Pack Rats!

Bushy Tailed Woodrat.

Winter in the Desert is generally pretty quiet. If you are retired as I am, life is much easier. I just read, do my exercises, catch up on TV and throw wood on the fire, and three days a week I get the mail- 6 miles up the road.

Right now in the world there is a Biblical proportion swarm of Locust eating everything in sight, so my problem with a Pack Rat is pretty small potatoes.

Pack Rats here come in three sizes, from Chipmunk size to LARGE rodent. Bigger than a lot of Squirrels. The bigger they are, it appears - the smarter. They have been known to cause such anger and desperation that people have been driven to take up firearms and actually try to kill them through the walls, by taking "sound shots". They also seem to have to chew a lot to keep their teeth to a manageable size. They also only come out at night when you are trying to sleep.

When we moved here, the place had been vacant most of the time and the Pack Rats were every where. Some of these things weigh more than a pound so the running foot steps through the ceilings can drive you a bit buggy and wild eyed. In Klamath it took Ferrets to get them to move out of the house. Here I am a bit luckier and the walls are solid. I long ago bought an industrial strength "Sonic" sound machine guaranteed to drive Mice and Spiders crazy and installed it in the attic, where it has done a yomans job. Nothing can stand it for more than a few hours. Of course there is the back porch which has suitable habitat for them. So I watch the Dogs, if they are interested in smelling around back there, its time to bait the trap.

I have noticed that I had a visitor and I was at a bit of a disadvantage because it got cold enough at night to freeze the water in trap containers. Pack Rats can jump quite well, so hard water was a problem. I have a couple of live traps that I use in the winter, and for Josie's entertainment, but Mice can set them off, so I prefer to not use them. I also had one in the hangar but I did manage to catch it after two tries. Pack Rats like Apples, so they work out well for the "GangPlank" trap. However the one on the back porch wasn't falling in the water but was eating the bait. I set up a game camera to find out what my opponent was. It soon became obvious that this guy was just too big for my setup. I tried changing the tub around since he accessed the tub from the wall, but he didn't trust the plank, and just reached out and held onto the wire to eat his apple.

Before changing the bait wire the third time he had snookered me, I decided to use a Rat trap to see if I could catch him with that. I found the trap sprung, but no Rat. I was just about to make a wire that set on the bottom of the tub, under water so that he had to use the plank instead of the wire, when I found him dead on the floor under a board. Apparently concussion will kill you as well. What ever, Dead is dead, and I will take it.

https://vimeo.com/393085213

password-  owyheeflyer

Back to my reading!

Update

We have had most of a week and things are leveling out quite well. Connie wears her "Life Vest" and it does quite well. She, being used to wearing a bra, doesn't have any problems with all the hard wear and is able to sleep well and comfortably with it on. Her heart seems to have settled down and about the only time that the vest threatens to shock her back to life is if one of the sensors gets out of place. She has not retained any water at all, and is now sleeping very well indeed.

She is feeling well, and her attitude is basically the same. She has no pain and is not short of breath. That is amazing to both of us. We are able to walk the length of the runway  and back, ( 1.69 miles) with no problem. Her cat, Chilli, has decided that he will go along with us, which is a hoot. He does quite well also. We only have to wait for him once in a while.

 I had Physical Therapy yesterday in Nampa ( Shoulders are giving me trouble)  and Connie went along with me, and we had a very nice day of it.

The Sunrise yesterday morning

Various views of the Steen's.

As you can see the view and sky is gloriously clear.

Feb 7th 2020

After a rather tumultuous weekend I took Connie to St Alphonse hospital in Boise, on Monday. She had slept little over the weekend and was seriously having trouble breathing. It took very little contact with the staff till she was admitted. Unfortunately I have had a lot of hospital visits over the years and I have been super impressed every time I go into one of the Hospitals in Boise. This was no exception. The reason for her difficulty was fluid in her chest cavity. Why it was there in the first place was of course the mystery. I won't go through all of it, but I just got her home last night.

