Recently, while in my local park, I sat down on a bench.

Nothing too out the ordinary there.

I started off feeling very comfortable, then I felt a dark presence behind me, and I turned to see a squirrel the size of a large little person running at full steam.

He ignored me at took a running jump onto the bin beside the seat. There he snuck his trout in and looked for the best food.

After a little while he came up empty, and that is when he realised I was looking at him.

He gave me that sarcastic look that only squirrels can truly master, and I tried to look at him with my best fuck you stare.

Then a bunch of crows came in like it was some Hitchcock film that had birds in it.

I assumed that squirrels and crows would be natural enemies, I was wrong.

The squirrel and the crows then worked in some sort of duet, and between them dragged out food and sort of shared it.

Crows, as many a horror film has taught us, are evil.

So to me this just proved that squirrels are evil as well.

I left the bench, the whole thing was a little too eerie for me.

My new Ashes book.

The cranes had been sunning themselves right out my window. 
The seemed so happy and peaceful taking in the warmth on this 50+ degree afternoon.
The female sat and contentedly groomed,  and I forget that they have white eyelids, and they close going up, versus ours that close down.   When suddenly the cranes took off. and I looked and the fox was out there.  He took off after them and I didn’t see him. Then I looked out the back, and there he was standing on my stump eating bird seed.  He looked starved and mange-y.
He looked at me through slits and then jumped down and ran away. I called animal services, told them the situation, and they said if he was eating he was okay. I beg to differ, does this look okay?   He looks kind of creepy, hope it is not rabid.
I will have to watch when I take little Bella outside. Don’t want the fox to think she is a Taco Bell special.    Yesterday my neighbor called when she saw the fox, I went out and caught a photo of him crossing the street.  Poor thing looks so lost.
The ibis are out in pairs again,   the heron has left it’s nest, I’m sure it went fishing.  A cute moth was on the wild little daisies.  
Later I should have some photos on http://offshoot2.wordpress.com
Until then, I am going to take a nap and then do X-mas cards. Catch ya later….

PS – I will call animal services tomorrow, request a trap, and will send them a photo…

A cold front approaches. It’s another gray day, everything looks bland. 
The cranes came , did a rain dance. We are in need of moisture.  The heron was MIA in her nest for 4 hours, maybe she was fishing.   The nest is filling out slowly.
She did come back in early afternoon.  A pair of ibis came foraging for food.
and a pied-billed grebe came by and dove under the water when he saw me.   They are funny looking.

I tried my hand at macro, but wind was blowing and the focus was almost impossible. But did get a few pics in to show.  So here’s a few…

Someone told me that those are some sort of beetles mating and not lady bugs.
Ringo the heron and I fished,    but the wind was whipping and the drizzling rain was getting cold and miserable, so I had to come in.  The heron was in her nest and it was waving in the wind.   Ringo came to the back door and decided to come in and dry off.
Right now Frankie is in my lap and my legs have lost all circulation,    ugh, I must get up and move.   Oh, I was looking at my match holder and realized I must get a chimney sweep to clean out  the fireplace.   For now, that’s it, and I’m sending a rose to Tabbie to let her know I am thinking about her and hope she is feeling better.
And here’s a video from Tampa, a bit shaky, but hope you enjoy anyway…     

Bear and Cub in the woods

I suppose you’ve all figured out I’m crazy about numbers.  Stats.  Useful information.  It’s kind of an obsession, as I explained to a friend this morning.  

We’ve covered the top search engine terms people have used to find this blog.  Now let’s look at the top blogs during the 365 day outdoor commitment. (Although, it seems to me that these top blog numbers are not really accurate.  If someone logs on to a blog and simply scrolls down the page without clicking on the actual title of the blog or the comments, no “hit” is registered in the statistics of a particular blog.)

#1 is Some Like It Funny and Some Like It Serious  (1,247 hits) and #3 is Repeating myself like a broken record, record, record (or CD, CD, CD) (393 hits).  Those two don’t really “count” as random top blogs because these were the blogs featured on the home page of WordPress.com.  The #2 top blog isn’t really a blog at all.  It’s the “About“  (612 hits) story which explains what this blog is about. 

#4 is Fisher, Pine Marten, Bear and Moose  (326 hits) which features photographs by Pam Boppel-Nankervis, a local wildlife biologist.  The first photo (up above) was captured by a game camera. 

