Tanya, one of my fave bloggers, lives in Australia. She gets to see kangaroos. I think that's cool!
I get to see elk. They're cool, too, but they're not roos, nor wallabies, nor any of the other cool upside down animals they have down there.
Tanya was sad I didn't' get photos of our close encounter with the elk yesterday, but here's something even better--just for you and just for her. Mr. Boom set the trail cam up last week in the hills to see what he could see. The camera is seven feet up in the air, attached to a tree. Keep that height in mind while you watch this video...
Elk are very shy, and tend to run when they see human beings. In fact, while we were up hunting this afternoon*, we saw a mama elk and her baby, along with another elk of middling size laying down in a meadow chewing their respective cuds. When they saw that they were seen, up they stood and up over the crest of the hill they trotted. They can move silently, so silently that you wouldn't believe it based on their size alone.
But, when people aren't around, they're not so quiet and staid. Here's a side of elk neither of us have ever seen before.
This last video is kind of neat just because it's taken with the infrared function of the cam.
Three elk, one watering hole.
Heh, I wonder what kind of people are going to end up here based on that description?
*No grouse were harmed, or even sighted, in the making of this hunting trip.
Friday, September 3, 2010
Dirty jobs
While I was confined to the couch last week, I watched more television in six days than I've watched over the course of the last six years. We don't have TV here at our house, though we do have a television set. We watch some Netflix, we play a few video games, and so for those we have an old hand-me-down television from my grandma. It doesn't have a remote. You actually have to get off your duff to adjust the volume or turn it off and on. Channel changing isn't a big deal, since it gets set to one channel for games, and the next channel for Netflix. It actually took me while to figure out which combination of buttons I had to push to get the Netflix movies to play--if it was any more complicated I'd be at a total loss!
Anyway, Netflix now has a bunch of television shows that you can watch instantly on your TV if you have a Wii and a special disk. This may be old news to a lot of you, but to me it's a new and wonderful thing. Since we don't have standard television, and I couldn't hold a book open for very long with my hand in it's state (and permanent position over my head), I might have gotten a bit bored--and I can't abide boredom. My sixth grade advanced math teacher stated that only boring people get bored, and it's one of the truisms that I like to repeat.
So, what did I watch? All five series of Dirty Jobs with Mike Rowe, Cake Boss series one, three seasons of The IT Crowd, some Red Dwarf, and then the night before last I finally saw the movie version of Phantom of the Opera. The Phantom of the Opera probably deserves its own post. I'd feel strange talking about my feelings for that movie in the same post where I rave about Dirty Jobs.
Dirty Jobs stole my heart. The premise of the show is to illustrate all the nasty, hard, and dangerous work that people have to do to keep America well-stocked with the level of goods and services we've all come to expect and feel we deserve. When you look at your bowl of Cheerios, do you see the locomotive engineers or the guy who has to clean the grease out of the clogs in the factory? Do you see the farmers working long hours to harvest the oats? What about the guys who battle the heat all day delivering the water to grow the oats? What about the people who work int eh ceramics factory to make your bowl? The inseminators who make the calves to keep the milk production steady?
Dirty Jobs shows the dirtiest and nastiest of these jobs, with the host, Mike Rowe, trying his hand at everything. At the steel mill, his face mask melted from the heat. Working with a biologist who monitors endangered animals on the Great Lakes he was bitten something like 27 times while helping her capture and monitor snakes. In another show he was assisting with wind turbine maintenance. Have you seen how high those are? Can you imagine standing on the top inspecting for damage, leaks, and loose bolts? Yikes?!
On our way home from the hills on Wednesday, we noticed some weird shapes attached to the high wires that run through our valley. At first I though it might be some trash, but as the road brought us nearer I could see that whatever it was, it was bigger than trash. Closer still, I could finally see what was happening. I made Mr. Boom stop the car so we could get some photos.
And here's our own Dirty Job to look forward to--turning this log into a tabletop for an outdoor seating area. This is the round I mentioned we had found alongside the road that we just had to bring back. Of course, it had to be sopping wet and covered with ants. What kind of forest log would it be if it weren't. But now we're bringing it into the town, so it must shed those aspects of its former life. This didn't qualify as heavy lifting, right? 'Cause I'm not supposed to be doing any of that...
Have I mentioned how much I love my new car? We could NOT have done this in our old car.
Oh, one more thing. This terrible shot shows the yellow helicopter that was flying around the area, lifting all the gear up the towers for the men and I think helping string the new power lines. You can see just how tall the towers are that the men are working on, as they completely dwarf the helicopter.
Anyway, this was published in the Local Police Blotter the next day: "A helicopter was reportedly seen in the area of R. C. Road." Love the small town news!!!