The biggest problem was that they couldn't find a reason for such a sudden onset of Congestive Heart Failure. The problem is that the heart "ejection" rate had dropped to 15%. None of the normal reasons for this to happen were present in her life style. The only thing that was posited was her "normal" to her, fast heart beat. It is about 102 resting. She has always had a low blood pressure. They say that you have so many beats of your heart before it quits. So far this is the only reason that they can find for what has occurred with her heart. She has no symptoms other than shortness of breath.

In any case she was eventually fitted with a "life vest" that is in essence a defibrillator that she will wear all the time, for the next three months, until she either gets better or she has a "Heart event". If she does, they will then fit her with a pace maker.

We left the Hospital at 3 PM beating most of the worst of traffic, made a side trip to a Burger King for a Milkshake. ( While she really was impressed with the staff and Hospital, she is not a fan of their food! ) The to Norco Medical to pick up oxygen bottles and a oxygen condenser, then to Costco for her new meds. She had four prescriptions to get 3 of them were $7.00 the other one was $600.00. A call to the physician resulted in a medication that cost $9.00. The original was two generic drugs that were combined and new. They have been advertising it on TV its called Impresco, or something like that. What a scam. We eventually got home at 8 PM.

It is now 0730 and she slept well, ( hated the hosp bed) and things are on the right track. Time will tell. Thank all of you for your concern.

Feb 2020

One of my friends in western Oregon has been wondering if I was still alive, so I guess its time I checked in. Of course winter is my quiet time. I generally do a lot of reading, with a bit of Coyote hunting, but they have been quite scarce due to the drop in the Rabbit populations. I have only seen three so far, and they didn't survive that sighting, so they may be even more scarce this next year.

One very unwelcome event that is still unfolding is that Connie has developed a rather serious case of Congestive Heart failure, just in the last two or three weeks. We are still in the beginnings of finding out what the problem was, and she has only seen a Heart Dr once, and nothing has been done yet other than one test. She is going to Bend for her care, so if I want to go with her it is a four hour drive for me. Unfortunately I am all too familiar with the disease  since that was what killed Karen. She has been here with me for the last three days and she is having a hell of a time. Hopefully they will get something done in this next week that will go to giving her some relief. Sleep and getting enough air is the problem.

Here are some sunrise pictures for you.

Sunrises, Sunsets and a new video

While it is "winter mode" for me, I have been a little bit active. The Sun Rises and Sets have been just spectacular. While parts of the back drop, Horns and trees for Sunrises, loading chutes and nothing but the Sunset itself are Sunrises from the West. Perhaps you may get tired and jaded with the continual "Sunrise" shots, I do not believe that I ever will. I love this country, its wildness, its stark beauty and the people that live in it.

I was asked by Harry Stoddart one of the owners of the ranch next door, if I would edit some video's that he had shot of one of their "Rodears." ( A rodear is the gathering of stock by riders and held in place by only riders and their stock dogs.) and of course the root of the word Rodeo, which is of course the showcasing of the talents needed to be a rancher. This is what I came up with.

https://vimeo.com/383196938        This one does not require a password.

My Christmas Card to You!

I suppose this is the time of the year when we spend a lot of time on reflection. There of course has been to me, a lot of adjustment in my life, still. I am truly sorry that Karen cannot be here to take care of this little chore. You would have then gotten a proper Christmas Card.

There is not much that has happened to me this year that you would not know about if you are still interested enough to read my blogs, so this will be mercifully short. However a couple of things were not dwelt upon all that much when I wrote this blog.

I met  (in his words) "a long lost cousin" on my way back from Glacier Park. He and his lady stopped by on his way to a Southern vacation at some of the Parks in Calif. We had a great time and to my surprise there seemed to be a bit of bond with him that I have generally "poo pooed" when the same sentiment was related to me by an acquaintance. Anyway I admit that I was surprised at the feeling that his "kinship" evoked in me.

Connie and I are into our second year together, and I am truly grateful to have her in my life. Our love and appreciation of each other has deepened this year.

I have been thinking of adding something of this sort to my blog, and putting it off, because I cannot possibly put into words my appreciation of each of you and my wishes for your continued happiness and well being. Then as I rose this morning to see what the day would bring. This Sunrise sequence bringing light and beauty to this world,  was the inspiration that I needed to wish you each and everyone.
                                                               Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year!

Another shopping trip for Hawk Food.

