Steve`s Country
For a smile as wide as a country sunrise
Spring Solitude. #5
Good morning on this cloudy Saturday! There sure is a big difference at the feeders now, not many birds are around anymore. I still saw one male redpoll this morning and 4 pine siskins. There were also 4 female purple finches and 8 evening grosbeaks. I have not seen any chickadees yet but there was one nuthatch. Plus there were 5 juncos and a white-crowned sparrow. Sir George and Lady Pearl were here early for their breakfast.
Yesterday there were no chipmunks all morning, but then Skitter showed up at noon and within half an hour all 5 were out here. And now we come to the name for our new chipmunk. All names were on crumpled pieces of paper, to make a nice ball for Muffin to scoop out of the bowl, I got down on the floor with Muffin, showed her the contents and…nothing. She just sat there staring. That was hard to believe. She looked at me.
I promised her treats if she would scoop out one of the balls of paper. She looked, then walked away. Not nice. So I waited. After a while she came back. Great, here we go as she put her paw in the bowl and kind of moved the balls of paper around a bit. She walked away. Sigh. She always likes this game. Guess we will have to try again later. It was such a nice walk to the river on Thursday, as I mentioned previously, even though I had to walk through snow and water.
Hopefully next time most of that snow will be gone, although the water will be around for quite a while. Especially since we are getting a lot more rain over the next 2 days, then again next weekend. And maybe some in between. But May is supposed to be like that, wetter than normal. That will make walking a bit harder because once the ground thaws that one area will be quite deep with water. Oh well, might have to get wet feet.
Walking along through areas that were dry there was that beautiful scent of warm, dried pine needles. I love that. That is solitude. There were many birds all along the path. Yellow-rumped warblers were amazingly plentiful, but they are an upper canopy bird so they stay high in the trees. Since they are so small it is impossible to get a picture of them. Later when they are nest building or feeding young, they will come down lower, so that is a good time for pictures, providing the birds can be found among all the leaves.
In one area full of pine and spruce trees there was a larger number of evening grosbeaks. I wonder if they are planning to nest in that area. It would be the kind of spot they look for. They like to nest close together. It did look like they were picking up nesting material on the ground and bringing it back into the trees. That is solitude. I will have to keep an eye on that area just in case. There were chickadees all along the way, plus juncos and white-throated sparrows. I heard a song sparrow singing just before getting to the river.
All this is solitude. Down at the river I could not hear anything due to the rushing noise of the river. It sounds nice, though I don’t really like not being able to hear other sounds. I stayed there for about half an hour and then returned home. Must admit, that walk back seemed harder than usual, but it has been 8 weeks since my last trip down there. The beauty of wilderness, that is solitude. Outside feeding the birds I heard the loons again. Now that is solitude. I hope you all have a beautiful weekend and God bless!
Steve and Muffin. (Praying for the people of Ukraine)
©2022 Steve McLeod.
The Investigators, Inc. The Sniper Mystery. Chapter 13. Jennifer.
Everyone came running when they heard the shots. “You got Stinger!”, said Carine excitedly to Jennifer. “Well, I…”, Jennifer began to say. “Yes indeed!”, exclaimed Jake, “you should have seen it. First she takes down these 3 guys with those fabulous legs of hers, then out comes her gun and pop, pop, she has the Stinger dead on!” Jennifer looks at Jake. “I was standing by just in case she needed help,” Jake continued, “but she had it all settled.”
They all congratulated Jennifer. Kristina looked at Jennifer and Jennifer gave a little smile, then Kristina went to Jake and whispered, “I don’t believe you.” “Please,” he whispered back, “it has to be this way.” Kristina smiled and nodded her head. They called the police to pick up the 4 men they had captured, Benjamins group had found 2 more.
Meanwhile at the clinic… “Well, guess I will go back to be with Annelie,” said Rock. Kat had been on her phone looking up something. “Rock, my phone,” she said. Rock looked at his, “just like in the desert, someone is trying to get in here.” They alerted the guards, 2 stayed outside the operating room door. “No one goes in there,” said Kat, “no one!” Rock went to check on Annelie first and told Mriya to stay in the room and ready while one guard stood outside the door.
Then they started looking around. They found the guard at the main door lying on the floor dead, so someone was inside. Rock stayed by the door while Kat and a guard went down the hall. They checked the first room but no one was there. As they came back into the hall a man came out of the next room, but the guard shot him. Rock turned to see what was going on and 2 men hiding behind the reception counter jumped over and onto Rock. Not very smart really.
He threw one against the counter knocking him out, the other one he picked up with one arm and hit him hard in the head and he was out as well. Then Kat saw through the window, someone running to a car. She ran to the door and shot the man just as he was getting into the car. A couple more guards ran out to check but no one else was in the car. Seems it was just the four of them. They found a small electronic device on one of the men and when they turned it off their phones were working again, and so were the locks on the clinic.
Now they had something to work with. Now perhaps they can do something to stop this device from working. That will be up to one of Baldwins companies. This could be a dangerous weapon that John now has and we need to find a way to neutralize it. There is nothing like a beautiful sunrise. Carine comes into the library. “What should we have for breakfast everyone?”, she asked. Apparently it was her turn to make breakfast.
“Pancakes!!”, meowed all 3 cats at the same time. Everyone else agreed with that. “Well, in that case, I am going to need some help,” Carine said with a smile. Kat and Angel went to help her and Jennifer came to sit beside me. “I need to tell you something,” she said. “Oh, what is that?”, I asked innocently. She looked at me. “You know already don’t you?”, she asked. “Yes, I do,” I said, “Jake told me.” “I still really do not understand why he did that though,” she said.
“Well, its like this,” I explained, “considering the type of business he is in, it would be bad if news got out that he killed Stinger. Two reasons, it could put a price on his head and no one would likely trust him anymore.” “Hmm, that does make sense,” she said. “He would make a good addition to our team,” said Baldwin, “providing he gave up his old ways.” “And that is not likely,” I said.
Well, it has been a month now and we are all back at the chateau. My gunshot wound was close to my heart but the surgery was very successful and I have healed very nicely. Annelie is fine now too and getting around good as ever. Even Lajla survived her injuries, but she decided to go back home to be closer to her family. We were hoping she would stay, but we can understand her decision.
Muffin is doing very well and is following doctors orders completely. MC is making sure of that. He has healed completely of his wounds too. We have not done anything about John yet and we will just leave him alone for now. One of Baldwin’s companies has been able to find a way around his “device” making it ineffective against us now, though he does not know that yet.
All the listening devices have been taken out of the chateau, they were our “traitor”, plus Shirley who had them installed. She also made sure that only ordinary glass was used in here, but now bulletproof glass has been installed throughout and we have a new security/alarm service in place. We are all glad that case is over and we are getting some much needed rest. And, here come MC and Storm pulling wagons full of vacation brochures!
The End. A new story will be coming soon, “The Ghost Town Mystery”.
©2022 Steve McLeod.
Steve`s Country 