. I read the gazillions of testimonials from satisfied owners with neat city picket fences that their little foofoo dog used to go through until they discovered Puppy Bumpers.

I finally found a testimonial about a dog on a ranch. The dog was not so big nor so furry as Shirley and only outdoors, I suspect, occasionally... not day and night with sheep and llamas to protect. Plus I suspect that ranch's woven wire fences were in considerably better shape than ours. But I was ready to try anything. So I ordered the size the ranch dog was wearing: the largest size they had. Thankfully, it fit!


The next time Shirley escaped, I caught her and put the Puppy Bumper on after returning her to the llama/sheep field. And waited to see what would happen. For several days she stayed in. I did not want to leave the collar on her 24/7 so, after praising her effusively, I took the collar off. The next morning, Shirley was out on her neighborhood patrol again. This went on for weeks; as long as she had the Puppy Bumper on, she stayed in. When I relented and took it off, she escaped.

But my semi-solution was not to last. A few days ago, Shirley was outside the fence with her Puppy Bumper still firmly around her neck. Rats! It was back to watching where she managed to push through even with a stuffed pillow around her neck and patching that hole, which I have now done.

My latest plan is to let her out first thing in the morning. Generally, Shirley comes home soon when she leaves in the morning. It's later in the afternoon, bored with no coyotes to bark at during the day, that she takes off to find something else to chase, like a car. When she returns in the morning, I'll put her in and hope she stays. If she doesn't, it's Puppy Bumper time again. Consequences, Shirley, consequences.


For every action, there is a reaction... but not necessarily equal since Shirley seems better able to get out than I am at keeping her in. Of course the ultimate solution is to put up new fences. But that's an expensive project and one we're not ready to tackle. So live with it, Shirley. I am.

And now to find more uses for too much milk...

An Orchid Show

I know it's going to be a wonderful day when it starts with a beautiful sunrise. Yesterday, the sunrise as I went out the back door to start morning chores was truly lovely. I went back in and grabbed my camera.



I had to be done with chores on time that morning because friends were coming to meet me for a trek to an orchid show and sale. I love orchids. But the only appropriate place I have for them is on the kitchen window sill. Right now, the kitchen window sill is full of orchids plus the three small poinsettias I bought over a year ago. They are budding and will bloom this spring, when poinsettias should bloom. Poinsettias are "short day" plants which means they begin to set buds when the days get shorter... and therefore open when the days are getting longer. Greenhouses control lighting to make poinsettias bloom in time for Christmas. I'll be happy to have them bloom whenever.

But that means I have no room on the kitchen window sill for more orchids. I don't need more orchids anyway as I'm not taking proper care (fertilizing, repotting) of the ones I have. But I'm always so tempted when I go to an orchid show and sale. The last one I went to I forgot to take my camera so my excuse for bringing home a blooming orchid that year was to show Johnny. (Any excuse in a pinch.)

This time, I took my camera. But left the battery at home in the charger, where I'd put it after taking sunrise pictures... so it would be fully charged for the orchid show. Fortunately, my friends have a camera that uses the same kind of battery and friend John had brought an extra with him. So I took orchid photos... and did not buy a thing.












Some were covered in flowers....












And some were whimsical... These made me laugh...



Since my orchid loving friends, Barbara, John and Velta, are also bird loving friends, we stopped at Baskett Slough on our way home and scoped out birds. They were more distant and difficult to photograph than orchids. It must have been a sleepy afternoon for these Dowitchers in front of a sleeping Mallard, sleeping Northern Pintail, and sleeping Green-winged Teal. Way in the distance through the haze, a lone swan turned its back on the camera. A lovely white Great Egret gave us a close-up view as it flew right over our heads, but I wasn't quick enough with the camera to capture it.





When I arrived home, Johnny asked to see my new orchids. When I told him I'd bought none, he seemed disappointed. No worries, dear. There will be another orchid show after my poinsettias have bloomed and faded and been moved this summer to the (unheated) jungle room... leaving room on the kitchen window sill...

