From Mary Ellen (she likes string!):
It’s very last-minute, but… my husband Jeff and I are walking in the
ALS Association’s Walk to Defeat ALS (aka Lou Gehrig’s Disease) this
coming Saturday. His family has been devastated over the years by the
genetic strain of the disease, so we walk every year to try to raise
money to find a cure. This year, the walk is even more important,
because his cousin, a lovely, vibrant woman, was recently diagnosed.
We’re trying for at least $1500, and so far, what with money being
tight all over, we’ve barely broken $200.
You can donate to help Mary Ellen and Jeff raise money for this very good cause right here.
This father was a firefighter who was injured 10 years ago and is now a quadriplegic. He needs a tech makeover, and needs people to vote for him. Go check out his story and consider voting for him, won’t you? It just takes a second!
Holy crap! How’d it get to be October already?!
New month, new banner (if you don’t see it up top there, you might need to clear your cache)! This one was created by the wonderful Aly who’s done tons and tons of my banners in the past.
Thanks, Aly – you rock!
So, a while back we got a webcam to point at the guest bedroom bed to see if we could catch whoever was peeing on the guest bed in the act of peeing. And then it was time for the eggs in the incubator to hatch, so Fred used it as a hatchcam for a while, and then we had it out in the garage pointed at the baby chickens for a while.
Then the cat food I leave on the front porch at all times was starting to disappear at a faster rate than usual, so I decided it was time to put the webcam on the front porch and see just what the hell was wandering through there at night.
I honestly expected to see a lot of cats move through, but the only cats who ever showed up were Maxi and Newt. Honestly, I expected more traffic on the front porch than we got, but I suspect that a lot of animals who might ordinarily have shown up and eaten the cat food were scared away by the fact that we were leaving the front porch light on all night long, since the webcam doesn’t have night vision.
In any case, I set the software to record when there was movement, and as a result, I got to make a movie so y’all could see what happens on the front porch.
I plan to put the webcam back out there in the Spring and see if anything else interesting shows up!
Several weeks ago, during a trip to Sam’s Club, I picked up a 50 pound bag of popcorn kernels. The chickens like popped popcorn, so I figured I could occasionally make a big bowl of popcorn for them.
(Oh, don’t give me that look. Popcorn is a quick and easy snack and IT’S GOOD FOR THEM. Don’t judge me!)
So I left the bag of popcorn in the garage, always intending to bring it inside so I could begin with the popping and feeding, but I put it off and put it off.
Yesterday, Fred said “I accidentally got the bottom of the bag of popcorn wet and put it outside to dry. What do you want me to do with it?”
“Bring it inside,” I said. “I’ll pop some for the chickens, then we can put the rest of the bag of kernels in the hall closet.”
A while later I looked outside to see Fred standing in the driveway. Apparently that bag had gotten wetter than he’d realized.
It worked out okay, though. We swept up the kernels and put them in empty (clean) litter buckets and brought them inside.
“What are you going to do with all this popcorn?” Fred asked.
“Pop it!”
“All of it?” he said.
“Yeah, why not?”
Why not? How about because it only takes 6 cups of popcorn kernels to pop enough popcorn to fill a large garbage bag and we have fifty POUNDS of popcorn kernels? How about there is NOWHERE to put that much popped popcorn? How about that, genius?
So I popped a garbage bags’ worth of popcorn, put the lid on the litter containers, and stored the rest of the kernels in the hall closet.
By this time next year, the chickens should be thoroughly sick of popcorn.
We had a visitor kitteh move through the property yesterday. He is such a pretty little cat, but as soon as he catches sight of me, he takes off. I don’t know if he’s feral or if he belongs to someone in the area. I sure would like to pet him.
I think the hummingbirds have moved on – it’s been three or four days since I’ve seen any. I’ll probably keep the feeders full of clean nectar for a few more weeks, but I seem to recall that the beginning of August through the end of September is prime hummingbird time.
I didn’t get many pictures of them this year, but Fred sat out on the front porch one day last week and got a few good pictures.
Speaking of birds, this one little bird kept hanging out on the bird feeder. He’d just sit there and look around, and I would think perhaps he’d gotten his foot stuck, so I’d go out onto the side stoop and approach him, and he’d let me get alllllllmost close enough to touch, then fly off to the bushes at the front of the house. A while later, he’d be back. I’m not sure what his issue was, but he stopped doing it.
Have I mentioned that I love this silkie? She just cracks me UP.
“Why would I hang out inside where there are soft beds and plenty of food to eat, when I could hang out OUTside where there’s dirt to roll around in and chickens to watch?”
Previously
2007: Except that seeing me so enraged the praying mantis that it took flight and flew at my head.
2006: No entry.
2005: No entry.
2004: I could have done a faster job with a measuring spoon and my ass.
2003: She was stymied by her big butt, which wouldn’t fit under the shed.
2002: Here’s my question: It’s open 24-hours, so why the FUCKITY FUCK FUCK can’t they stock in the wee hours of the morning when NO ONE IS THERE?
2001: It’s funny how two people can look at the same thing and see it differently, isn’t it?
2000: No entry.
