RK. That has happened to me.
I think what happens is that posting the new photo is the last thing he does.
Makes sense.
So? He was still working on it when you showed up.
Good Morning. I have been up a while. I have had breakfast, exercised, and waited on the blog to change. After this I will go get ready for the day. 8:30 Google Meet with my agents.
***I have a free Google Meet Account with no time limit and unlimited attendees****
Surgery went well yesterday. It took about twice as long as we were told it would take. I was beginning to get worried. I remained calm when the doctor came to the waiting area and took me to a private room. Finally! She said everything went well. It took so long because someone, and I am not saying who, has been on an eating binge and is fat. I mean who eats two chocolate covered ice cream bars at a time???? The surgeon had to remove fat to get the device inserted and then push the leads through to where they need to go. She is going to talk to him in two weeks about this.
In the last 18 months I have lost 25 pounds. T told the doctor I don’t want to be that person who loses weight and decides everyone around me is fat and nag them. Of course I do have him a discounted link to Weight Watchers. He is going to have to lose weight differently than he has in the past.
Now for the humor of the whole day. Sunday I washed the sheets in hot water with a little bleach then made the bed. Mr. P took a shower with the antibiotic whatever it is they give you to wash with before surgery. Yesterday he got up and took another shower with it before we went to the hospital. He came home and went to bed afterwards to sleep off the anesthesia.
Last night? Well, let’s just say that I am married to the Princess from the Princess and the Pea. There was a crease in the bed from the down mattress pad under the sheet. He fussed and complained until I completely stripped the bed and remade it. I had been up 19 hours at that point and told him he was the Princess from the Princess and the Pea.
Good morning. Husband and daughter are off to Boise today. They will stay with sis in law as daughter is no longer aloud to stay at oldest daughter’s house. They are bringing home youngest daughter from her Ann with an E experience.
Morning! Do we know what kind of bird is nesting up there? We are having so much fun birdwatching around here lately…it’s the little things in life don’t ya know?
Through this stay-at-home thing we’ve been doing for the last couple months, I have learned something about myself – I have spring allergies! I guess in the past I would always assume that I merely had a mild cold that lasted a long time. But this year, with my only contacts being Nightingale and Boy, and neither of them having a cold, it dawned on me that these cold symptoms are really from allergies.
We’re trying to keep the swallows from nesting on our house this year. They love the spot just above the guest room window. I don’t mind having swallows in the yard and the babies are so cute, but when they leave the nest, all the mites make their way into the house – yuck! They don’t stick around but until they all die out, it’s not so fun. We hung CDs to turn and flash in the breeze and built them a ledge out on the shop to nest on. If necessary, I’m going out there with wax paper to cover over where they like to build.
We’re also likely to have to put an electric fence around the garden this year as there are two bull elk that love our yard this spring. Wandering through at all hours and bedding down close to the house. Nice to see but we need to be careful letting the dogs out without checking for them first.
Saw this in my work email today, sounds like positive news:
COVID-19: Patients Improve After Heart Cell Therapy
Experimental Treatment Is Designed to Fight Fatal Immune Response in Coronavirus Patients
LOS ANGELES (May 12, 2020) — Four of six critically ill COVID-19 (coronavirus) patients significantly improved after receiving an experimental therapeutic designed to reduce inflammation, a major cause of death from this disease, according to a case series published by Cedars-Sinai and Capricor Therapeutics. The four patients got well enough to be discharged from the hospital.
The therapeutic, known as CAP-1002, contains cardiosphere-derived cells (CDCs) that are grown in the laboratory from human heart tissues. Previous preclinical and clinical research showed that the CDCs, originally created by a process developed to treat heart failure, can help the whole body.
Investigators emphasized that the patient outcomes, while encouraging, are not sufficient to prove that CAP-1002 is safe and effective for treating COVID-19 because this was not a clinical trial with a control group.
The case series, published today in the scientific journal Basic Research in Cardiology, is believed to be the first peer-reviewed report on using a cell therapy in critically ill COVID-19 patients, according to Eduardo Marbán, MD, PhD, executive director of the Smidt Heart Institute at Cedars-Sinai.
All six patients in the case series suffered from respiratory failure and required supplemental oxygen prior to receiving the cell therapy; five were on ventilators. Within four days after infusion with CAP-1002, four patients were able to breathe without respiratory support, and within less than three weeks, the four were well enough to be discharged from the hospital. As of April 28, the two other patients remained hospitalized in intensive care.
Kizzie, I know I have spring allergies, but I have been scaring myself because it has been so cold that plants are delaying pollen release, so I was not sure if my allergy symptoms are symptoms of illness. But it is so windy that undoubtedly pollen is being carried up from further south. I am trying to see if allergy medication will help this year, as my asthma always gets much worse during this season, as in needing bed rest worse, and I want to keep working.