Anyway, Netflix now has a bunch of television shows that you can watch instantly on your TV if you have a Wii and a special disk. This may be old news to a lot of you, but to me it's a new and wonderful thing. Since we don't have standard television, and I couldn't hold a book open for very long with my hand in it's state (and permanent position over my head), I might have gotten a bit bored--and I can't abide boredom. My sixth grade advanced math teacher stated that only boring people get bored, and it's one of the truisms that I like to repeat.
So, what did I watch? All five series of Dirty Jobs with Mike Rowe, Cake Boss series one, three seasons of The IT Crowd, some Red Dwarf, and then the night before last I finally saw the movie version of Phantom of the Opera. The Phantom of the Opera probably deserves its own post. I'd feel strange talking about my feelings for that movie in the same post where I rave about Dirty Jobs.
Dirty Jobs stole my heart. The premise of the show is to illustrate all the nasty, hard, and dangerous work that people have to do to keep America well-stocked with the level of goods and services we've all come to expect and feel we deserve. When you look at your bowl of Cheerios, do you see the locomotive engineers or the guy who has to clean the grease out of the clogs in the factory? Do you see the farmers working long hours to harvest the oats? What about the guys who battle the heat all day delivering the water to grow the oats? What about the people who work int eh ceramics factory to make your bowl? The inseminators who make the calves to keep the milk production steady?
Dirty Jobs shows the dirtiest and nastiest of these jobs, with the host, Mike Rowe, trying his hand at everything. At the steel mill, his face mask melted from the heat. Working with a biologist who monitors endangered animals on the Great Lakes he was bitten something like 27 times while helping her capture and monitor snakes. In another show he was assisting with wind turbine maintenance. Have you seen how high those are? Can you imagine standing on the top inspecting for damage, leaks, and loose bolts? Yikes?!
On our way home from the hills on Wednesday, we noticed some weird shapes attached to the high wires that run through our valley. At first I though it might be some trash, but as the road brought us nearer I could see that whatever it was, it was bigger than trash. Closer still, I could finally see what was happening. I made Mr. Boom stop the car so we could get some photos.
And here's our own Dirty Job to look forward to--turning this log into a tabletop for an outdoor seating area. This is the round I mentioned we had found alongside the road that we just had to bring back. Of course, it had to be sopping wet and covered with ants. What kind of forest log would it be if it weren't. But now we're bringing it into the town, so it must shed those aspects of its former life. This didn't qualify as heavy lifting, right? 'Cause I'm not supposed to be doing any of that...
Have I mentioned how much I love my new car? We could NOT have done this in our old car.
Oh, one more thing. This terrible shot shows the yellow helicopter that was flying around the area, lifting all the gear up the towers for the men and I think helping string the new power lines. You can see just how tall the towers are that the men are working on, as they completely dwarf the helicopter.
Anyway, this was published in the Local Police Blotter the next day: "A helicopter was reportedly seen in the area of R. C. Road." Love the small town news!!!
Thursday, September 2, 2010
Musings from the middle of the night
I've been leading a very uninteresting life lately.
Per doctor's orders, I'm laying off using my right hand as much as possible. The splint was removed last Friday, just in time for the weekend, and just in time to leap into doing all the things that hadn't been getting done while I was laid up. Obviously, my right hand was jealous of the way my left hand and I were beginning to get along so well, because the first thing my right hand did on Saturday morning was cut my left hand rather severely with my newly sharpened Global chef knife while lopping off beet tops.
Ooouuuch.
Chirp-chirp starts eighth grade on Wednesday. She and her classmates are the top dawgs on campus this year. She's sad that she only has one friend in one class only this year. Hopefully her lunch period will jive with more of her friends' schedules. Better yet, maybe she'll add to her circle of close friends. They're a good bunch of kids, but it's always good to branch out, I think.
Today was the opening day of grouse season. Mr. Boom took the day off, and after my almost-daily doctor appointment, we headed to the hills. Grouse are abundant around here, and dumb as heck. But maybe they're not quite dumb enough, as we didn't see a single one today! We did find an enormous round of wood we managed to hoist into the back of the car and bring home. Mr. Boom wants to make an outdoor table from it.
The most exciting part of the day was toward the end. We'd given up on grouse and decided to follow another road that leads to a nice patch of boletes from which we've harvested some great fungi in years past. We drove quite a distance down the road, only to have it suddenly end in a quasi-parking area. Beyond the turn-around area the road had been decommissioned. "Well, okay" we thought. This isn't a bad thing. We can still hike in to the spot, and maybe there will be fewer people looking for mushrooms.
As we were getting out of the car, a gi-freaking-normous elk crossed the path in front of us. I scrambled to find Mr. Boom's camera (mine died and has yet to be replaced) but couldn't find it before the elk passed. A moment later, though, a second and even larger elk appeared in the same spot. This guy was at least a 6x6 (meaning six branches on each antler). He too paused and gazed at us, then moved on into the thick trees on either side of the decommissioned road/path. We were quite breathless, and looking at each other in amazement when a third gi-freaking-normous elk appeared. Again the pause, the gaze, and the eerily silent passage into the trees.