An Eagle Roost

Mary Poppins says that in every job that's to be done, there is an element of fun. Just find the fun and snap! the job's a game. And every task you undertake becomes a piece of cake... a lark... a spree...

One of my most unfavorite jobs is selling goats. For the last few years instead of painfully selling them two by two, I sell all the kids at once to a goat buyer a two hours drive from here. Yesterday, Johnny and I loaded up (easier said than done) the ten kids from last year and took them to the buyer. It was a beautiful day for a drive and it really is easier on all of us, goats and me, to have them all leave at the same time together. But it's still stressful and I needed to find that "element of fun".

And we did. After the kids were delivered, we drove back past the Bald Eagle roost discovered by some birder last year. Eagles from up and down the valley converge on a line of tall Cottonwood trees to roost for the night. The eagles are in the valley mainly to clean up sheep placentas and dead sheep from the thousands that are lambing out on grass seed fields this time of year. The eagles will return to their nesting areas in the spring. The line of trees is a long way across fields. It takes binoculars to see big birds in the trees and scopes to tell what they are.


When we arrived at 3:45, we could find a total of four birds in that line of trees to the east. Very soon, two more flew in. We left at 4:00 to go have supper in a nearby town. We could see six eagles when we left... pretty cool! Here are two of them.


We returned at 5:45. Those trees to the east were now full of Bald Eagles... 47 by one count. But the sky to the west was also spectacular. I hurriedly shot a few pictures of the distant eagles before it got too dark to see them, but did not manage to focus properly and succeeded only in getting photos of blurry black lumps. Johnny counted a total, by the time we left fifteen minutes later, of 63 Bald Eagles. Yes, 63!


I took almost that many photos trying to capture the spectacular sunset.


The goat selling business turned out to be not so painful after all... thanks to an element of fun provided by eagles and a sunset.

A Raptor-Centric Week

From the high of a juvenile Red-shouldered Hawk on our snag last Tuesday, the day I returned from California, and then again today... to the low of a Red-tailed Hawk electrocuted on one of the utility poles along our driveway last Thursday, this has been a raptor-centric week. (Yes, I know raptor-centric is not a word, but it should be.)

I had never seen a Red-tail up close before. It is much more beautiful in hand than from a distance. The white chevron of feathers on the back are much more obvious and all the feathers seem to have both rich brown and some white in them. The reddish feathers of the tail are actually the least spectacular of all. I would have taken a photo but it was a bit too sad to see such a beautiful bird with one leg burned in half and the bottom bill burned off completely.

Apparently the poor bird landed on the pole and touched the wire with its bill (or vice versa), grounding itself and getting fried. It reeked of burned feathers. I called PGE and asked to have some sort of hawk-protection device put on the pole. They took the information but made no promises. With a tip from a birder friend, I emailed the Fish and Wildlife Law Enforcement division but have not heard back yet from them either. (Post script: today, Tuesday, a very nice woman from PGE arrived at my door to find out which pole fried the hawk, examine them all, and order guards for any that are problems. She decided to order guards for the hawk-fry pole plus the transformer pole at the house end of the driveway and also the transformer pole at the road end of the driveway. Whoopee!)

The hawk was almost certainly one of the pair that live and nest and raise young here every year. Another Red-tail was on the snag yesterday morning, no doubt the mate. I hope it finds a new partner.

This morning Johnny called my attention to a hawk on the snag again. That one turned out to be the juvenile Red-shouldered Hawk that we first saw in September and then again last Tuesday. It's pretty exciting to know it is hanging around, since Red-shouldered Hawks are California birds just beginning to set up housekeeping in Oregon.