Elk and other deer have not been a problem here since we put up the eight foot deer fence around the five acres. Nor have porcupines. Still have mountain lions and rattlesnakes though.
Mumsee, we may have to put up a fence one day. We haven’t needed to for the last 9 years, but we’ve only had deer and bear raiding the garden and not badly.
There is a section of town going up a small mountain which is heavily wooded where people sometimes see moose.
We also get a lot of bear sightings. There are also deer, fisher cats (which neither fish nor are they cats), coyotes, and foxes, among our wildlife. My town is a mixture of suburban and rural, and I like it a lot. 🙂
The one time we camped at Yellowstone in September, the elk were coming down from colder elevations and they were even roaming in the campground were we were. It was 17° that evening. An unforgettable experience. They can be noisy creatures!
We have squirrels, chipmunks, shrews, rabbits, birds, cats, dogs, snakes, frogs, and a few coyotes which I have never seen along with a few rabid neighbors!😀 Watch out!👀🐾🚴♀️🚴♂️Oh, and road hogs, a few wild boar, and loose horses have been seen out and about.
Are fisher cats what we simply call fishers, I wonder. They are members of the weasel family, vicious, and kill for the sake of killing. Two years ago, Second in law bought over a hundred chickens to raise, and a fisher got in and slaughtered the entire flock in a night and a day. It was rather horrible, because when they went to feed the chickens in the morning, the pen was littered with corpses, with a handful of frightened survivors huddled together. They did not realize what had happened and thought the heat had maddenned the birds (chickens have been known to peck each other to death) so after cleaning up the corpses, they left the survivors in the pen. The fisher came back, and they returned to find the rest dead
There are wild boar being spotted in southern Ontario. We already have coywolves, coyotes – I have seen both, and they look different -, black bears, sightings of cougars (the Eastern cougar was supposed to be extinct but there have been increased sightings reported), and all the smaller North American predators like fishers, weasels, foxes, raccoons, etc. There is no elk or moose in this immediate area, but when my father was driving from community to community to fix office machinery, he saw moose crossing the road several times. We have seen skunks, porcupines, deer, all manner of birds and wild rodents, beaver, and once, while driving home from a 12 hour shift last autumn, I saw an animal crossing the road that looked like nothing so much as an oppossum.
Saw a very large raccoon lumbering along the curb on the dog walk last night.
I’ve had trouble reaching my vet, Cowboy’s meds need refilling, but all I could get yesterday and this morning were odd busy signals.
I finally found an “888” number for them online this morning and got through on that so I could leave the order on their automated refill line. Then I was able to pop over to the office line; took a while on hold but one of the office regulars finally got to me and said the busy signals are because every line is ringing all the time — they’re down to half staff (not sure if that’s due to cutbacks, furloughs or what, she clearly needed to keep the call short). They’re on shortened hours and are running way behind on everything.
I am still mulling over the Xfinity cable. I spoke with a former co-worker from Art’s office. She said they have buried cables and it does not cause a problem. Is that the newer way it is handled? If the line goes more over in my yard instead of the questionable border line of our properties then my neighbor should not have a say in the matter, correct?
Janice, I don’t know what your question refers to, but it would seem indeed that your neighbor can’t have a say in whether you get cable. Cable companies would know to put it in in a legal way, so I wouldn’t worry about it.
Roscuro, re the fisher slaughtering the chickens: My sister and her family once came home from church to find two dogs had jumped the fence and were running from chicken to chicken and killing them. (They would normally have put them away before church but hadn’t had time, but they had a fenced yard.) When they came home, the dogs jumped the fence and ran away.
My mom said many years ago that she never fed raw chicken to a dog, lest it develop a taste for it and kill chickens, and that one story is just one example. I followed that plan and never let Misten have raw chicken. (I would give her a bite of raw hamburger occasionally.)
Yesterday someone posted a photo on Flickr with a red fox clearly not photographed in a natural setting. It was lit by artificial light and eating bits of chicken off the sidewalk. The photographer explained that he/she had cut the raw chicken into small pieces to get the fox to stay longer and have more chances at a photo. And I thought this is wrong on so many levels. First, no, you shouldn’t feed a predator, even a small one. This isn’t a “wildlife” photo at all. But second, there are enough problems with foxes killing chickens without someone deliberately feeding a fox raw chicken and telling him this is a human-approved food source! I did post a note and tried to be gentle, suggesting that if one wanted to feed wild animals, feeding it raw chicken might not be the best choice because of the risk of encouraging it to kill chickens. Maybe I should have added “kill chickens and get shot” because the danger to the fox might have mattered more to the person than whether or not someone’s chickens got killed. But really, no. If you want to feed birds or even squirrels, fine. But please don’t feed foxes or coyotes or bears!