The mysterious inside of an oak gall

#5 is The gall of that oak tree! That was the exciting day when we discovered that oak trees often grow green balls known as “galls”.  Very educational…for all of us.  Apparently, many, many folks are interested in oak galls. 309 hits for this one. 

I am also delighted to tell you that I discovered one of the dead birds hidden within this blog!  At least part of a dead bird.  The above raven’s claw was featured in a post called Dead raven, deer hide, river and stones back in March.  Perhaps all the people searching for “dead bird” end up on this post.  It has had 284 hits. 

The first sucker I ever caught

#7 in the greatest hits series (ha ha, Barry made me use this title!) is A sucker for sucker fishing, written in May.  I’m sure many fishermen have visited this post, wanting to know the secret for catching suckers.  Bet they left not knowing much more than when they started.  Here’s what I remember about that day:  throw the fishing pole into the water and wait until the sucker bites.  Then jerk the pole up and hope that the hook caught the sucker.  End of my knowledge of sucker fishing. 237 hits here. 

Birch bark on snow

#8  An all-time favorite of blog visitors has been Let’s have a scavenger hunt!  (235 hits). The idea for it popped into this brain on the way to the mailbox one day and we had a few eager participants.  The rules:  find some pussy willows, sumac or wintergreen, birchbark, animal scat and an animal.  Photograph all five and email ‘em to me.  Some folks opted to put them in their own blogs.  We had so much fun that Amy over at Flandrumhill decided to feature a follow-up contest. Hers was really classy and educational.  

Fisher near pond

(Photo credit for above goes to Pam Boppel-Nankervis.  And this was NOT from a game camera.  She actually got this close to the fisher.  Can you imagine?) 

I hope that you don’t consider this cheating.  Putting in all these old photos and doing wrap ups of the year.  The statistics just beg to be included, you understand.  Besides, I didn’t think you wanted yet another photo of me in that darn snowmobile suit from 1970 filling the wood room.  That’s what we did again today.

Almost forgot to tell you!  More excitement.  The temperature leaped back up into the 20’s.  Once again, we’re living in the banana belt…

An ex-elephant trainer from Ringling Brothers has come clean (upon his death).

There are photos with the story showing some training techniques used on baby elephants. The story is a sad sad tale of what we humans do to animals just for our entertainment. Just for our entertainment.

These elephants are probably treated far more humanely than trained elephants were in the past. They probably do grow up to look forward (in their own way) of seeing their trainer. Who the fuck cares?

These elephants are being treated like this for our entertainment. Just for our entertainment.

Go. Look at the photos.

Ropes are a big part of training. Haddock said in his declaration: “The babies fight to resist having the snatch rope put on them, until they eventually give up. . . . As many as four adult men will pull on one rope to force the elephant into a certain position.”

Jacobson scrutinizes the photos of ropes and chain tethers. He points out the precautions that he says he takes. Thick, white doughnut-shaped sleeves are on one baby’s feet. That’s hospital fleece, he says, to make the restraints as soft as possible.

“If you didn’t use the rope, you’d have to use the stick,” Jacobson says. “This way we use the carrot and the rope.”

Weighing up to a ton, a young elephant is strong. That’s why so many handlers are working on each at the same time, Jacobson says. It’s a credit to Feld’s resources that so many people can focus on one elephant pupil, he says.

“On the third day [of training a new trick], there are no ropes on them anymore,” he adds. “It goes very, very quickly.”

That’s right. Elephants are forced into positions and given rewards when they are there. Let’s say, like forcing your dog to “sit” and then giving him a treat and an “atta boy”. Elephants are not dogs. They are or should be wild animals. They have not evolved with us to look to humans for confirmation. They are independent family oriented fantastic creatures of nature.

God I hate zoos – where fantastic animals like these just hang around bored and trapped and losing their minds.
But I also hate circuses – where fantastic animals like these get to learn these idiotic tricks just for human entertainment. Outrageous.

On a side note, the article very much seems to empathize with the plight of the mothers and babies who are separated after a couple of years together. Horses are weaned too early too. Cows, especially calves of milk cows are weaned too early. [Horses theoretically work for a living and cows provide food, so these are not just for our entertainment, but people need to be aware that we wean waaaaay earlier than nature does and it's hurtful to the animals.]