On Friday Johnny and I drove the North Santiam raptor route that I used to do with my dad. From the cemetery where Mom and Dad are buried, next to the Timberknoll Ranch that they owned, we spotted a pair of Bald Eagles. I wished Dad was still alive to see them. They would have been visible from his dining room window and deck. Mom and Dad did occasionally see eagles hunting along the North Santiam river that runs through Timberknoll, but only rarely. Eagles are making a comeback now and are seen much more often. Although you can't see it unless you zoom the photo way up, I think one of the eagles is on the very top of the fir farthest left. Although taken from the cemetery southeast of Mom and Dad's house, this is pretty much the view they had out their east windows. Next photo shows one of the eagles, blurry at that distance.


People and birds come and go, but the mountains remain. I find that comforting somehow.

Today, as I wandered my way via Baskett Slough from errands in Sheridan to the feed store in Dallas, I saw my first Osprey of the season. I think I've read on OBOL (Oregon Birders On Line) that an osprey has been seen there earlier but this is the first time I've seen it. It was perched on the very high power lines that cross Livermore Road... and was a long way off for a decent photo.

On my way home, I stopped at Shenk Wetlands to check for White-tailed Kites and found one hunting in its usual place. As I looked at it through my binoculars, a Northern Harrier flew past my field of vision. Shortly after, an American Kestrel did the same thing.

It has been a Raptor-centric week for sure.

A Weekend in California

My usual 12 hour trip to visit the California kids and grandkids took 15 hours last Friday, thanks to my less than brilliant idea to leave home when I awoke in the morning. I awoke at 3:30 and left shortly after. I thought that would get me there mid-afternoon instead of my usual late evening. Instead, it got me to the San Francisco Bay area during rush hours and in pouring rain. Very informative signs along I-80 told drivers how far it was to which exit. At one point, after I'd been barely moving for an hour, my exit was 2 1/2 miles away. Half an hour later, my exit was 1 1/4 miles away. I'd traveled one mile in half an hour. Eventually, after making a wrong turn and having Steve talk me in over the phone, I arrived. It was very nice to have two small boys excited to see me.

Cedrus turned 3 last week and I was bringing his birthday gifts from Grandpa and Grandma (Johnny and me). Cedrus likes bugs so he got a bug collecting kit and bugs and bug book. Kestrel helped him open the presents. Their Auntie Fudge (Munazza's sister Faiza) came the next day with colorful pancakes she made for Cedrus (out of all natural food dyes, she assured us). Dad Steve helped Cedrus cut them in half so Kestrel could have some, too.







Kestrel, 4-almost-5, and Cedrus (above) like to draw. Below Kestrel is drawing a double-decker car carrier with lots of cars inside. This table is in Mom and Dad's office so the boys can work where their parents are working.










I had not been to their new home since they moved the car parking area from in front of the house, where it was when they bought the place, to in front of the garage. Now the boys can ride bicycles, etc., in the front... and Steve can practice his unicycle skills, which he has not yet mastered but I did manage to catch him in a photo before he fell off. Cedrus found it easier to navigate around the obstacles (that bare tree-looking thing in the middle was their outdoor Christmas tree which had ornaments on it for Christmas) and up the slope with Mom pushing. Note the large blooming shrub behind Steve and also behind Munazza and Cedrus. That's a Brugmansia that blooms nearly all the time with huge, trumpet-shaped fragrant flowers. What a climate!









Munazza built this flower bed outside the kitchen. All the plants look very happy there... in January!



The backyard has a covered area with room to ride a tricycle even in the rain, plus a play structure for when the weather is warmer and drier than it was when I was there. Steve, never one to do things conventionally (or safely), walks across the top of the monkey bars.






















This was the first time I had seen their newly remodeled kitchen. It's beautiful! And efficient, too.