Only concern is trying to live up to God’s desire to keep the peace with people if at all possible. Also, I think how the guy installed it was less invasive for Covid purposes than having to reroute the cable all over the house through the attic and walls. I try to think things through and seek advice on things I have little knowledge about before I make a request for action.
Janice, I don’t know the details of your scenario. Did they trespass on your neighbor’s property? If so, it seems it’s the cable company’s infringement and not yours. And one would think that they would be trained not to do that.
Janice when we lived in town the phone company guy ran a new cable and laid it on top of the privacy fence which was exactly on the property line between us and our neighbor. I asked him if he planned for it to stay that way because it was ugly and we didn’t want it on the fence! He said they run the cable then hire guys to put it underground, which they did. All of our utilities were underground as they are where we live now which is a rural area. Is neighbor concerned about hazards concerning underground utilities?
I stumbled to the kitchen one morning for coffee 2009-2011 and saw something out of the back windows. I couldn’t figure out what it could be until I realized it was an orange 🐈 whose owner had had it shaved. It looked like a miniature 🦁.
All is well here. We are having a whole 🐓 roasted with rosemary and 11 cloves of garlic instead of 40. Frozen broccoli florets – what do you really do with those to make them exciting??? And we have a request for roasted potatoes 🥔.
Master Amos is on an additional medication. That makes 3. This one is for seasonal allergies. I asked the vet today what she would give him first if he was the love of her life. This is what she suggested. He is currently “High maintenance “.
I looked it up online. In dog years he and Mr P are about the same age. I can’t stand to hear him cough and act like he can’t catch his breath. Amos I mean. Mr P is fine on breathing.
Cheryl, farmers here have a right to shoot animal predators, including dogs, who are threatening their livestock. Every once in a while, there will be a letter or article in the newspaper from someone upset that their dog or dogs, whom they let run loose, were killed because they were chasing cattle or other livestock. I always want to say to them that a dog who harasses and harms animals is a dangerous pet.
“Fishers are pretty vicious,” said Michelle Johnson, the animal control officer in West Greenwich. The fisher belongs to the mustelid family, which includes weasels, otters and wolverines. It has the aggressive, carnivorous temperament of a wolverine and can climb trees like a marten.Jun 10, 2008 — NYT, Fishers, Fierce Predators, Make a Home in the Suburbs
Hmmm. Don’t think we have them here (yet). They sound unpleasant.
I remember reading in the old Canadian school readers my mother had about how the fisher is one of the few predators that hunt porcupine. It will tunnel through the snow and attack from underneath, where the quills do not protect the porcupine. The only more fearsome member of the weasel family would be the wolverine, which are here in the province, but much further north.
With the first call, the neighbor was concerned with the cable laying across the grass on the assumed property line. She was concerned about mowing. Then I said it would be buried. She was reminded of three years ago when her plumbing problem required a crew to work at the property line. Those people used a small bulldozer and messed up a big area of my yard. It has never been the same. They replanted but not with what I had planted out there. She had been almost in tears. I said she was a person and more important than the lawn. I did not make a big deal. Now she can’t understand why they want to bury our cable when all others on our street are up in the air. She does not want a repeat of the former dig problems. She said the guy was in her back yard, but I think she means the narrow area between our two fences where he ran the cable in the back for a short distance. I can ask that it be just inside our fence instead of just outside our fence. I think he did not want to run it in the small area by our patio because of disturbing plantings and a tree trunk may be in the way there, so maybe we will cut down the tree? But it won’t matter. I am trying to get my head around all the nuances of this problem before I call Xfinity. When she had the plumbing problem she found out that water pipes do run underground in that area near the edge of our yard. Before digging to hide the cable, utilities are suppose to mark any areas with little yellow flags where they are not suppose to dig according to what I read online. This should not be so difficult, but this is us.
Janice, it gets complicated when you have neighbors and all of the things that are buried that we don’t even think about. That is why they have to have the other utilities come mark it. We had to have that done out in the middle of nowhere. Surprising how many things are there.
I read an interesting article on the difference between reclaiming ranch land compared to built on land. Farmers and ranchers hear a lot about how hard they are on the planet, but reclaiming city land is huge with all the concrete, dumps, buried cable, buried pipes, buried this that and the other.
Which is why it is beyond absurd to require PG&E to bury all the electrical lines in northern California. (As in, from San Francisco to Oregon!)
Not only do the TV and phone lines require their own separate trench, but PG&E would have to get permission from every person whose property they crossed.
These, of course, are the same people who insist upon planting trees under the powerlines and won’t allow PG&E to trim them back.
We are such a stiff necked people. Is it any wonder God has to go to such extreme lengths to get our attention?
Phone interview I need for a story (to finish writing tomorrow, editors are holding it a day) may not come through now until 7 p.m. tonight.
Fed the dogs late again today 😦 They probably should take lessons from the cat and start shoving things off tables and countertops to get my attention. Her meals (plural) are always delivered on time.