We eventually got ourselves together and started down the path. Just as the car was out of visual range, and just past where the elk had crossed the path, we heard the cougar. The very loud and angry cougar. The cougar that yoyled and yelped and screamed. The cougar that was between us and the car. After it quieted down and our pulses were back in the normal range again, we decided to continue on. Neither one of us really wanted to get closer to the source of that sound, even though the safety of the car was on the other side.
We had walked a few hundred yards further when the rumbling started. Mr. Boom's advice of "GET BEHIND A TREE" sounded good, so I did. The sound of a hundred bison (or maybe just three large elk?) stampeding toward us grew louder, but then veered away.
Our best guess is that a cougar had a relatively fresh kill still near the original road. The elk, which were removing themselves from our presence, must have then entered her presence and pissed her off. The elk eventually took off and were looping back around to the decommissioned road ahead of us when they heard or smelled us, at which point we didn't hear or see them again.
We continued on to where the mushrooms used to grow, only to find it all logged out. Instead of Ponderosa Pines and boletes, there were a few scraggly tamaracks and pile after pile after pile of slash.
No grouse, no fungi, no pics of wild animals. Just a big round of wood. Still, it was nice to get off the couch and get out of the house. Just don't tell the doctor. Also, I'm not really typing this, because that would also be against doctor's orders. Time to tape the hand back up and behave, I guess.
BORING!
Per doctor's orders, I'm laying off using my right hand as much as possible. The splint was removed last Friday, just in time for the weekend, and just in time to leap into doing all the things that hadn't been getting done while I was laid up. Obviously, my right hand was jealous of the way my left hand and I were beginning to get along so well, because the first thing my right hand did on Saturday morning was cut my left hand rather severely with my newly sharpened Global chef knife while lopping off beet tops.
Ooouuuch.
Chirp-chirp starts eighth grade on Wednesday. She and her classmates are the top dawgs on campus this year. She's sad that she only has one friend in one class only this year. Hopefully her lunch period will jive with more of her friends' schedules. Better yet, maybe she'll add to her circle of close friends. They're a good bunch of kids, but it's always good to branch out, I think.
Today was the opening day of grouse season. Mr. Boom took the day off, and after my almost-daily doctor appointment, we headed to the hills. Grouse are abundant around here, and dumb as heck. But maybe they're not quite dumb enough, as we didn't see a single one today! We did find an enormous round of wood we managed to hoist into the back of the car and bring home. Mr. Boom wants to make an outdoor table from it.
The most exciting part of the day was toward the end. We'd given up on grouse and decided to follow another road that leads to a nice patch of boletes from which we've harvested some great fungi in years past. We drove quite a distance down the road, only to have it suddenly end in a quasi-parking area. Beyond the turn-around area the road had been decommissioned. "Well, okay" we thought. This isn't a bad thing. We can still hike in to the spot, and maybe there will be fewer people looking for mushrooms.
As we were getting out of the car, a gi-freaking-normous elk crossed the path in front of us. I scrambled to find Mr. Boom's camera (mine died and has yet to be replaced) but couldn't find it before the elk passed. A moment later, though, a second and even larger elk appeared in the same spot. This guy was at least a 6x6 (meaning six branches on each antler). He too paused and gazed at us, then moved on into the thick trees on either side of the decommissioned road/path. We were quite breathless, and looking at each other in amazement when a third gi-freaking-normous elk appeared. Again the pause, the gaze, and the eerily silent passage into the trees.
We eventually got ourselves together and started down the path. Just as the car was out of visual range, and just past where the elk had crossed the path, we heard the cougar. The very loud and angry cougar. The cougar that yoyled and yelped and screamed. The cougar that was between us and the car. After it quieted down and our pulses were back in the normal range again, we decided to continue on. Neither one of us really wanted to get closer to the source of that sound, even though the safety of the car was on the other side.
We had walked a few hundred yards further when the rumbling started. Mr. Boom's advice of "GET BEHIND A TREE" sounded good, so I did. The sound of a hundred bison (or maybe just three large elk?) stampeding toward us grew louder, but then veered away.
Our best guess is that a cougar had a relatively fresh kill still near the original road. The elk, which were removing themselves from our presence, must have then entered her presence and pissed her off. The elk eventually took off and were looping back around to the decommissioned road ahead of us when they heard or smelled us, at which point we didn't hear or see them again.
We continued on to where the mushrooms used to grow, only to find it all logged out. Instead of Ponderosa Pines and boletes, there were a few scraggly tamaracks and pile after pile after pile of slash.
No grouse, no fungi, no pics of wild animals. Just a big round of wood. Still, it was nice to get off the couch and get out of the house. Just don't tell the doctor. Also, I'm not really typing this, because that would also be against doctor's orders. Time to tape the hand back up and behave, I guess.
BORING!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)