Sorry for the long
post.
Time for an update
on my summer since I didn't do a whole lot of blogging cause of the
craziness of it all. Yup it was crazy and its the end of summer.
Boooooooo Hissssssss. But on the upside there are only a few more
months till spring. I would rather avoid thinking about the misery
months to some. That's what I like to call them.
Lets see, there was
my poor kitty Meetso. He got really sick. So sick I thought he was
going to kick the bucket. The poor guy got so sick he stopped eating
all together. So I brought the poor guy to the vet. He hated it of
course but at least he's not a mean cat. He does have great manners
after all. So he had a blood test to make sure he didn't have any
major diseases. He did not thank goodness. He ended up getting a shot
and some antibiotics that I had to orally give him every day twice a
day. Also not fun especially when you need two people and the person
does not follow instructions well making the situation worse. But
then finally he was all better. All up to snuff and a terror of his
domain.
Also did I mention
my doves, my sneaky doves pulled another fast one and made two more
babies. Didn't expect them and neither did I expect them to be
speckled again. One white with peach colouring and the other white
with regular colouring. I'll have to take some pics when I can.
Probably when they're indoors for the winter. Bright little fellas.
Btw they are boy and girl. They always come that way with doves. Also
they learned all kinds of things really fast too.
A few weeks later if
I remember correctly one night when I when to feed Meetso after
taking my bath. About 3am I noised water on the floor in the
basement. Not too unusual when its warm outside and cool inside
especially downstairs. But then it was coming from underneath a door
to the water heater room/ small storage. I go and open the door and
there was water spitting out of a pipe onto the ceiling if you would
call it that on to the water heater. I was a little worried that it
might damage the tank. But I guess it didn't after my dad repaired
it the next day. Luckily every thing worked find and the pipe hasn't
leaked since.
Then we ended up
find out we had a huge wasp colony in our fruit cellar. I first
noised something odd when I went in there to get a pop. At first I
thought it was another water leak of some kind. So went outside to
see if there was a leak outside since we do have a water faucet
there. But then I noised lots of yellow jackets coming in and out of
a little hole in the wall. Hummmmm Then went back inside and I went
closer in a corner of the room to take a so called closer look. I
made some noise by knocking on the wall and sure enough realized that
we have a very large and angry colony. I also noised that there was
a certain spot on the ceiling where the drywall was very thin. I was
very concerned about the whole thing but nothing was done about it
till it was too late.
A few days latter
mom was the unfortunate one to go there and take care of some
business but didn't get too far. The wasps apparently finally broke
thru that spot of concern and were now flying around the cellar.
Luckily she didn't get stung. But unfortunately one family member
got stung indirectly and unintentionally. Eventually every thing was
brought under control and the whole colony was killed off as a result
of a nasty and expensive insecticide spray. It was then after
leaving the room to its self for a few days and pulled out a sample
of the hive when we realized how large the mass yellow jackets were.
I think they were
there for at least 2 years.
But of course as a
result we had another problem.
Poor Meetso came
home one night, the same night we took care of the big wasp problem.
So he came home from one of his kitty adventures only to be licking
his tail area profusely and acting strange. He ran straight inside
like a cartoon kitty. He wasn't acting any better the next day and
then after that stopped going out all together. Forcing him to go out
and get some fresh air wasn't any better since I noised he would go
nuts when any mosquito or other flying insect would land on his butt.
No one believed me and I think no one believes me still that he can
act so strange and all of a sudden. Of course I knew that it might be
a possibility that a left over angry wasp had stung him at night when
he when to explore the bushes at the front as he brushed by. So
there fore any flying insect especially mosquitoes would send him in
to a tizzy. He would even try to bite them in mid air. It was just
crazy.
Well none the less
this summer fiasco lasted several weeks. I think it was a month's
worth of trouble for Meetso but just a few days ago he finally got
out of it. He seems now back to his king of the jungle self. In fact
he landed him self a tasty tidbit with wings the other morning. A
morning dove. Unfortunately I found the evidence of his messy dinner
all over his favorite dinning spot.
Speaking of things
to eat did I mention the squirrel invasion? No I don't eat squirrels
but I do or rather we as in the family like to eat tomatoes. In
recent years they managed to eat all of our peaches but this year
there was none. It was the bad winter we had but my dad mentioned
that it also might be the age of the tree. So anyways the squirrels
decided that they would help them selves to every beef steak tomato
growing our vine, ripe or not whether it was too big to carry or not.
When it was too big or behind a fence they would just take a bite
out of it to claim it as their own. That was the last straw! That and
the fact they then tried to eat all the seeds in my doves cage. Some
how they little thieves got their little stick paws in there and
snatched out every seed. By morning my poor doves had nothing to eat.
Oh yeah did I mention they mooched all the wild bird seed I put out
for the wild birds too.
So yeah, I decided
that it was time to do something about the most annoying creatures
ever besides mosquitoes and do something about it. I when to the
store and bought a small trap. A nice little humane trap to trap the
little buggers. So then I set up the trap which was fairly easy and
filled it with extremely tasty things like peanut buttered bread,
some peanuts, some acorns, sunflower seeds and a trail of bird seed
leading to the trap. I set the trap in a small area next to our
garage and under a pile of wood, piled up near a wall and then
waited. I didn't wait long till it caught one of the little buggers.
My dad then helped
me oust the guy leaving him at a nice wooded area with sparsely
populated with people and farms. A really nice place for a bunch of
little bushy tailed jerks. Too good for them really but what ever. So
far I caught 4 of the little jerks. I'm still aiming for two young
trouble makers still hanging around. So you heard me little bushy
tailed thieves, I'm coming for you.
Oh and actually I do
have one thing that wasn't so crazy that I found. It was another
interesting weed that's edible. So I took a few pics of it. It looks
a lot like rhubarb only its not.
Apparently its
another European import called the Common Burdock.
You can eat the
boiled roots in its first year and in the second you can boil and eat
the stocks and flowers with some salt and butter. Neat stuff! Sounds
way better then rhubarb any day. Yuck!
Oh yeah I heard you
can candy the flowers or something. I guess for more uses go look for
the info online of course.
Burdock's just about to bloom. ^
Burdock's blooming. ^