… any further easing of the lockdown of sorts that the county and the City of Angels have been under since late March will only be a reality if there is a “dramatic change to the virus and tools at hand.”
As of Monday, confirmed cases of COVID-19 and deaths in L.A. County continued to be on the rise. Heading into a full briefing later this afternoon, the L.A. County Public Health office said that the area has had over 32,250 cases and more than 1,560 fatalities as of 8 PM May 10. Those figures have moved up yet again, a civic source tells Deadline. …
______________________
Your Covid numbers, DJ, are very similar to the numbers for the state of Georgia. I think we have more than the number of cases you named, but the number of deaths is not quite as high. Our African American or Black communities are especially hard hit. That is very sad to me. They of course are the ones who have the most abortions, too.
Roscuro or any other medical people, do you have opinions on this? That the corona virus is nowhere near as dangerous as we’ve been told and it’s time to reopen the economy? This is personal because (1) I’d rather be in church when it opens and (2) my family has a reunion in another state next month, and I can’t be at either unless my husband is convinced it’s safe.
The ‘opinions’ are many and varied. Then there is the issue of the economic and whether that’s been an overreaction. My own sense is those things will only be sorted out in the aftermath, once we have a lot more information than we do now.
But yes, as Cheryl says, in the midst of it, all of it becomes quite confusing.
In terms of the church — We’re now realizing that this whole thing may last a lot longer than anyone first envisioned; therefore, is it riskier to not meet? Or to meet, with precautions, perhaps before it is “allowed”?
In our case, the concern is that there is a flock to be cared for, and will the flock begin to scatter? How are congregation members doing, spiritually? Not seeing each other face to face, regularly, over what may be a long period of time, raises some of those concerns and questions.
And with our toxic politics (sadly) now coloring so much of the debate, it is becoming quite the mess. I know people across the spectrum on this issue, both within and without the church.
Cheryl, the last entry in that rant is April 23. In the lifespan of a disease only isolated 5 months ago, that is a long time, so the claims are somewhat out of date. There are just over 4 million cases of COVID-19, and nearly 300,000 deaths (291,924) as if today. One of the claims made in the rant is that the disease is in no way dangerous to children, yet there have been three children who have now died in NY of a condition similar to something called Kawasaki syndrome, which is essentially an inflammation of the blood vessels, and these children and more who only became critically ill with the same syndrome, developed it after having COVID-19. The rant also claims exaggerated numbers of deaths, but, as I have pointed out several times now, COVID-19 is not just capable of infecting the respiratory tract and causing death from pneumonia. The fact it can infect the kidneys, intestines, and blood vessels means that other forms of death, such as stroke and heart attack, could also be attributed to it when they occur in an infected person. My cousin was hospitalized after experiencing uncontrollable vomiting, to the point where he was unable to keep anything down. Dehydration also can kill. Ontario just lost a nurse to this, on the 200th anniversary of Nightingale’s birth. He was working in a nursing home where five residents have died, one of the more contained nursing home outbreaks in the province. Three personal support workers (similar to nurse’s aids) have died of it. Elsewher, healthcare workers are also dying: https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/927976. That list includes a paramedic in his early twenties, and not a few workers in their 30s and 40s. Influenza does not kill frontline workers like this. Incidentally, influenza is not a reportable illness to public health, so yearly cases of influenza are an estimate, based on projections from known cases, rate of infection, and the seasonal rise seen in hospitalizations from respiratory illness. COVID-19 is a reportable illness, so numbers are based on actual lab confirmed cases.
Oh, and finally, for those who keep saying that death due to COVID-19 related complications is not the same as dying from COVID-19, it is usually secondary bacterial pneumonia to influenza that kills. COVID-19 is actually a much more direct threat than influenza.
Wandering Views 
Good morning. I have seen that crew before.
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Well, maybe not that crew, but one similar. Was reading yesterday’s blog when the photo changed.
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RK. That has happened to me.
I think what happens is that posting the new photo is the last thing he does.
Makes sense.
So? He was still working on it when you showed up.
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Good Morning. I have been up a while. I have had breakfast, exercised, and waited on the blog to change. After this I will go get ready for the day. 8:30 Google Meet with my agents.
***I have a free Google Meet Account with no time limit and unlimited attendees****
Surgery went well yesterday. It took about twice as long as we were told it would take. I was beginning to get worried. I remained calm when the doctor came to the waiting area and took me to a private room. Finally! She said everything went well. It took so long because someone, and I am not saying who, has been on an eating binge and is fat. I mean who eats two chocolate covered ice cream bars at a time???? The surgeon had to remove fat to get the device inserted and then push the leads through to where they need to go. She is going to talk to him in two weeks about this.
