Posts Tagged ‘Rain’
Following Up
Picking up right where I left off yesterday, the story is rain and more rain, and a raccoon that needed to be dealt with once and for all.
Tuesday was a crazy day for Cyndie at home. First, she had to move the horses into the barn for an appointment with Marcus to trim their hooves early in the morning. After cleaning up from that project, she started calling around to see what interest our local authorities might have in our ailing masked bandit.
Since no humans had come in contact with the raccoon, Public Health referred Cyndie to the DNR. They said they didn’t have anyone who could come out, but gave out the number for their biologist. They also suggested she could call the Sheriff.
The Sheriff’s office suggested she call the DNR. Figures.
Eventually, the dispatcher offered to pass on the issue to a Deputy who would call Cyndie back.
Cyndie said she was finally trying to have some breakfast around 10:30 when Delilah started a barking fit at the front door. It was a Deputy Sheriff.
The officer asked if we had any firearms. Nope. Then she offered to shoot it for us.
In her estimation, there was a good chance the coon was suffering from distemper. Regardless the affliction, ailing wildlife is not something you want around for other predators to eat, so she assured Cyndie that it was the right decision to call.
The Deputy elected to use a shotgun, so she could keep a distance. Cyndie said the weapon was almost as long as the petite officer was tall. After several warnings that the shot would be loud, the results possibly messy, that it would startle our horses, that it would be very loud, and that Cyndie didn’t have to look if she didn’t want to, the deed was done.
By the way, this was all accomplished in the rain.
The very kind and helpful officer stayed around to give Cyndie a hand triple-bagging the body and putting it into a closed garbage can for storage until our trash gets picked up.
One good thing about the rain is that it washes away any residual mess that might appeal to our dog on her many walks past that spot in the days ahead.
Delilah is more interested in the sound running water makes as the mini-waterfalls pour over the edges of washouts in the drainage ditch cutting across our fields.
Seems like that water is going to be flowing for days, so she’ll have plenty of distraction.
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Soaking Wet
A flood watch has been issued for a wide area around us through Wednesday because they are expecting we could receive between three or four inches of rain. It’s not that big a deal except, we are already saturated beyond belief. There was an inch in the rain gauge when I got home from work yesterday.
The trails are like soup and the drainage ditch is flowing like a spring melt.
At least our trees are going to be well hydrated heading into winter this year. That’s a bonus I’ll be happy to take.
I don’t think it’s rain that is bothering the raccoon that has become a permanent fixture in the grass beside our north loop trail.
We are leaving it alone because we aren’t sure if the problems it seems to be having might be related to rabies. There is an outside chance it was hit by a car and made its way from the road to that spot, but we are keeping our distance and letting nature take its course, regardless.
The first time we took notice was because it was out and about during the day. It was walking, although not in a completely normal way, and never moving very far away from that area on our property. After three days of seeing it out during the day, we surmised it was not healthy and started giving it a wide berth.
We are careful to keep Delilah on a very short leash because she is very interested in checking out the mysterious visitor.
I’m half hoping some other nocturnal predator might show up to carry the raccoon away so I don’t have to deal with it. If it stays in sight, I’m eventually going to need to check to verify it is no longer living. I’m under the assumption it will not suddenly recover, based on what I’ve witnessed thus far.
I’d like to relocate the body far from our trails so Delilah will no longer be tempted to investigate.
While researching to find out if our local authorities would want us to report possible rabies in wildlife, Cyndie came upon an announcement from September that reported a dead crow was found to have West Nile Virus in our county.
The concerns all seem to focus on actually being bitten, either by a mosquito or a rabid animal. We didn’t come across anything that indicated concern for the possibility of sick animals or a need to report on them.
Maybe all the rain will wash away any germs.
I bet that giant crayfish Cyndie saw a few weeks ago is pretty happy with the moisture. Do crayfish get rabies?
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Still Learning
It’s been five years of horse ownership for us now, and we are still coming upon situations that baffle us. Yesterday, it was a fresh wound on Dezirea’s flank near the point of her hip. There was a dramatic vertical incision, and then a broad area on either side where the hair looks cleanly shaved.
I can’t imagine what it must have looked like when she got cut. Best guess is that she was rubbing up against something with a long, sharp edge. It’s possible that it was even something in the ground and she was rolling around and came in contact with the sharp edge.
We have yet to identify anything that looks like it might be the cause.
