Steve`s Country
For a smile as wide as a country sunrise
Coffee And Chatting. #15
Good morning on this beautiful, though cool, sunny Tuesday! After a cool, rainy day yesterday it is nice to see the sun shining out there this morning. It is also supposed to warm up again for a few days and that will certainly be a nice way to enter into autumn. The birds were busy yesterday enjoying themselves at the feeder. There were not many chipmunks around however.
But it seems that lately the chipmunks are busy out here every other day. They must go somewhere else on the day in between. Or perhaps they stay home to arrange all that food they are getting here. Speaking of food, I was unable to get any peanuts yesterday when I went shopping. This is the first time I have ever run out of peanuts for my little friends.
I do have just a few left which I will give them when I sit out there with them. Otherwise they will have to be satisfied with sunflower seeds, which they do like as well. I think I mentioned that I walked to the river this past Friday, my second time this month. It was a beautiful day, that is when I got the picture of the orange sulphur butterfly. There are so few butterflies this year and most that I have seen have some damage to their wings.
I think all the heavy rain we have had this year has really affected our butterfly friends. That is too bad. Hopefully their numbers will be higher next summer. At the river the water level is still very high, though it has dropped another 6 inches (15cm) from the previous Friday, so that makes about a 20 inch (50cm) drop in the river level. But that means there is still another 7 to 8 feet to go before reaching normal levels. It is doubtful the river will get back to normal before winter now.
Unless we have a very dry fall. There are a lot of mushrooms growing along the path to the river. There are lots of lobster mushrooms this year, especially in one area. I did identify one new mushroom along the path, the “Chicken Fat Mushroom”, a rather odd name for a mushroom. It is also sometimes called “American Slippery Jack”, which is just as odd for a name.
Scramble, my country squirrel, was around. When I got to his usual spot he was nowhere to be seen, so I called out his name. It took about 2 minutes and he came scampering through the trees and right over to where I was. I tossed him the peanuts, he grabbed one happily and off he went to take it home. He eventually took all of the peanuts back to his home somewhere further from the path.
He must have recognized my voice from wherever his was at the start. Nice to know he remembers even though I do not make it out very often anymore. I thank you all very much for stopping by today. Have a very wonderful day and God bless!
Steve and Muffin.
©2022 Steve McLeod.
The Investigators, Inc. The Northern Mystery. Chapter 1. Yukon.
Well, here we are, nicely rested from our last case, everyone is feeling great and we are ready for another case. Most are ready anyway. I am not so sure about Muffin, MC and Storm. They are busy figuring out their new play structure. Baldwin promised to make them anything they wanted instead of buying something. That way it would be unique, just for them.
They were wildly enthusiastic about this idea but I think Baldwin is having second thoughts. They keep coming up with new ideas and his planner is going crazy making up new drawings all the time. But the cats are having fun and it is certainly keeping them occupied. But that means they are not thinking about going on another case right now. So maybe we will have to leave them at home this time.
But we did get this request for help from a couple in Canada. It seems their grandparents left a rather large inheritance for anyone in the family that could figure out the “riddle” for finding this inheritance. I think we had something like this one other time. But this one seems a bit different since the note specifically says there will be traveling necessary to find this treasure. Everyone in the family has had a try at locating it but has failed, so now it is the turn of this couple.
Their names are Frank and Janice McCreary. Muffin comes over after I finish reading the letter. Meow,meow.=It handwritten letter, that mean they have no money so we not get paid. Say no. We not pack. Off she goes again. “What is all that?”, asked Sigurbjorn. “Oh, some of you do not know about this,” I said, “when we first started as a PI business, every time we had a handwritten letter from someone we never did get paid.
That meant we did not have much money to work with until our next case came along, which might be a while.” Muffin reappears in the room. Meow,meow!=It mean we starve for maybe a month because we not get paid. And we not have car so we have to walk everywhere. “Hey now, I did the walking, you sat on my shoulder,” I reminded her. Meow,meow.=And shoulder boney, not comfy at all. “You did not complain at the time,” I said. Meow,meow.=Well, better than sore feetsies.
Off she goes again. Everyone chuckles. “Well, I guess we could go talk with the people and see if it might be worthwhile,” said Kat, “at least it seems like something a bit easier for a change.” “And it might be fun too,” said Galyna, “a treasure hunt!” Everyone agreed. So we decided to go and talk with the people anyway, easy to tell just from a talk whether it will be worth for us to get involved in a simple treasure hunt. So Kat, Sigurbjorn, Kristina, Galyna and I were the ones to go and talk.
The cats were happy to sit this part out at home and plan their play structure. We were soon flying across the Atlantic Ocean all the way to the Yukon Territory of Canada, site of a major gold rush in the distant past. So perhaps this treasure is gold that we would be after. We phoned home after arrival in Canada, as our new rules outline, to keep in touch regularly with our head office, which is Baldwin’s office. Then we phoned again after arriving in Dawson City, or more officially, the City of Dawson.
This was the major center during the Klondike Gold Rush from about 1896 to 1899. Dawson city was established in 1896 at the beginning of the gold rush. It quickly reached a population of about 17,000 at the time though now it is only about 1,300. A day after our arrival in Dawson, Frank McCreary called our office asking where we were.
Baldwin nearly choked on his coffee when he heard that question! He called the team together immediately to let them know we had disappeared. He had tried to call us but without success. Poor Muffin was so upset that she did not go along with us! “Rock, you will take the team over there to find out what happened to them,” he began, “and check out the McCreary couple, just because he called does not mean he is innocent.”
Jennifer, Carine, Angel and Storm stayed home with Annelie. Rock took Rossana, Sovia, Tracy, Benson, Muffin and MC, plus a new team member, Susanna. Soon they were in the air, sleeping most of the way so they would be well rested upon arrival and ready to look for us…
To Be Continued.
©2022 Steve McLeod.
Steve`s Country 