In the last 18 months I have lost 25 pounds. T told the doctor I don’t want to be that person who loses weight and decides everyone around me is fat and nag them. Of course I do have him a discounted link to Weight Watchers. He is going to have to lose weight differently than he has in the past.
Now for the humor of the whole day. Sunday I washed the sheets in hot water with a little bleach then made the bed. Mr. P took a shower with the antibiotic whatever it is they give you to wash with before surgery. Yesterday he got up and took another shower with it before we went to the hospital. He came home and went to bed afterwards to sleep off the anesthesia.
Last night? Well, let’s just say that I am married to the Princess from the Princess and the Pea. There was a crease in the bed from the down mattress pad under the sheet. He fussed and complained until I completely stripped the bed and remade it. I had been up 19 hours at that point and told him he was the Princess from the Princess and the Pea.
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Chas at 8:06…
Correct! 🙂
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Good morning! On my small phone screen I can not tell if that is the mama or a baby peeping over the nest.
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Good morning. Husband and daughter are off to Boise today. They will stay with sis in law as daughter is no longer aloud to stay at oldest daughter’s house. They are bringing home youngest daughter from her Ann with an E experience.
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It’s the mama bird. The next day I got a pic of the papa bird. I sent that to AJ too.
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Morning! Do we know what kind of bird is nesting up there? We are having so much fun birdwatching around here lately…it’s the little things in life don’t ya know?
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I believe it’s a house finch, based on coloring and Audubon Society description.
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Through this stay-at-home thing we’ve been doing for the last couple months, I have learned something about myself – I have spring allergies! I guess in the past I would always assume that I merely had a mild cold that lasted a long time. But this year, with my only contacts being Nightingale and Boy, and neither of them having a cold, it dawned on me that these cold symptoms are really from allergies.
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We’re trying to keep the swallows from nesting on our house this year. They love the spot just above the guest room window. I don’t mind having swallows in the yard and the babies are so cute, but when they leave the nest, all the mites make their way into the house – yuck! They don’t stick around but until they all die out, it’s not so fun. We hung CDs to turn and flash in the breeze and built them a ledge out on the shop to nest on. If necessary, I’m going out there with wax paper to cover over where they like to build.
We’re also likely to have to put an electric fence around the garden this year as there are two bull elk that love our yard this spring. Wandering through at all hours and bedding down close to the house. Nice to see but we need to be careful letting the dogs out without checking for them first.
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Well, elk are one thing we do not have to worry about. Another thing to be grateful for. 🙂
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No elk here either.
Cute little bird.
Saw this in my work email today, sounds like positive news:
COVID-19: Patients Improve After Heart Cell Therapy
Experimental Treatment Is Designed to Fight Fatal Immune Response in Coronavirus Patients
LOS ANGELES (May 12, 2020) — Four of six critically ill COVID-19 (coronavirus) patients significantly improved after receiving an experimental therapeutic designed to reduce inflammation, a major cause of death from this disease, according to a case series published by Cedars-Sinai and Capricor Therapeutics. The four patients got well enough to be discharged from the hospital.
The therapeutic, known as CAP-1002, contains cardiosphere-derived cells (CDCs) that are grown in the laboratory from human heart tissues. Previous preclinical and clinical research showed that the CDCs, originally created by a process developed to treat heart failure, can help the whole body.
Investigators emphasized that the patient outcomes, while encouraging, are not sufficient to prove that CAP-1002 is safe and effective for treating COVID-19 because this was not a clinical trial with a control group.
The case series, published today in the scientific journal Basic Research in Cardiology, is believed to be the first peer-reviewed report on using a cell therapy in critically ill COVID-19 patients, according to Eduardo Marbán, MD, PhD, executive director of the Smidt Heart Institute at Cedars-Sinai.
All six patients in the case series suffered from respiratory failure and required supplemental oxygen prior to receiving the cell therapy; five were on ventilators. Within four days after infusion with CAP-1002, four patients were able to breathe without respiratory support, and within less than three weeks, the four were well enough to be discharged from the hospital. As of April 28, the two other patients remained hospitalized in intensive care.
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Kizzie, I know I have spring allergies, but I have been scaring myself because it has been so cold that plants are delaying pollen release, so I was not sure if my allergy symptoms are symptoms of illness. But it is so windy that undoubtedly pollen is being carried up from further south. I am trying to see if allergy medication will help this year, as my asthma always gets much worse during this season, as in needing bed rest worse, and I want to keep working.
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Elk and other deer have not been a problem here since we put up the eight foot deer fence around the five acres. Nor have porcupines. Still have mountain lions and rattlesnakes though.
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Mumsee, we may have to put up a fence one day. We haven’t needed to for the last 9 years, but we’ve only had deer and bear raiding the garden and not badly.
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There is a section of town going up a small mountain which is heavily wooded where people sometimes see moose.
