Things you don’t see everyday

The first thing is this strange looking flower called Indian Pipe or Ghost Flower.  Last summer was the first time I ever saw them growing around here.  This summer they came up in different spots and I’m somewhat confused by that. They only last for a couple days, before turning black and drying up.  The next two things I saw from my little blind.  Even though the water is going down, there’s still a lot of action out there.  Thursday a green heron landed right out in front of me.  It was there to get some fish, frogs and whatever else they eat.  I saw it grab something out of the water, shake it around, dip it in the water and then finally swallow it whole.  All the time, I’m taking pictures of it and thinking it grabbed  a great big frog.  After looking at my pictures, I was really confused.  What kind of frog has such a long tail, I asked myself? This was really freaking me out, trying to determine what in the heck the little heron caught.  I ended up showing this picture to a friend and he knew right away, it was a baby muskrat.  Whew, that explains the long tail and the claws on its webbed feet, although we didn’t know muskrats were still out there.I’m guessing it got washed out of its nest (or den or whatever baby muskrat holes are called) when the pond drained. 

 

A couple days later in just about the same spot, I watched a turtle climb out of the water and there on it’s shell were a couple leeches.  Ewwww!It sat there long enough for the leeches to get all heated up and I’m assuming very uncomfortable.But it didn’t stay out in the sun very long and went back in the water, so the leeches didn’t dry out. I know for sure, if I were a turtle, I would NOT like having a couple leeches attached to my shell!  It’s really not very attractive. 

Taking the Good with the Bad

Some examples of what I’m talking about.  Rain can be good and bad.  This is what the pond looked like on Tuesday, after receiving more than 5 inches of rain in less than 12 hours.  This is what it looked like after all that water caused the hole in the damn to become even larger.  And then there’s good and bad animal sightings.  I showed you pictures of the little wolf pup we saw out on the road the other day.  Well… when I finally took the card out of the trail cam, I wasn’t happy to see this visitor.  Talk about posing for the camera!  This is an adult wolf and it’s the first time we’ve gotten a picture of one…and it’s right in front of the cabin! Getting back to the rain we received the other day.  We don’t have a rain gauge, but our friend Randy who lives only a couple miles away said his rain gauge that holds 5” was full!  All that rain is good for the lakes and groundwater, but not so good for the already bad roads around here.  There were washouts on main roads, secondary ones and on most of our favorite dirt roads too.Notice the butterfly on the sign.  I wonder if they’re attracted to the color of all the road closed signs?  Well, there’s plenty of them around.  This was on our road Tuesday night, but it’s open now. I sat in my blind this morning, not expecting to see a lot with so much of the water gone.  But I was wrong.   Fish, frogs and bugs are easy pickin’s for the herons and other birds.  The kingfisher stopped for a rest right in front of me!  Finally a decent picture of one of my favorite pond birds.  But the decoy isn’t looking so good anymore.  Poor thing, for all it’s been through in the past year, now it’s just another mud duck.  It was frozen in the pond last winter and this spring I saw an eagle pecking at the decoy’s head that was just showing through the snow.

A Movie for your Viewing Pleasure

I’m still learning about HD movies and YouTube.  I made a two minute video and it says it’ll take 363 minutes for it to upload.  What’s with that?  Until I get things figured out, I’ll stick to this kind or just regular Def movies.  This is a video I made on Picasa, using the pictures I took yesterday.  I added some captions and a little background music and I think it turned out pretty good. 

Cute little pup.

About that new camera I mentioned…

Well, I got a new one, but I have to tell you the rest of the story.  We were about 3 hours from home when I remembered I never put my camera in the truck.  I did a frantic look-see in the glove box, hoping it was still in there, but it wasn’t.  I said “Oh sh*t, I forgot my camera!”  As it turned out, this was a perfect time for me to be forgetful, because in just 3 days was my birthday and guess who didn’t buy me anything?  So he says, “If you’d like, for your birthday present you can get yourself a new one”.  Hmmm, that sounds pretty good to me.  I knew I wanted to keep things simple and I didn’t want an expensive camera that requires expensive lenses.  So after some online research and shopping around, I decided this was the one I wanted.  A Nikon Coolpix P500.I’ve only had it since Wednesday, but so far, I really like it.  And I really like the color of it too!  I’m still learning the settings and other features.  I sure was glad I had it when we were driving along and saw this little cub along the edge of the road.  Such a cutie.  Mom and the rest of the kids crossed the road before we came along.  While we were watching it, Jim caught some motion in the review mirror and most likely, Mrs. Bear pushed this deer out of the woods.  The next day Little Doe brought her two fawns around.  Jim was stacking wood over on that side, so Little Doe had the kids hang around while she decided whether it was safe of not.  She decided to take them back from the direction they came from. I grabbed my camera and took some picture through the front window.   We’re finally seeing some pretty butterflies.  I just wish more of them would be on flowers and not on piles of poo.  I don’t know what kind of butterflies these are, but the small ones really blend with the sand, don’t they?This little bird was sitting in front of my blind, singing it’s heart out.  I got all excited and took a video of it.  After the fact I learned that unless you record your video in HD, there won’t be any audio.  Okay!  Won’t do that again. 

Another thing I’m learning is that HD videos take FOREVER to upload to YouTube.  I’ll have one for you in my next chapter.

So that’s my story and I’m very happy with my new camera. 

Here we go again

When the forecast showed high humidity and temps in the 90’s for the next 4 days, we decided to go back home a week early, knowing it was going to be hot in Madison too.  We stayed until Thursday morning and returned back to the northland and much nicer weather.  BUT, while we were gone another big storm ripped through here, taking down many trees that survived the July 1st storm.  This really sucks.  There were branches down all around the cabin.

 

More trees snapped in half that will be used for firewood.  Some were uprooted and laying on top of other trees.

Miraculously, the gazebo survived, but has some serious structural damage.  The ancient swing set I use for my flags even got knocked over.  My little blind was in a heap again, but after shaking it a few times, it popped right back up, good as new.  And then I noticed this tree.  Okay, that’s got to come down before it falls on the power line.  It’s the one in the center, leaning to the right.The wind even blew Jenny’s head off.  The other deer were quite confused by this headless deer.  But I’m the kind of person that always looks for the positive and again, we were very lucky there was no damage to the cabin, outhouse, shower tent or sheds.  And tomatoes are fine and they loved all the heat and rain.

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There may be a new camera in Cindy’s future.  She forgot hers at home and hubby (being the sweetheart he is) said I could go “uptown” and get a new one.  Now to decide what kind…but it’s got to be better than the one I forgot, with a nice zoom and a point and shoot. 

The Culprit

Under the cover of darkness, Jenny's assailant returned to the scene of the crime! Just as we suspected, although a little smaller than I would've guessed.  It's probably a yearling separated from Mama Bear.

 

FYI...the reason it's called Jenny/Kenny is that it can be either a doe or a buck.  Later in the year, well transform Jenny into Kenny by adding some antlers to it's head.