The route map: Kenya to Cape Town

On January 17th, 2010, after spending 3 weeks in Uganda, I get picked up in Nairobi, Kenya, for a 6-week overland trip through Southern Africa—from Kenya, we drive down to Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Namibia, and finish the journey in Cape Town, South Africa. Epic!

I always fancied the idea of traveling extensively through Africa, seeing her natural beauty first hand. After extensive research, I learned that the only way to see so much of Africa in a relatively short amount of time (and cheaply—flights within Africa are ridiculously expensive) is to drive. The safest option is to go with one of the many tour companies that specialize in overland Africa trips. I’ve chosen to travel with Topdeck, a UK company, whose South African arm is called the African Travel Company. There are many other tour companies, including Acacia Africa and Intrepid which I considered, but Topdeck was priced the best—all companies cover nearly the same route and feature the same highlights. On my trip, we’ll spend the entire 6 weeks camping under the stars, driving from location to location, while the tour company takes care of all but a few meals.

The agenda, in very short form, is as follows:

• Kenya: the trip starts here. We’ll be driven in a specially built, large van with 12 or so other adventurers. We head south; first stop: Arusha, Tanzania;
• Tanzania: Driving past Kilimanjaro to Ngorongoro Crater (home of some of the best lion and wildlife viewing on the continent) and Serengeti National Parks; onward to Pangani and Dar es Salaam, Zanzibar for 3 days; continuing south to:
• Malawi: we spend four days driving along the western side of Lake Malawi, stopping off to camp on the white sands in various bays along the way;
• Zambia: drive of doom from Malawi to Livingstone (I’ve done half of this drive before—from Lusaka to Livingstone—8 hours each day of not a whole lot besides iPod, card games, and dozing if you can). Livingstone and Victoria Falls, and the other activities you can do here are well worth the effort: elephant back safari, cruises up the Zambezi River, horseback riding, microlighting over the falls, white water rafting, and so much more;
• Zimbabwe: Victoria Falls (one of the 7 natural wonders of the world), from the other side of the Zambezi River;
• Botswana: Chobe National Park and what I’m most looking forward to, the Okavango Delta! Rainwater from Angola seeps south to creates the Okavango Delta, the largest delta in the world, which draws thousands of herd animals from surrounding countries to drink and be merry for the months that it floods the Botswanan plains;
• Namibia: Etosha National Park, Cheetah Park, Spitzkoppe (the Matterhorn of Namibia), Swakopmund (base of the Namib Desert with some of the most spectacular sand dunes—over 300 meters high), to Fish River Canyon, second in size only to the Grand Canyon in Arizona;
• South Africa: starting at the scenic Orange River, for a half day canoe trip, to the Cederberg Mountains and surrounding winelands, finishing the trip in Cape Town, where I’ll spend 4 nights thoroughly exploring the city.

I’ll be covering the entire trip via a Netbook which I’ve yet to purchase (Christmas present?) and will, of course, have lots of photos to share as well. Watch this space…

A parent brought a bat to my daughter’s class for show and tell.

Really.  A bat.

Bats carry rabies.  Not all bats, obviously, but it’s best to assume that any bat you are in contact with has rabies.  How to tell if a bat actually has rabies?  The brain and spinal cord have to be examined for the virus but there’s an easier way to tell if a bat might have rabies.

If you can catch the bat easily, it probably has rabies. Bats with rabies have difficulty flying and behave abnormally such as flying during the day in your house!

If there is a bat in your house and you’re absolutely positive that no one has been bitten, call animal control so that the bat can be trapped and tested.

Do not take the bat to a school.  Do not let your children touch the bat.  Do not keep the bat as a pet.

Please.  Please.  Please.

Thanks.

This morning we had quite a fog. The night before we had a clear look at the meteor shower and I saw a good amount of gorgeous mini looking comets, it was beautiful to watch. Stayed up till 3am, then woke up and the fog swallowed the lake.  The herons, both male and female were clanking their beaks together.
They seemed real lovey-dovey.   I found it to be a good time to try my hand at some macro photography. I tried with 4 different lenses and had a hard time, but looking through my lens at spider webs was just over-whelming, the webs looked like crystal beads.  Here’s some pics.
There were webs everywhere, and I had 4 different magnifications, so I was all over using different settings. I need a mentor standing beside me. 

The plants and a few bugs were on the plants. I tried to get them, but have no tripod to keep me steady, it is tedious trying to stay still and focus on the details.