Winter is coming right along. We have had another snow that covers the ground a bit, and this morning the snow was sparkling with diamonds. You should know that snow on the ground here is a bit unusual for this area. We do get snow, but it soon melts off. The "big die off" of three years ago was due to a snowfall of about 18 inches that turned into ice, and would not go away. That began the eradication of all the Rabbits, Antelope and Deer in this area. There were too many Rabbits and they would have died of disease the next summer if they hadn't froze to death because of the icy snow and starvation. I suppose that the nature of the Sage limits the food available to this type of wildlife, and snow covering and blocking it are just too much for the Rabbits. Then minus temps and the wind chill that comes with it are just too much.

When I moved here one of the locals saw the snow plow for my quad and asked "what are you going to do with that"? He told me at the time that the snow rarely lasts for more than a week, and for the most part that seems to be the reality. The snow and ice of three years ago was definitely unusual.

Connie came down Monday to spend some time with me. She likes to shoot and is always after me in the summer to go shoot some of the Ground Squirrels that infest the hay fields of Burns. So when the snow again covered the ground I knew that my friend on the White horse road was going to have the Jacks working on his hay stacks again. So I made arrangements to go back there again for another shopping trip.

Without getting too deep into the subject, this seems to be a bit of a contradiction of my philosophical beliefs. In a nutshell I am a true conservationist, in that I try really hard to leave enough of the game population so that there is enough breeding population left to keep the next years offspring high enough that there is no reduction in numbers. Nothing noble about it at all. I do have "principals" that I live by in falconry- I want the hunt to be fair, and I do not require a large head count to feel successful.

So basically this type of hunting for me is not sport, it is "shopping". The ranchers normally shoot the rabbits with shotguns and toss them in the Sage for the Coyotes. They need to protect their hay stacks from the Jacks that come from miles around to feast on the hay. They can topple the stacks from their undermining of the bottoms if the numbers are high enough. You have no idea as to how many Jacks converge on some of the stack yards. There are paths in the snow that are beaten down that are amazing, and they are everywhere and coming from all directions. I read earlier that Jacks will travel up to 10 miles for food or water.

The snow has caused the Antelope to gather up as well, and we saw one group of Antelope that had to have more than 150 in it, along the Hwy as we went south. The feral Horses were also gathered close to the White Horse Road as well.

This ranch is one of the few places that I rarely hunt with the Hawks, simply because there are not enough rabbits that stay in the area during the daylight hours to make it worth while. It is also 15 miles of gravel road to get there. With snow on the ground its a bit like it was here, when I brought in some bales of Alfalfa to feed our horses. I had 30 deer camp on this spot and it just drove me crazy trying to keep them off of it.

The temperatures was in the mid teens as we took up our vigil in the stack yard. Connie was sitting in the back seat to watch to the right of the yard while I took the left. We of course had to leave the car windows down. I gave her my 17 cal rifle while I used my 22 rimfire. Nothing but head shots.  As it got darker the rabbits began coming so fast that it was sometimes difficult to keep up. The darker it got the more came. I picked off a group of four that came on my side by shooting the farthermost one and then forward till there were none left standing. It was so cold that both of us had trouble reloading because our fingers were so numb. We managed 18 before it go too dark to shoot.

On our way back home with our loot, we saw a pair of eyes coming our way down the road. I stopped the car and eventually realized that what we were seeing was a Kit Fox.

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kit_fox

He ran right at the car and didn't turn till he was just 10 feet in front of us. I knew that these little Foxes lived here, but they are endangered and very scarce. I was amazed at how small he was, Tiger, my cat, is bigger than he is by a lot. We were both more than a bit amazed by this apparition, and we were talking about it as we continued our drive. After a bit a truck passed us going the other way, which was unusual as well. Not a lot of traffic on this dirt road, especially at night. As we got within a couple of miles of Hwy 95 we again saw something in the road. The other truck had apparently hit a wandering Jack Rabbit in the road, and there was another Kit Fox feeding on it. Needless to say I left this Rabbit for the Fox.

It was quite a night. Not only do I have a "lady Friend" that isn't afraid to get a little blood on her hands, she is a damn good shot as well.