I get possums in my outdoor kitty food. 🙂
How surprised were you to see those dogs on your porch? The raccoon wasn’t that surprising (but cute), but those were two big dogs! Speaking of big, the spider that crawls across the porch was pretty large, too. Blech.
You need more silkies. Too cute!
I love the one part of the video with the spider (?) crawling across the porch. And the dog giving the camera the stink eye is pretty funny too. Very cute.
How much cat food do you go through out on the porch? If that was just a sampling of the free loaders, I can’t imagine that how much food you’re going through.
Love the Crooked Acres at Night vid. LOL at the spider and the random ankle shot. I got a kind of soup kitchen vibe from the video. Like one of those movies they remake with all animals. This kind of reminded me of Grapes of Wrath only with animals. Kibbles of Wrath perhaps?
I was waiting for that raccoon to come back with a tote bag and empty the dish!
Watch the bird when it is calm and see if there is a tail-bob when it breaths. If there it, it has a respiratory problem.
I love that the raccoon was courteous enough to face the camera directly so we could all enjoy watching his face, not like those inconsiderate dogs! (c:
Y’all have got to get rid of that food dish!
You might try keeping the hummingbird feeder up a litle longer. I went to a little class about hummingbirds and learned that they sometimes stick around until it snows. So to stop feeding them too early is bad.
Hey Robyn, just came across this today and thought you might like it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qit3ALTelOo
By the way liked the video, you still got plenty of visitors even if the light was on.
The ‘coon is too cute! Who knew you had so many nocturnal visitors? Maybe that little bird is claiming the birdfeeder and all it’s contents as his very own. You know, possession is 9 tenths of the law, right?
Enjoyed the porch cam. A wild game cam with night vision out at the back forty might truly capture a lot of roaming deer, racoons and who knows what all. About 100 miles south of where you live, a woman has a wild game cam and catches lots of deer, racoons, possums — as well as lots of coyotes! (They are not hunters, just like to see what is wandering around their fields and woods.)
As for the raccoon, we had LOTS of coons when we lived on the farm. A creek bordered our property and the coons soon grew brave in “begging” for food. I kept a large stoneware pot at the far corner of our yard, and would put my food scrapes there for them. One night, my husband and I heard noises out there, and got a flashlight to see what was going on. A mama coon and her FOUR little ones were feeding, and the babies were “squabbling” over the food dish. One enterprising little coon finally just climbed into the pot, and stood his ground! It was sooooo funny! And I’ve always thought coons have the cutest, expressive faces. 🙂
oh it’s a pretty siamese! Love.
I love how the black dog came back and brought a friend!
The bird is male house sparrow, a nonnative species. They have displaced a lot of native sparrow species because they’re more aggressive.
That webcam’s motion sensor is delicate! I’m impressed it picked up the spider and that other thing.
I live too much in the city for raccoons and I miss them! Which is totally hypocritical because squirrels fill their niche (ours raid gardens and eat meat, such as catfood) and I hate those fuckers.
The porch cam rocks!
I love love love the video from the front porch webcam!! The raccoon was sooo cute. hee hee
The fact that the spider was large enough to set off the motion detector on the camera is downright scary to me.
:::::::shudders::::::::::::
Do you know who those dogs belong to? I would love to save dogs/raccoons/stray cats come up and feed on my porch, but since I live in a suburb with NO land around us whatsoever, I do not think our neighbors would appreciate that. Heh.
Oh and P.S. Those hummingbird feeder shots are GORGEOUS!
LOVE the porch cam! Wouldn’t you have DIED if you were going through the images and saw like, a PERSON sneaking up on your porch? Looking right into the camera? And giving you this evil grin? Shudder.
One of the hummingbird photos is now my desktop background. Gorgeous shots.
YIKES! What Anita said!
Your journal was full of yummy goodness today. Love the front porch cam. Hard to believe how entertaining that was! Something along that line: http://errabundusbus.blogspot.com/2008/05/pimp-my-ride-investigator.html
Love your new hairdo!
it cracks me up seeing the spiders and beetles.
Erin: Their next door neighbor was just struck with an awful idea… a wonderful, terrible AWFUL idea… and has no idea why.
The little male house sparrow is one of this seasons nestlings. The males have the dark spot on the chest but the female doesn’t. This little guy is just now getting his adult feathers and his dark spot hasn’t completely feathered out. Being young he probably is staying near the food source and being territorial he sits near ‘his’ food until something or someone scares him off.
I feed all birds….heck…. we pretty much feed anything that comes around. I know that starlins and these house sparrows are considered nusainces(SP?) but they’re alive…so … I feed ’em.
Also…
Pigs and birds enjoy popped popcorn…..
so does little fat squirrels that you won’t bake cookies for ; )
LOL! Cute video clip of the free buffet.
What kind of webcam do you have? I just bought one on ebay. Do you capture it to a tape or dvd, or to a browser?
I had to watch it a couple of times to be sure, but I am almost positive that that is not a spider at the end of the video. I think it may be a camel cricket/spider cricket/cave cricket. They get into my garage every fall and hide behind things on the wall. I HATE THEM WITH EVERY BONE IN MY BODY! You can probably hear me for miles screaming like a ninja and slamming my broom down on the floor to kill them. SHUUDDER….