The cranes were in full mating mode – they have totally ditched the baby and now only have each other and are enjoying each other. 
They were goofy and looking for trouble. They tried Ringo,   and even Frankie.   I tried to get close to the males silly face.   
It was a good morning and took all day till the sun came shining through.   I did a few abb-strax.  And came out to see the heron take off.

And that was it for the morning, then I left to run errands, get some shopping done and come back in time to fish with the heron and Ringo. It turned out to be in the 80’s and we had sunshine.  Fishing was not great, but that’s okay with me.
Hope your day went well, you can see, there’s hardly a dull animal moment around here…

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Pond Memories

Review from Winnipeg Free Press.

Caring for orphaned or injured wild animals requires extraordinary skill and sensitivity.

Lil Anderson is an adept practitioner of this art; she has written an anecdotal account of her experiences as a wildlife rehabilitator that is poignant and highly readable.

Anderson maintains her rehabilitation centre on her property outside of Kenora, where she lives with her husband.

People send or bring animals from all over northwestern Ontario for her to nurture.

Amazingly, she is able to look after her charges while still working a full-time job at the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources in Kenora.

In this book, released by Winnipeg publisher Turnstone Press, a house better known for its literary fiction and poetry, Anderson describes caring for numerous animals, including a young moose, a fox, beavers, goslings, a porcupine and a fawn.

“Should wild animals become pets to ward off extinction?”

If someone can describe how homes are better than zoos for wild animals maybe we can have this conversation, until then….nope.

The Billings Gazette notes that the Montana wolf hunt this year (it’s first) was “effective” because 9 wolves who lived in an area with livestock predation were killed. ?

Then…get this:

Confident state wildlife officials said they could increase the quota on the predators next year. They want to zero in on a number that would strike a balance between protecting the wolf population and stopping increasing attacks on livestock and big-game herds.

Apparently the state wildlife officials would like to see wolves eating mice or something vs “big-game herds”.
?
Good Lord.
Ralph Maughon notes this from the story:

I’m not sure why the article ended with this: “Ranchers like Jerry Ehmann, 63, counter that the state’s hunt is not doing enough. Ehmann said he used to run about 200 head of cattle on 25,000 acres of public land in southwestern Montana’s Bitterroot Range. After wolves started harassing his animals this year and five calves went missing, Ehmann decided to cut back to only 72 animals and keep them fenced in on his ranch near Sula. He sold off the remaining cattle in November.”

Are we really to believe that the only reason this rancher reduced his herd of 200 to 72 is because “5 calves went missing” — not killed by wolves, but just missing. Calves too, not cattle. Isn’t there a recession or something going on? Seems like I read about one Seems like Ehmann is getting toward retirement age too.

Amen. This is exactly what should happen. Keep cattle home. Let public lands be freed of private enterprise, or else let the public get what it’s actually worth to all.

Mae Bua Loi was bought by an elephant rescue group and taken to live out the rest of her life in relative comfort. Don’t miss the bit where she meets an old friend.
(ht to a Facebook and real friend! Who I don’t see enough of by the way.)

This elephant cost $13,000. Please give if you can.

Today was the day to go fetch Steve from the Billings airport.  Once again I left my camera at home.  A BAD thing to do because that’s when one will always find those perfect picture moments.

How does one describe in words what a picture can convey?  Well for me pictures can say things far better than I can in words.  Never was gifted at that, but I’ll attempt here in this post.  By the time you’re done reading, if you do, you’ll probably wish I did have the camera too.

Sure enough, I saw quite a few perfect pictures.  One was of the river valley outside of Belfry.  The fog coated all the bushes, trees, etc….next to the river with all its white glory.  Then the river had steam rising up in the cold air.  There were quite a few places that would have composed a GREAT picture.  Alas no camera…so I guess I’ll have to keep the image in my mind till it’s replaced.

Then there was an area that had at least two dozen black ravens all together.  They were feasting on a road kill.  It was quite the site because I don’t think I’ve ever saw more than three together in one area.  Made me appreciate my own method of eating in the comfort of a warm home.  Then I saw numerous hawks perched here and there.

Coming home, I thought I saw a wolf.  So we pulled over to view it.  Of course it knew that wasn’t normal, so it immediately ran off.  We watched it run across the field from a distance and tried to figure out if it was indeed a wolf, maybe a coyote or fox.  Regardless, that would have been fun to try capturing.

