It's Kobae Time

Been waiting, waiting, and waiting for Kobae to start doing some serious hike but it's just as well he hasn't as it's been so busy but that has mostly ended. The lodge has gone vacant some Saturday and the rest today. Not even any campers tonight. 

Still a group coming down the river now and then on the way to Lake Powell one hundred plus miles as they set up camp for the night on the sand bar across the river.

Everybody said there was a storm coming but I went back and looked at the blog and I couldn't find snow hitting ever before Halloween and rarely if ever before Thanksgiving so I was a non believer but last Sunday afternoon at 1pm the snow came. I was up on the roofs winterizing air conditioners and shutting off water pipes to keep things from breaking but within a day or two it was mostly gone.

Is there such a thing as a problem solver dog? Remember the kid in class when there was a test who would blow through and then fall asleep on their desk with 45 minutes to go. It wasn't me but it might have been Jax if he'd have been born in a different body. 

First it was the rock squirrel problem where they'd crawl up in vehicles and a few years ago the fad was to make spark plug and starter wires with vegetable derivatives. That worked out well, for the rock squirrels. I had counted 37 rock squirrels showing up at the three feeding areas. Now there is one. Problem solved. 

Second, at night all the little people have to have their own place to eat or some of them get killed by the others. The skunks have the west end of the porch and mostly underneath. The raccoons the east end of the porch, the ringtails the roof and rafters, and the foxes everywhere else. But sometimes the foxes would venture up on the side walk or porch and the raccoons would go out in the parking lot and pretend to be foxes if their yellow eyes didn't give them away to get a hot dog. Jax and I would sit on the porch during evening feeding time and if somebody ventured to where they weren't suppose to be they got a quick visit from a little dog with a lot of attitude issues. When the problem appeared to be solved he'd take a hot dog and leave it out on the side walk and then move back by the steps. I realized he was using it as bait to see if anybody would screw up and they did and Jax would charge out there and chase them off. Problem solved. Now Jax comes out for about five or ten minutes and if there's no issues, and there aren't anymore then he just goes back in the lodge. 

Third, there was a mouse running around in the office for a couple days. How it survived the ringtail and skunk brigades to even get to the lodge I don't know. Jax heard it and made it his mission. Two days later I woke up in the morning, walked into the office and it was dead on the floor. 

Now Kobae is out and marching about. I've been taking a book with me to start reading again and I'll give Kobae some distance so I can sit somewhere for ten or fifteen minutes, unless we're on a road, and then I just say "Where's Kobae?" Jax gets up and walks around until he picks up the smell of the tracks and then walks right between them. About ten feet before he gets to Kobae he'll turn around and look at me and then wander off. The looks says (a) this is too easy and (b) why do we want to find him anyway?

When we do take a short break Jax has figured out that Kobae will never give him enough room in the shade anywhere so he knows that I have a shadow and so he waits for me to sit down and then goes to the shadow.