I would guess it probably gave her a bit of a jolt when she got cut. It seems likely to me that she would have recoiled or startled in some manner. Must have been a scene in the moment, but by the time we discovered it, she was as calm as if nothing was amiss.
Except for that gaping wound on her side.
We spent most of the day inside, out of the non-stop wetness around here. Dew point and air temperature have been hovering close together and the moisture doesn’t so much fall as rain as it just hovers in the air in a perfect mist.
The ground is thoroughly soaked. Our neighbor and part-time mail carrier told Cyndie that he was still planning to do a second cut and baling of our hay-field, but that was before this very persistent wet weather pattern settled over us. Next week is looking like repeating days of more rain, so I don’t expect there’ll be any activity in the fields for quite some time.
Since we chose to remain indoors, the opportunity to continue our momentum on decluttering was well served. Cyndie had already been through her closet, so I dug in on mine to catch up with her, and then we both went through dresser drawers.
Time to release some perfectly useable clothing back out into the world for the purpose it was designed to fulfill. I’m done storing these shirts and pants for years on end.
It is truly an exercise that rewards doubly. Our drawers and shelves change from over-stuffed to a much more functional order, and we give others an opportunity to actually wear this clothing again.
So, not only are we continuing to learn what is involved with owning horses, we are also still learning how rewarding it is to live intentionally aware of our surroundings and how rewarding it is to practice the art of reducing clutter.
You could call it the very definition of a continuing education.
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More Weather
Weather was the center of attention on the ranch again yesterday afternoon. During my hour drive home from work, I heard the announcement that our county was included in a tornado watch until 11:00 p.m. I checked the radar when I got home and found there was nothing to indicate a storm was imminent.
During the short time I was catching up on my daily reading on a handful of web sites, the radar screen rapidly changed from nothing of interest to “better take cover soon!”
That came up really fast. In the image, there is a marker indicating our home, southeast of River Falls. I figured there was plenty of time before the main event would get here, so I stepped outside to see what it looked like in real life.
The change in atmosphere from when I left the workplace to when I walked out the door to look at the sky was remarkable. The dew point temperature had soared to a tropical 70° (F). The air temperature was in the high 70s.
I don’t know how much the sudden return of warmth might have contributed, but yesterday also happened to mark the return of our annual Asian beetle infestation. It is striking how specifically the environment changes in a single day, going from nothing at all, to thousands of bugs swarming all at once.
Somewhere nearby, a soybean crop has been harvested from the field, triggering the mass migration of beetles to some source of water and shelter.
Getting out in the air provided a feeling that there was more than enough fuel for a rip-roaring thunderstorm, but the reality I encountered didn’t look bad at all yet.
It was actually a serene scene of calm horses in front of a backdrop of fall colors in the trees. Low clouds were sweeping by at a pretty good clip, mostly obscuring the higher and darker wall of the approaching storm.
A short while later, while we were eating dinner, the sky opened up to dump an inch of rain in a relatively short-lived outburst. Oddly, there was little in the way of lightning and thunder. Maybe it was moving by too fast. The sky turned a little green, but that was probably more a function of the low angle of the setting sun than it was the measure of threat from the storm.
It didn’t even blow that hard during the peak. That actually came later. Once the storm had passed, the sky cleared, stars shined bright, and strong gusting winds blew in to fill the void.
It was just another day where the weather served up the equivalence of several days of action –or several seasons even– all in a single afternoon.
We measure that in WPMs around here. That is, Weather Per Minute.
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Stormy Monday
It’s not original, but I couldn’t help myself with that title. It was stormy last night. What can I say?
The weather service warnings and the radar images looked more ominous than what we ultimately experienced, but there was still plenty of bluster and a relatively quick 2-inches collected in the rain gauge. The main thing that moderated the impact was the speed with which the storm line was moving.
The wind burst was short-lived and the rain lasted only about a half of an hour. Then a sky-show followed when the sun popped out to illuminate the last minutes before it dropped below the horizon.
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I had stayed in the house while Cyndie and Delilah were scouting the grounds to assess for damage, but soon received a text from her reporting the clouds were worth my heading out to see.
In addition to it being wonderfully scenic out there, the air temperature had dropped by almost 20 degrees, making it noticeably more comfortable, too. I strolled the long way around to return to the house and came upon our regular visiting white tail doe with two fawns grazing in our back pasture.
I think I startled them, as they made a hasty exit through, and over, the fence to disappear down the trail into our woods.