When seeing animals while traveling like this, it’s hard to capture those pictures, because by the time you stop, pull out your equipment, etc…the animal is long gone.  So I try to console myself by saying I wouldn’t have been able to get it anyway, but then that is the fun and challenge in trying.

In the end the trip to Billings this week may have been well worth the time, even if I didn’t capture those pictures, because their are some positive possibilities on the horizon for Steve.  Now, that would be the most perfect picture!  Yet I’m not sure if words or pictures can capture the deep feelings involved in that moment when it indeed becomes real.   Just hoping those possibilities don’t die as the others have.

Whether you put in hours and hours of preparation or just a weekend hunter, what is the real reason you go hunting? Is it the chase, the trophy buck, or the meat on the table? If you harvest that trophy buck do you eat the meat? There are lots of hunters that donate the meat to soup kitchens and rescue missions. There are some that could care less about the trophy and are looking to put the meat in the freezer. If your hunting for the meat what are you hunting for, buck or doe? What is the best for putting on the table in your opinion? Looking for your comments .

100% Pure Venison is a great place for venison recipes and equipment.

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Striped coloring is inherent, certainly, in tigers – to the largest representatives of family Felicidae. Tigers live only in Asia. Tigers are adapted for various environmental conditions. The color at a tiger bright enough, but its orange-black-and-white striped fur coat possesses surprising property. Despite all brightness, it helps a tiger to remain imperceptible. It occurs that strips of a tiger visually break a body contour into separate fragments. Therefore in wood where there is a play of light and shades, outlines of a tiger are lost, and the animal becomes imperceptible. The tiger loves reservoirs and well floats.

The tiger lives alone in territory to 200 square kilometers. It the fine hunter also extracts to itself livelihood under any weather conditions.

The biggest tiger is the Amur tiger. It lives in a Far East Russian taiga and meets also in Northern China and Korea. At length it reaches 3 meters and weighs to 360 kg. Now number of the Amur tigers does not exceed 400 individuals.
The Amur tiger is not afraid of strong frosts it is protected perfectly by dense and long wool. In the summer coloring brighter, and in the winter the skin brightens. At it lights sides and a white belly. The Amur tiger is considered least “blood-thirsty” and the least aggressive at a meeting with the man. However, old inhabitants of a taiga assert that this tiger is very curious, but curiosity is not aggression and when the tiger understands that it has noticed, it leaves.

The Bengalese tiger lives in India, Burma, Bangladesh and Nepal. These tigers are a bit more numerous, than the Amur tigers. Number of a Bengalese tiger makes 2500 individuals living naturally. The basic area of their dwelling is the river Ganges delta. At length this tiger can reach 2, 6 m and to weigh to 260 kg. It is very strong and powerful animal. Though this tiger also is very cautious and avoids meetings with the person, notorious an attack on people. The old or crippled animals who more cannot hunt for wood game become “cannibals”, as a rule. On such tigers arrange the present round-ups, sometimes the whole settlements participate in them. But today tigers are so rare that chances of a meeting with it are very insignificant. Therefore even if suddenly also there is a tiger who has attacked the person, it, whenever possible, do not kill, and catch and send in a zoo.

The Indochina tiger meets in Cambodia, Burma, Thailand and Malaysia. In the nature its number makes about 5000 individuals. In the sizes it is similar to a Bengalese tiger. It differs from Bengalese “relative” the appearance a little. A coloring at it more contrast, strips very accurate, and a head at it more round.

The white tiger is not considered a separate version of tigers. This phenomenon is very seldom. Individuals with wool deprived of a pigment, responsible for red coloring, sometimes are born among tigers. Brown strips thus remain. Eyes of such tiger are blue, and the animal is extraordinary beautiful. In the Indian princedom of the Roar have managed is artificial to fix this rare deviation from norm, and today white tigers are national property of India.

My position on public lands is that ranchers really ought to pay market value for public lands. As should recreationists. (with exceptions for the poor on the recreation side) Ranchers use the growth and recreationists use trails, toilets, rangers, they pound things into rocks, they leave dog doo behind and they often need rescuing.

As I read this story about a mountain bike rider getting attacked by some protective sheep dogs, I can’t help but feel for the rancher. He’s just doing his thing. He’s working to do right by recreationists by keeping his dogs inside during the daylight hours and pulling them off the flocks during major events outside of Vail.

