Steve`s Country
For a smile as wide as a country sunrise
Night Visitors.
Hello everyone! I hope that you are all having a wonderful week so far. We had a beautiful sunny day on Monday. More about that another time however. This has been a very wet autumn. And I don’t mean official autumn, but our northern autumn, which we have had for 5 weeks now. Of course our autumn doesn’t normally begin so early. But it did this year. At least for temperatures.
There has been a little, noisy, visitor for the last few nights. A raccoon. I call him Rocky. He is a younger one and likely weighs no more than Muffin. But Rocky looks bigger with all that fur. I think he likes Muffin. I have some plastic milk crates sitting in front of the window. Rocky climbs on them to look in the window at Muffin. She was scared at first. No more. At 4:30 this morning, Rocky shows up. Muffin was at the window. She attacked Rocky, scratching at the window, hissing, spitting. Scared Rocky. He fell off the crates. Muffin was so happy and proud! Poor Rocky.
I used to participate in a lot of different bird studies at one time. One such study was trying to determine the breeding range of different species of owls. That meant being out at night looking for owls. That was no easy task. It’s dark. You may remember my encounter with the police doing this. This time I stayed off the main highways and traveled down this lonely country road. Hardly anyone lives along this road, I think there was 3 houses. It was a long winding road.
I would stop now and then, get out and call for owls. I got very good at imitating their calls and they would come flying in nice and close so I could see them. I always chose a night with good moonlight such as that particular night. After a bit I noticed a car coming up behind me, but it stayed back quite a bit. It traveled at the same speed as me and stopped when I stopped. After the third time I was getting a bit nervous. I had already passed the last house. And it was a good distance before arriving at another road. Hmm, what to do?
I was stopped and had just called for owls when 2 of them came flying in. Nice. 2 Great Gray owls. They are large owls and not easy to call in close. I was so excited about this as they are considered a rare owl, so I was very intently watching them. The car behind me had stopped as usual. But this time it started driving slowly up behind me. I was in front of my car, about 20 feet. It was so amazingly quiet on that lonely road. Yet I didn’t even hear this car driving closer until it stopped behind my car. Great. No one got out of the car. That just made me more nervous. I started back to my car.
Just as I got back to the car it happened. Bright light and loud voice saying don’t move. My heart was pounding but at the same time I knew who it was. The police. Two officers got out and came over to question me. There was no problem once I showed my ID. Apparently there had been 2 break ins at one of the houses in the past month. They laughed when I told them what I was doing. It was 1 am, I went back home. Enough excitement for one night.
Night visitors can be so exciting. Or not. I hope you all have a wonderful day and God bless!
Steve and Muffin.
© 2019 Steve McLeod.
Autumn Adventures With Dad.
Hello everyone on this cloudy autumn day! We had a lot of rain and wind over the weekend. That knocked a lot of the nicely colored leaves off the trees. Just when it was starting to look so beautiful with all those different colors. Oh well, there will be more yet. Yesterday was beautiful and sunny, more on that later. Okay, on to adventures!
One warm autumn day dad and I went digging for old bottles. Dad liked insulators better. But occasionally we would go bottle digging. Anyway, we were looking around this old abandoned place and came across what we figured was an old well. Full of water. Wonder if it is a well, I pondered. Most likely, said dad. He put his shovel in a little ways. Looks deep, he said. You only put the shovel in a little, I said. See if you can touch bottom. It will be too deep, said dad. I’ll try, I offered. NO, said dad and he swung the shovel away before I had a chance to grab for it. Unfortunately the shovel hit the side of the well. And it slipped out of dad’s hand.
There was this kind of quiet ‘sploop’. We both stood there watching the shovel disappear from sight down the well. My new shovel, dad said quietly. Looks deep, I said. Bonehead! said dad. That’s good. At least he wasn’t upset about losing his shovel. Oh well, he said, now I won’t be able to dig for bottles. Sure you can, you can use my shovel, I said. I brought my extra folding shovel, so I will use that one. I always liked to be prepared. Especially knowing how accident prone dad was. Dad just looked. He used to do that a lot.
We were digging quite close together in this one spot and finding a few nice old bottles. But not usually a good idea to be so close. Anyway, I was trying to pry something out of the ground. Dad finally stopped digging to see what I was doing. Right then my shovel broke free. And dirt went flying. Right in dad’s face. Oddly, he had his mouth open at the time. He was going to ask what I was doing. Seems he got dirt in his mouth. So now he was sputtering and spitting. Bonehead!, he said. Not sure how he could be enjoying a mouthful of dirt.
Dad decided to take a break and have some coffee. I kept digging for a bit. I found a really nice old bottle and took it over to show dad. Look at this one, I said. I held it right in front of him. Then I brushed a bit more dirt off the bottle. Oh. We both looked down. The dirt landed in dad’s cup of coffee. Dad just looked. And sighed. He used to sigh a lot too. You seem to be having problems today, I said. Today?, he questioned. Here, I’ll get you some more coffee. I reached for the thermos. NO, said dad as he also reached for the thermos. It fell. We both looked.
You should have put the lid on it, I said. I should have stayed home, dad said. Strange. And miss out on all this fun? Oddly, dad didn’t think it was fun. For some reason dad didn’t like digging for old bottles.
I will stop for now. Yes, all these things really did happen. I hope you all have a wonderful day and God bless!
Steve and Muffin.
© 2019 Steve McLeod.
Steve`s Country 