We are counting our blessings to have experienced such minimal disruption to our property. The only obvious evidence of the intensity our trees endured was the number of leaves scattered on the ground.
Maybe the storm drained off the most dangerous energy before it arrived to us. News reports last night indicated the Red Wing airport, just 20-minutes south of us, clocked a wind gust at 82 mph, which knocked down some hangars.
Leaves us hoping that Tuesday won’t be just as bad.
I don’t see how it could be, since the heat and humidity that fueled the severe weather yesterday has now been replaced my much cooler and dryer air. Yesterday morning was so warm and humid at 5:00 a.m. that even the rear view mirror mounted to the windshield in my car was steamed up during my commute.
The television broadcast meteorologist was marveling over the fact it had been cloudy all day and still the heat index climbed to 89 degrees (F). The high dew point temperature in the 70s was an obvious contributor to that.
At least, according to the song, the eagle flies on Friday, and Saturday I go out to play.
Yes, it was a Stormy Monday.
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Different Project
It rained with such ferocity yesterday that water found a way past shingles, and dripped over the toilet in our bathroom. I thought maybe Cyndie had unbelievably made a mess, until I got dripped on and discovered it was coming from overhead.
I drained 2-inches from the rain gauge in the afternoon and Cyndie reported 2-inches more collected by dusk. It hailed, and it thundered, and Delilah barked at the booming all day long.
Basically confined to staying under a roof all day, I puttered around in the shop. I finally got around to using power tools to cut and grind old shovels to give them a clean edge again. I cut off the broken metal tines of a rake that has been lying around for a couple of years because I couldn’t part with the perfectly good handle.
Then I spotted the wood sculpting project I started a couple of winters ago and decided to spend a little time with it again.
The idea for this came from a high school art class assignment I did over four decades ago. I figured, if I’m still thinking about that piece I did that long ago, the idea deserved revisiting.
The concept is to create the piece by removing the background wood around the shape. Relief carving.
“To create a sculpture in relief is to give the impression that the sculpted material has been raised above the background plane.”
I made the shape of a fish in high school. I remember that I wasn’t able to make the tail fins look real, so I morphed them into a small ‘cartoony’ version of a fish tail.
I think it worked, in the end. Gave the finished piece a kind of primitive-folksy look. What I remember most about the project was the surprise of how the grain looked after I sanded everything smooth.
The lines from the flat rise up with an accented grace over the shape that is carved.
I’m going with the tear drop shape this time. That way I won’t have to figure out how to make that tail.
Now I just need another day of monsoon rain to confine me to the shop for long enough to bring this project to fruition.
Don’t hold your breath. As much as I love working on projects like this, this gem could easily rest on the window sill for another couple of years, if history is a reliable reference.
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We’re Dry
During my commute home yesterday afternoon, I watched clouds thicken and grow dark to the south. When I exited from I94 east and turned toward the southeast heading to River Falls, the view looked a little threatening. Then the radio reported there was only one noteworthy storm worth mentioning. With possible heavy rain amounts, high wind, and hail, in Goodhue and Pierce counties, it included the communities of Red Wing and Hager City.
We live in Pierce county, a short distance north of Red Wing.
Good, I thought. We could use the rain. I just wasn’t fired up about driving in the pouring rain.
When I finally reached Beldenville, the road was soaking wet, but the rain was already done. It must have stopped just before I arrived.
We live a couple of miles north of Beldenville proper, and when I turned onto County J, the pavement was bone dry.
We didn’t get a drop at home.
I stepped out on the deck to take a picture of the drooping sunflower for a representation of how the plants are feeling about our long spell without rain.
As I stood there, I noticed there was a lot more than just the sunflower that would show up in the frame.
This sunflower made a surprise appearance, most likely growing from birdseed that fell from the feeder nearby. It shot up with robust energy at first. When the ground started to dry out, the growth stunted significantly. It hasn’t looked very happy ever since.
There used to be a big pine tree here. I’m guessing it might have been root bound, based on my recent discovery about the pines out in the field north of the driveway. We left it standing until it was good and dead, then I cut it down, leaving enough of the old trunk to have a nice support for a balanced rock. Using this chiseled stone for a base (probably a remnant from the construction of the field stone chimney on the house), I balanced a large rock that I was only barely able to lift up to the necessary height.
It eventually fell down.
I’ve yet to decide whether to put a different one up there, but I’ve definitely chosen to leave the too heavy one safely on the ground where it landed.