The dogs attacked a bicyclist that insisted on “finishing” a race that she was going to lose, and that kept her out at night. She’s a suer. Even after the dogs have been put down, she wants “justice”. She wants the rancher put in jail. She wants…..change.
(ps – previously, the rancher was warned when an activity was going to be held where he grazed sheep)

The rancher wants to keep in business using government land to graze his sheep.
The biker wants to continue to enjoy the outdoors without fear of dogs.

I personally feel for the rancher, but I want him to pay for lands.
He states:

“It’s the suburban mentality — they think their milk comes out of a plastic jug, they think their meat comes out of a container,” he said. “They don’t realize you have to live like a Third World person to produce meat in the United States.”

This isn’t a truism. (Obviously, as he mentions driving to Denver to see an opera.) It doesn’t matter if people think their milk comes from the supermarket. Free market forces mean that everyone pays for the value used. If ranchers were made to pay properly for the land they graze, then yes, meat prices would rise. And people would eat less. And some ranchers would go out of business. Is any of this so bad on a universal scale?
[tangent: this would also mean that those horrible CAFOs would thrive]

There are many, many changes going on in this world. Somehow we the taxpayers need to make our priorities known so that those with the most money in the game aren’t the only ones with a voice.

I feel for the rancher in this story, but I really hate to be attacked by dogs.
I don’t like the woman who sued even after the dogs were put down, but she has a point.

Hopefully next time it’s not a mountain lion that attacks a late bicyclist forcing the infamous Wildlife Services into action.

This story……let’s see if I can data point it.

– elk would winter in a valley because it was nice in the winter
– because it was nice in the winter, humans liked it and moved in
– because humans moved in, they started feeding the elk so as not to watch them starve
– not watching them starve meant feeding them up on a ridge away from the people
– the person doing the feeding gave the property to the local school
– the local school “accidently” dropped some feed closer to town than the ridge
– the elk came to town to eat
– this also brought wolves to town which can be seen and heard (vs mountain lions)
– the answer per the government was to stop feeding the elk

Now, the elk come to town to find food (because someone’s always going to toss a flake over the fence for them, they starve anyway, and the wolves come to town for easy prey.

AND in the same state, they want more hunting of wolves. Maybe it’s time to reduce the number of elk so there’s less starvation. ?

(ht Ralph Maughan)

I don’t get it, normally the nest should be finished by now. This heron has not progressed much at all. The male flies in for a bit in the morning, then flies off, have not seen him return when I leave my fishing post.  Yesterday they were both in the nest at 7:30am having a nice meeting, the nest looks a bit fuller, but I would have thought it would really be a thick tangle by now.
then the male left.
and was gone.  The cranes came minus their baby, I think they might have finally gotten rid of him.   That means in a few months, maybe Feb, or March, a new one or two will arrive.
The anhingas came in pairs yesterday, two males were hanging around drying off their wings.   The male on the metal was very bold and let me get quite close.   The wings are a gunmetal gray, very cool contrast.  

This morning while taking out the trash, I saw the male heron fly to the nest.
They did not get close, just stood and looked around. He did not even bring any branches.   When suddenly a third heron flew over and landed on a branch above the male .  
They all looked at each other and the one on the lower branch took off.
And off it went into the nest two yards over. So what is going on? Is the male serving two females?  Was the heron that took off the other female going back to her nest — was she just checking out the competition?  Maybe the male is trying to establish a heronry, of having a few nests that he can service?   The other nest is the one normally used each year by the herons. Having the one in my yard is a dream come true to have them so close, but looking at how flimsy it still is, the male needs to bring more branches.  This nest is looking amateur compared with what my herons built a few years ago.  The tree in the neighbors yard is higher up and much more secluded.   I will keep an eye on this. Did not fish last night, it’s too cold for me, only in the 60’s yesterday for a high and that is like being in the 30’s for my blood.
Last night I did stop by my daughters as she was working on a Pabst Blue Ribbon cake for her sweet boyfriend.  It was so cute. Her cats were so cute and their fur is growing back.  They were sleeping on their cat tree, but perked up to say hello.   I love their little flat faces and soft bodies. They will be getting a fourth cat as their cousin Sasha is coming to visit them near X-mas.  Oh Baa Humbug, time to get a move on for the day,
take care until tomorrow….
P/S, rat traps still empty, but waiting just in case…