We also get a lot of bear sightings. There are also deer, fisher cats (which neither fish nor are they cats), coyotes, and foxes, among our wildlife. My town is a mixture of suburban and rural, and I like it a lot. 🙂
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The one time we camped at Yellowstone in September, the elk were coming down from colder elevations and they were even roaming in the campground were we were. It was 17° that evening. An unforgettable experience. They can be noisy creatures!
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No elk or bear here, but occasionally some deer come out of the woods by the golf course. Lots of rabbit, squirrels and ground squirrels.
And a cat that looks like its owner wanted a poodle by the way it got groomed.
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Poor kitty!😳🙀 I can not imagine.
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We have squirrels, chipmunks, shrews, rabbits, birds, cats, dogs, snakes, frogs, and a few coyotes which I have never seen along with a few rabid neighbors!😀 Watch out!👀🐾🚴♀️🚴♂️Oh, and road hogs, a few wild boar, and loose horses have been seen out and about.
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Are fisher cats what we simply call fishers, I wonder. They are members of the weasel family, vicious, and kill for the sake of killing. Two years ago, Second in law bought over a hundred chickens to raise, and a fisher got in and slaughtered the entire flock in a night and a day. It was rather horrible, because when they went to feed the chickens in the morning, the pen was littered with corpses, with a handful of frightened survivors huddled together. They did not realize what had happened and thought the heat had maddenned the birds (chickens have been known to peck each other to death) so after cleaning up the corpses, they left the survivors in the pen. The fisher came back, and they returned to find the rest dead
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My brother has been dealing with a wily weasel getting into his chicken pin. Opossums and raccoons are much easier to catch.
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There are wild boar being spotted in southern Ontario. We already have coywolves, coyotes – I have seen both, and they look different -, black bears, sightings of cougars (the Eastern cougar was supposed to be extinct but there have been increased sightings reported), and all the smaller North American predators like fishers, weasels, foxes, raccoons, etc. There is no elk or moose in this immediate area, but when my father was driving from community to community to fix office machinery, he saw moose crossing the road several times. We have seen skunks, porcupines, deer, all manner of birds and wild rodents, beaver, and once, while driving home from a 12 hour shift last autumn, I saw an animal crossing the road that looked like nothing so much as an oppossum.
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Oh, those poor chickens 😦
Saw a very large raccoon lumbering along the curb on the dog walk last night.
I’ve had trouble reaching my vet, Cowboy’s meds need refilling, but all I could get yesterday and this morning were odd busy signals.
I finally found an “888” number for them online this morning and got through on that so I could leave the order on their automated refill line. Then I was able to pop over to the office line; took a while on hold but one of the office regulars finally got to me and said the busy signals are because every line is ringing all the time — they’re down to half staff (not sure if that’s due to cutbacks, furloughs or what, she clearly needed to keep the call short). They’re on shortened hours and are running way behind on everything.
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I am still mulling over the Xfinity cable. I spoke with a former co-worker from Art’s office. She said they have buried cables and it does not cause a problem. Is that the newer way it is handled? If the line goes more over in my yard instead of the questionable border line of our properties then my neighbor should not have a say in the matter, correct?
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Janice, I don’t know what your question refers to, but it would seem indeed that your neighbor can’t have a say in whether you get cable. Cable companies would know to put it in in a legal way, so I wouldn’t worry about it.
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Roscuro, re the fisher slaughtering the chickens: My sister and her family once came home from church to find two dogs had jumped the fence and were running from chicken to chicken and killing them. (They would normally have put them away before church but hadn’t had time, but they had a fenced yard.) When they came home, the dogs jumped the fence and ran away.
My mom said many years ago that she never fed raw chicken to a dog, lest it develop a taste for it and kill chickens, and that one story is just one example. I followed that plan and never let Misten have raw chicken. (I would give her a bite of raw hamburger occasionally.)
Yesterday someone posted a photo on Flickr with a red fox clearly not photographed in a natural setting. It was lit by artificial light and eating bits of chicken off the sidewalk. The photographer explained that he/she had cut the raw chicken into small pieces to get the fox to stay longer and have more chances at a photo. And I thought this is wrong on so many levels. First, no, you shouldn’t feed a predator, even a small one. This isn’t a “wildlife” photo at all. But second, there are enough problems with foxes killing chickens without someone deliberately feeding a fox raw chicken and telling him this is a human-approved food source! I did post a note and tried to be gentle, suggesting that if one wanted to feed wild animals, feeding it raw chicken might not be the best choice because of the risk of encouraging it to kill chickens. Maybe I should have added “kill chickens and get shot” because the danger to the fox might have mattered more to the person than whether or not someone’s chickens got killed. But really, no. If you want to feed birds or even squirrels, fine. But please don’t feed foxes or coyotes or bears!
