How many times in your life do you get a chance to say "well, I can get some cougar pee for you?" Certainly couldn't pass that up.
My friends Christy and Rik at the feed store are having a predator problem. A fox has been nabbing their chickens. Rik has been trying to build up defenses, but foxes can climb as well as dig and slip through surprisingly small gaps. The fox has also been harassing their baby lambs. It avoids traps. And with other animals out there, shooting isn't a safe option. In an online discussion, someone mentioned that mountain lion pee is supposed to be a good deterrent (and yes, you can buy mountain lion pee online). That was my moment to join in. We have two cougars at the museum (same animal, different name). They have to be put into holding cage at night, and one of them is polite enough to pee in a tub in her cage. And the keepers at the museum are used to strange requests (I'm not even the first person to ask for cat pee). The next day I drop off a jar at my friends - now we have to see if it does get the fox to back off, or if the smell freaks out the sheep too much to be able to use it.
April is firefly season. It's rather magical to see what looks like Christmas twinkle lights all along the edge of the woods. When I put up the chickens at night I allow time to just sit and enjoy the magic, because it only lasts for a few weeks.
I'm still trying to unpack how I feel about a new app that I put on my phone; my cousin Marty told me about it. It's a check-in app. One thing that's I've felt a bit weird about my current life is that while I'm expected at the museum two days a week, the rest of the time I have very limited human interaction. So something could happen to me, and it could be up to 5 days before anyone would notice that I was gone. This could be unpleasant (I actually know someone who checked on a neighbor after she realized that she hadn't seen him for a week - it was, shall we say, not good). Hence, the check-in app. It's a simple free app, Snug Safety. Once a day I tap it to check in. If I don't by a certain time (mine is 7 p.m.) it will send a text to my friend Gill and my nephew Rob letting them know that I haven't. Simple, and that way I won't be lying in the yard being nibbled on by possums more than a day before an alert goes out. So it's a good thing. But it also makes me a bit sad to know that I have become one of those people.
But sometimes I have interaction - I had lunch with Adrianne this weekend. As usual, we both had our spinning stuff with us. It's fun; most people just glance over at us, and then back at their phones, but sometimes (and this happened) someone will come over to see what we're doing and ask questions and it's just sort of nice.
The baby birds in Bob's hat are a week old now. I'm always amazed at how fast they grow; it just doesn't seem possible. Another week and they'll fly off.
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