Come From Away

The clouds cry with us (B mostly) this morning. Nero died last night of unknown causes. He had been “happy” and eating all day yesterday.

Sadly, we awoke to a dead baby crow.

Bean was fixed yesterday…

One our way back from picking her up, We saw a bird in the middle of the road. I moved to the side slightly to make sure that we did not roll over it. I figured it was dead, but wasn’t keen on smushing it flat… As we passed over it, we could see that it was not flat (as one would expect) and it look quite normal. It seemed to be just sitting in the road… B said that she thought she saw it move, so. . .

We turned around and I ran across the “highway” to scoop it up. When I reached down, it opened its eyes and checked me out… It was super hot on the blacktop and the poor thing was clearly suffering, so I scooped it up. It seemed fairly intact, and there was no scary mess underneath it. I figured it was a black bird that had been hit by a car and expected that it would die from internal injuries on the way home.

We arrived home with sleepy, ouchy Bean and a little black bird in hand and quickly got both of them settled. Bean slept in here crate and birdy was in a cage in the cool basement. After some research by B, she figured out that it is not a black bird as they apparently always have yellow beaks. A little bit of further searching shows us that we have a fledgling crow on our hands. He has perked up a great deal today and we have been playing momma bird by prying its beak open and cramming tiny pieces of chicken down its throat. The kids have decided that Nero (“black” in Italian) is an acceptable name for him and he will be referred to as such from now on.

Apparently, we will have to feed Nero every half an hour during daylight hours (sigh). It’s been a fun day already of running up and down the stairs to the basement. The good (?) side of all this is that if Nero survives we will have a pet crow on our hands. They are supposed to be incredibly smart and live to 17 years on average. If only we can tame him to sit on our shoulders and play fetch with a stick. . .

Our house becomes more like a visit to the circus every day!

As soon as the grass greens up, the horses start to lean on our wooden fence to try and reach the grass on the other side. Strangely, if you crush 1400+ pounds of horse flesh on a fence, it leans over and the occasional board splinters or falls off. This leads to much early morning grumbling and trudging around with cordless drill, crowbar, hammer, nails, screws, large boards and fence ban-aids (small pieces of wood that I put over where the boards meet to strengthen up where the nails are) to correct the problem.

Over the week-end, K worked on attaching electric fence holders onto the inside of our fence and running a wire around the inside of the paddock. I hooked up the charger today and the fence is definitely working… I know, I tested it (with my hand, not my tongue as suggested in the manual). I’ve been expectantly watching in the hopes of seeing the horses discover that the fence is on. No luck yet.

On Saturday, I was annoyingly trying to get a part for our Sears Craftsman rider mower. Sears doesn’t stock it, of course and the incredibly unhelpful people working there were very busy watching TV in the electronics department. As it turns out, I did manage to get new blades for the mower, but it also needs a new drive belt. Once again, Sears does not have the correct part in stock and the same TV watchers were there. They told me that they could not tell me which belt I needed even though I had the mower part, etc. with me, making no effort to stop watching TV all the while… I picked up what seemed like the correct part, but it did not fit. The mower still worked well enough to cut the lawn, but it was incredibly annoying as there is a thin spot on the belt and it causes the thing to vibrate. As a coupe-de-gras of my day, it started to rain when I was almost finished and was working on the last tiny bit of lawn. I decided to try to get right up next to the edge of the ditch and the mower slipped on the wet grass and bumped off the edge. It summarily tossed me off into the ditch. I turn to watch the mower skip a bit in my direction and I quickly scurried away. I had visions of the thing rolling over on top of me… Thankfully, it just settled down (it stops running when no one is sitting on the seat). I pushed it off the edge, mowed the last strip and ran inside to escape the rain. Sunday dawned with sore muscles and cramps from my three/four foot fall. We had a late breakfast and went to the beach with Bean and Molly…

Although, I understand that we have a tourism based economy and that other local businesses rely on tourist dollars to be able to provide services that I may need and use (even outside of the tourist season), it is still annoying when every second car stops in front of our house to take pictures, etc.

Especially annoying are those who think that, because we live in a vacation destination, that we somehow must not mind if they come up our drive and walk around in our yard! Yes, this does happen! Last week, there was someone poking their face through the windows of our front door at 9:30 PM. because they wanted to talk to us about what we did to keep the peacock from leaving… Did we tame him when he was little, etc.? -sigh- Strangely, I was polite and nice to them…

Next we have the cyclist who stopped to take pictures and urinate! Gotta love that! So we took his picture!

We had our first outing of the summer to the beach today. It was also Bean’s first time at the beach ever! She found the beach wonderful! So many stinky new smells. She obviously felt that the water was best to be avoided.

We went to the beach down Stewart Point Road. Two minute drive, 1 hour on the beach and then home. BBQ for dinner soon. . . All in all, a good day.

Midnight comes and the night is suddenly full of some of the most creepy noises I have ever heard. The horses are panicked! We can hear them racing around in the dark and snorting loudly.

Flashlight in hand, K and I rush outside to see what is going on. We find the horses standing almost on top of one another in a corner of the paddock as far away from the noise as possible. Shining the light down the driveway in the direction of the noise and expecting to see a pack of coyotes fighting over some dead thing in the ditch, we end up seeing at least two racoons fighting.

The noise they were making was such that you felt your guts wrench with fright. I could see how past peoples with an active imagination would think that there were spooks out in the dark outside the small circle of light available. Happily, we live in a time where we can shoot a nice solid directed beam of light 100 feet down the road and see what it really there.

End of school year field trips are upon us and today I tagged along with “L” and his classmates on a visit to the Harvey Moore Migratory Bird Sanctuary. We walked around a small man made lake (pond) and saw lots of geese. There was a beaver lodge, but no beaver in sight (no surprise)…

Lady Slipper (PEI’s flower):

The highlight was that we found a gosling that was tangled in some fishing line and we rescued it. Here you see Charlie Moore (Harvey Moore’s son) holding the bird while trying to get the line off. I ended up holding the little guy (or gal) while he worked on getting the line off. It was around its neck and legs and took a little bit of work, but we soon had it freed.

The scream rang out, again!

“FUCK IT! “

It echoed across Canada and CFA was turned back on.
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