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Only concern is trying to live up to God’s desire to keep the peace with people if at all possible. Also, I think how the guy installed it was less invasive for Covid purposes than having to reroute the cable all over the house through the attic and walls. I try to think things through and seek advice on things I have little knowledge about before I make a request for action.
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Janice, I don’t know the details of your scenario. Did they trespass on your neighbor’s property? If so, it seems it’s the cable company’s infringement and not yours. And one would think that they would be trained not to do that.
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Roscuro – Yes, fishers and fisher cats are the same thing. I’ve seen them referred to as fishers, but around here, “cats” is added on.
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Janice when we lived in town the phone company guy ran a new cable and laid it on top of the privacy fence which was exactly on the property line between us and our neighbor. I asked him if he planned for it to stay that way because it was ugly and we didn’t want it on the fence! He said they run the cable then hire guys to put it underground, which they did. All of our utilities were underground as they are where we live now which is a rural area. Is neighbor concerned about hazards concerning underground utilities?
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I stumbled to the kitchen one morning for coffee 2009-2011 and saw something out of the back windows. I couldn’t figure out what it could be until I realized it was an orange 🐈 whose owner had had it shaved. It looked like a miniature 🦁.
All is well here. We are having a whole 🐓 roasted with rosemary and 11 cloves of garlic instead of 40. Frozen broccoli florets – what do you really do with those to make them exciting??? And we have a request for roasted potatoes 🥔.
Master Amos is on an additional medication. That makes 3. This one is for seasonal allergies. I asked the vet today what she would give him first if he was the love of her life. This is what she suggested. He is currently “High maintenance “.
I looked it up online. In dog years he and Mr P are about the same age. I can’t stand to hear him cough and act like he can’t catch his breath. Amos I mean. Mr P is fine on breathing.
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Cheryl, farmers here have a right to shoot animal predators, including dogs, who are threatening their livestock. Every once in a while, there will be a letter or article in the newspaper from someone upset that their dog or dogs, whom they let run loose, were killed because they were chasing cattle or other livestock. I always want to say to them that a dog who harasses and harms animals is a dangerous pet.
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“Fishers are pretty vicious,” said Michelle Johnson, the animal control officer in West Greenwich. The fisher belongs to the mustelid family, which includes weasels, otters and wolverines. It has the aggressive, carnivorous temperament of a wolverine and can climb trees like a marten.Jun 10, 2008 — NYT, Fishers, Fierce Predators, Make a Home in the Suburbs
Hmmm. Don’t think we have them here (yet). They sound unpleasant.
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Okay, I just sent out the Zoom meeting notice for tomorrow.
Let me know if you didn’t get it.
I’ve been in 1930s China most of the day. Wow, was that a grim time, though I knew it. 😦
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I remember reading in the old Canadian school readers my mother had about how the fisher is one of the few predators that hunt porcupine. It will tunnel through the snow and attack from underneath, where the quills do not protect the porcupine. The only more fearsome member of the weasel family would be the wolverine, which are here in the province, but much further north.
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With the first call, the neighbor was concerned with the cable laying across the grass on the assumed property line. She was concerned about mowing. Then I said it would be buried. She was reminded of three years ago when her plumbing problem required a crew to work at the property line. Those people used a small bulldozer and messed up a big area of my yard. It has never been the same. They replanted but not with what I had planted out there. She had been almost in tears. I said she was a person and more important than the lawn. I did not make a big deal. Now she can’t understand why they want to bury our cable when all others on our street are up in the air. She does not want a repeat of the former dig problems. She said the guy was in her back yard, but I think she means the narrow area between our two fences where he ran the cable in the back for a short distance. I can ask that it be just inside our fence instead of just outside our fence. I think he did not want to run it in the small area by our patio because of disturbing plantings and a tree trunk may be in the way there, so maybe we will cut down the tree? But it won’t matter. I am trying to get my head around all the nuances of this problem before I call Xfinity. When she had the plumbing problem she found out that water pipes do run underground in that area near the edge of our yard. Before digging to hide the cable, utilities are suppose to mark any areas with little yellow flags where they are not suppose to dig according to what I read online. This should not be so difficult, but this is us.
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Janice, it gets complicated when you have neighbors and all of the things that are buried that we don’t even think about. That is why they have to have the other utilities come mark it. We had to have that done out in the middle of nowhere. Surprising how many things are there.
I read an interesting article on the difference between reclaiming ranch land compared to built on land. Farmers and ranchers hear a lot about how hard they are on the planet, but reclaiming city land is huge with all the concrete, dumps, buried cable, buried pipes, buried this that and the other.
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Janice, and I am glad to be reminded that you have your head on straight and know the neighbor and her concerns matter.
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Which is why it is beyond absurd to require PG&E to bury all the electrical lines in northern California. (As in, from San Francisco to Oregon!)
Not only do the TV and phone lines require their own separate trench, but PG&E would have to get permission from every person whose property they crossed.
