Stuff

I think it's Dec 20th the shortest day of the year. The first couple winters when I didn't have Buddy Heaters or know anything about them I froze my ass off each winter. Because the lodge is closer to the Anti Cline the sun hits Last Hurrah about 30 minutes before it hits this side of the property. I remember each morning I'd open the blinds in the office and I'd think in two more minutes the sunlight will hit the lodge and it's going to get one or two degrees warmer. I could hardly wait. Usually doing jumping jacks waiting for it to hit my office. On Dec 20th it would hit the office at 9:13 am. This year on Dec 20th I happened to be in my office and the sun hit it at 9:10 am. How is that possible? After all these years of 9:13 am and then one day 9:10 am. Something's up.  

Each night there are two food bowls of Kit&Kaboodle on the front porch for the raccoons and one in Kobae's pen. In the mornings now they still have food in them which is unthinkable for the last eight or nine months. At best one or two raccoons show up each night, the ringtail twice last week, couple of skunks, and three to six foxes. What wakes me up in the morning now is the Eurasian Doves gathering on the porch to eat some Kit&Kaboodle and break the ice on the water bowls to drink out of.

Each day Jax and I are hiking places we don't go very often because we have guests and check ins and Collin and Nate are both in Salt Lake so we need to stay close in case we're needed.

On this day we're going to hike The Boulder Canyon from bottom to top instead of the usual way. I'm feeling some of my endurance coming back finally and not having to use my hands so much while hiking over semi difficult stuff. Each time I get out of shape and have to make a comeback I keep thinking what if I don't make the comeback? Maybe there is an age where you just don't get your endurance back but this doesn't appear to be it yet.

I've seen a single bald eagle going up and down the river most days the last two weeks. I clicked on the Facebook postings that Heather puts up from the blog and it let me on for a little while before it kicked me off. A while back when the dead deer was at the bottom of the driveway I suggested to me it looked like it was a bobcat that killed it. There were some comments that a bobcat can't kill a deer. Dear Doubters, go to You Tube and type in deer versus bobcat.

At the lodge I now have a sharp-shinned male hawk that is giving a pretty good try at the songbirds each day. I've chased him off a couple times but he has a different technique than the one I battled six or eight winters ago. He's not small enough to get down in the bush where the songbirds hide so he finds some bushes that he can get down in and waits for a songbird to fly into it. I've got about 20 walkie talkies still so I may have to put one in every other bush or so to try and scare him when I can even detect he's here. I only know because no songbirds go to the feeding areas and they are all deep in the brush and silent. But I don't know where he is without combing the whole area and scaring off all the songbirds that are hiding in other brush.