Even though the big tree died, the ground seems to be fertile for a new generation of pines sprouting in its place. There are at least three rising up around that stump, taking advantage of the sunlight available since I cut the big one down.
And where do baby trees come from? The number of pine cones remaining from the now-removed tree seem to offer plenty of clues.
Maybe if we come out of this dry spell, more of those seeds will sprout.
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Barely Started
I don’t know why I would expect this year’s weather to be any better for getting our hay-field cut and baled in a timely manner compared to the previous five summers. It’s past the middle of July and we are still waiting on the neighbor who volunteered to tackle the job for us.
All the mowing I did last year to discourage weeds and give the grass a boost looks to be marginalized by the vast number of new weeds reaching maturity out there today.
I had hoped the field would get cut in June while I was on my bike trip, but Cyndie reported rain almost every day I was gone. Then there was the 4th of July holiday week, followed by more days of rain. The window of dry weather this week is very short, but Cyndie spoke with our neighbor and he confirmed our field is still in his plans.
I expect he needs to get his fields cut first. When I got home yesterday, I spotted him cutting a field on the corner.
Finally, last night we heard the tractor in our field. By the time I got out there to witness the scene, he had cut three passes inside the fence and was driving away down the road.
Did something fail on his equipment? Did he just run out of time? We’re hoping to talk with him later this morning to learn his status.
From the looks of the forecast, more rain is expected on Thursday. This doesn’t leave much time for drying, based on my understanding of the process. At least we have a spell of dry Canadian air over us currently. That goes a long way in determining how quickly the cut grass will dry.
Last week’s mid-70° dew point temperatures weren’t doing much toward helping anything to dry out.
Meanwhile, we have already purchased and stored enough hay for the year, so we don’t actually need this as much as we simply want the field cut, and are hoping someone could use the bales.
While walking the three freshly cut rows last night, Delilah was in her glory to investigate the scene. In no time at all, she had sniffed out the body of a decent sized rodent and consumed it faster than either Cyndie or I could react to dissuade her.
That’s really queasy-making, I tell ya.
Here’s hoping our neighbor’s barely getting started cutting last night will change over to completely finished by the end of today.
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Wild Life
Lately, the night views at the coop have been dominated by the masked bandits. Luckily, despite their regular visits, there isn’t anything left out overnight to reward them.
Doesn’t prevent them from checking, just in case.
The only other (not-so) wild life we captured shots of recently was a neighbor’s cat. It sat for over ten minutes with its body facing the camera, but the head was always twisted side to side or around backwards. I don’t know why it didn’t just turn around.
I think maybe it was trying to see where that rabbit went that had been filling our memory card with pictures the previous week. That critter was pouncing back and forth across the view all night long.
The other wildness we have been enjoying was in the sky. Cyndie snapped this panorama as a thundering shower loomed large over the ranch.
I had just finished mowing and was putting the tractor in the garage when the first giant drops started slapping the ground.
It was a wild day of chores yesterday, after I squeaked in a short bike ride to start my exhausting day. Our grove of trees by the road was expanding to obscure the view of traffic coming down the hill, so I hauled out the pole chainsaw and did some highway crew style pruning.
No mercy.
Being clever, I put the battery charger on the truck before heading out on my bike ride earlier, thinking I might want to load the cuttings into the pickup so I wouldn’t have to work on chipping them near traffic.
There is a phantom load draining the battery that we haven’t been able to identify. I have finally heeded advice from a smart thinking friend and purchased a switch to protect the battery. After all the branches were loaded in the back, I parked the truck at the shop to install the device while the battery had some life to it.
I bought a unit that will automatically switch out the battery when it senses the voltage drop to a certain point. To reconnect, we simply press the brake pedal or toggle the headlights and the switch re-engages the battery to start the truck. This way, we don’t have to pop the hood and open or close the switch every time we use the truck.
We never know how long an interval it will be between uses, and both Cyndie and I are prone to forgetting just this kind of occasional detail.
With the installation complete, I moved on to the lawn tractor to finish the yard that I started Thursday afternoon, before that round of all-night thunderstorms. On my bike ride in the morning, I saw a lot of farm fields with brand new lakes in them. Our rain gauge indicated over 4-inches had fallen overnight.
Low on gas, and running out of time before the next thunderstorm, I wildly hustled to the arena to mow that, too.
By the time Cyndie and I called it a day, the clock had reached 7:30 p.m.
Another wild day in our wild life.
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Relative Something 