These, of course, are the same people who insist upon planting trees under the powerlines and won’t allow PG&E to trim them back.
We are such a stiff necked people. Is it any wonder God has to go to such extreme lengths to get our attention?
😦
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Janice, that makes sense. If you can get them to make sure they stay on your property, I imagine that would be helpful.
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Phone interview I need for a story (to finish writing tomorrow, editors are holding it a day) may not come through now until 7 p.m. tonight.
Fed the dogs late again today 😦 They probably should take lessons from the cat and start shoving things off tables and countertops to get my attention. Her meals (plural) are always delivered on time.
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Breaking News: Wearing a mask inside your home is now highly recommended. Not so much to stop COVI D-19, but to stop eating.
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Meanwhile:
Headline: Coronavirus Stay-At-Home Orders Likely Going Until Summer, L.A. County Public Health Chief Says As Deaths Rise
https://deadline.com/2020/05/los-angeles-county-stay-at-home-order-extention-likely-1202932657/
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… any further easing of the lockdown of sorts that the county and the City of Angels have been under since late March will only be a reality if there is a “dramatic change to the virus and tools at hand.”
As of Monday, confirmed cases of COVID-19 and deaths in L.A. County continued to be on the rise. Heading into a full briefing later this afternoon, the L.A. County Public Health office said that the area has had over 32,250 cases and more than 1,560 fatalities as of 8 PM May 10. Those figures have moved up yet again, a civic source tells Deadline. …
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Your Covid numbers, DJ, are very similar to the numbers for the state of Georgia. I think we have more than the number of cases you named, but the number of deaths is not quite as high. Our African American or Black communities are especially hard hit. That is very sad to me. They of course are the ones who have the most abortions, too.
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Roscuro or any other medical people, do you have opinions on this? That the corona virus is nowhere near as dangerous as we’ve been told and it’s time to reopen the economy? This is personal because (1) I’d rather be in church when it opens and (2) my family has a reunion in another state next month, and I can’t be at either unless my husband is convinced it’s safe.
https://coronavirustruths.godaddysites.com/
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The ‘opinions’ are many and varied. Then there is the issue of the economic and whether that’s been an overreaction. My own sense is those things will only be sorted out in the aftermath, once we have a lot more information than we do now.
But yes, as Cheryl says, in the midst of it, all of it becomes quite confusing.
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In terms of the church — We’re now realizing that this whole thing may last a lot longer than anyone first envisioned; therefore, is it riskier to not meet? Or to meet, with precautions, perhaps before it is “allowed”?
In our case, the concern is that there is a flock to be cared for, and will the flock begin to scatter? How are congregation members doing, spiritually? Not seeing each other face to face, regularly, over what may be a long period of time, raises some of those concerns and questions.
And with our toxic politics (sadly) now coloring so much of the debate, it is becoming quite the mess. I know people across the spectrum on this issue, both within and without the church.
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Cheryl, the last entry in that rant is April 23. In the lifespan of a disease only isolated 5 months ago, that is a long time, so the claims are somewhat out of date. There are just over 4 million cases of COVID-19, and nearly 300,000 deaths (291,924) as if today. One of the claims made in the rant is that the disease is in no way dangerous to children, yet there have been three children who have now died in NY of a condition similar to something called Kawasaki syndrome, which is essentially an inflammation of the blood vessels, and these children and more who only became critically ill with the same syndrome, developed it after having COVID-19. The rant also claims exaggerated numbers of deaths, but, as I have pointed out several times now, COVID-19 is not just capable of infecting the respiratory tract and causing death from pneumonia. The fact it can infect the kidneys, intestines, and blood vessels means that other forms of death, such as stroke and heart attack, could also be attributed to it when they occur in an infected person. My cousin was hospitalized after experiencing uncontrollable vomiting, to the point where he was unable to keep anything down. Dehydration also can kill. Ontario just lost a nurse to this, on the 200th anniversary of Nightingale’s birth. He was working in a nursing home where five residents have died, one of the more contained nursing home outbreaks in the province. Three personal support workers (similar to nurse’s aids) have died of it. Elsewher, healthcare workers are also dying: https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/927976. That list includes a paramedic in his early twenties, and not a few workers in their 30s and 40s. Influenza does not kill frontline workers like this. Incidentally, influenza is not a reportable illness to public health, so yearly cases of influenza are an estimate, based on projections from known cases, rate of infection, and the seasonal rise seen in hospitalizations from respiratory illness. COVID-19 is a reportable illness, so numbers are based on actual lab confirmed cases.
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Oh, and finally, for those who keep saying that death due to COVID-19 related complications is not the same as dying from COVID-19, it is usually secondary bacterial pneumonia to influenza that kills. COVID-19 is actually a much more direct threat than influenza.
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Meanwhile in our part of California, we currently have no cases.
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