Within easy walking distance from their house is a park with hiking trails and lots of birds. Naturally, I headed there. Munazza and Steve and Kestrel came with me. Cedrus, a little under the weather, stayed home with Auntie Fudge. Kestrel and his umbrella took a rest under a gnarly tree. After a bit he and his mom headed home while Steve and I explored the rest of the park. Wonderful views along the trail of the bay and wetlands would have been more photogenic if it wasn't quite so gray and wet. But California has been in an extended drought so no one down there is complaining about the rain (until the day I arrived bringing rain with me, Steve had been watering the lawn daily). The park was pretty even in drippy weather. I liked the twisted shapes of these leafless trees along the path.












No matter the weather, the boys have plenty to do indoors in their colorful playroom. Here Cedrus drills while Kestrel fixes a bridge.











Monday morning, after two days of fun with the California portion of our tribe, I awoke at 4 a.m. and left for home. It works well this direction to get up early, because I avoid morning rush hour traffic in the bay area. It was pouring rain. In a few hours the city awoke and cars starting sliding around and running into each other. Fortunately, I was soon away from the congestion and on I-5 headed north. However, I was worried about snow in the Siskiyous with all the rain at lower elevations, so I called Johnny at 6:30. He confirmed, via tripcheck on the computer, that it was snowing and chains were required from Dunsmuir north. Ugh. I hoped things would clear up by the time I got there. Johnny was even more worried: he started checking on train schedules to get me home and leave the car in California if the pass was going to close for a week under a heavy snowfall. I think he didn't want to be left with chores that long!

Continuing northward, I passed by the wildlife refuges along I-5 and saw hundreds of snow geese in a field right beside the highway. To give the snowplows plenty of time to clear the pass, I exited and sat taking photos for a good long time. The sun lit up the Trinity mountains to the west and it was truly beautiful as the day gradually brightened.












Eventually I noticed White-fronted Geese grazing in front of the Snow Geese. That's I-5 behind, with not many cars on it yet early in the morning.



Geese flew in small flocks across my field of vision in front of the snowy mountains beyond.


After taking about a zillion photos, I called friends Hazel and John who were also on call to watch trip check for me. John reported that the roads looked clear and "carry chains" was the only advisory. The snow plows had been hard at work. I drove the rest of the trip in good weather, with only a few light snowfalls here and there in the Siskiyous. Mt. Shasta, buried in clouds and fog on my way up, was now radiant in sunshine.





I arrived home at 6:30 after many photo stops... and rest stops to try to wake up. It's a long drive, no matter when you start.

Kestrel's 5th birthday is next month. I'm sending Johnny down on the train.

Flood!

Our insignificant weather event that I wrote about yesterday turned into a major flood this morning, thanks to melting snow in the hills above us combined with an all-night rain. Our pond flowed over the dam and spillway, carving its own routes downstream as water in a hurry is apt to do. It even carved a hole in the top of the dam in its rush.















Our spawning fish of last week can go up or downstream at will until the water recedes, if they're determined enough. Here is one of several streamlets coming off the flooded lane and heading into the main stream through bushes.



Johnny and I hiked to Agency Creek via the arboretum to see how high the creek is. The arboretum paths have turned into rivers.


Agency is high and muddy, but not as high as it has been in the past. The white stake on the far left of one photo marks the highest ever at that point. That was during a major flood some years ago when towns were sandbagged to keep the South Yamhill River out. Agency flows into the South Yamhill. We canoed through our woods back then. They're not canoe-able this year... yet. Rain is predicted for at least the next week, but snow should be gone from the hills very soon if it isn't already. It's a heavy snow pack combined with warm (relatively speaking) rain that causes the worst flooding around here.












This time, the flood waters came up so quickly that some people were caught in their cars in the valley and swept downstream. Some lost their lives. Moving water has an incredible amount of force. Just getting myself across the dam to the horse barn (visible in the distance in the photo below) was scary enough this morning.


The water seems to have receded a little but I still think I'll hike down the flooded lane through the gate, across the culvert where the horses cross the creek, and back up to the horse barn on my next trip. The culvert is, so far, holding its own against the raging waters.