LATEST FROM CANEY FORK VALLEY
The pups and I have had an interesting couple of days. I’ve never had any hesitation to let them have access to the dog door at night. A few years go I had to abandon the bird feeding ritual for a year because we were over run with raccoons but there has been no sign of them since then. Wednesday night I woke up to hear both of my brats carrying on something fierce in the yard. Several times I got up and went to the door calling for them. My calls fell on deaf ears. The commotion which woke me several times during the night seemed to travel around the yard. It was raining and I was getting leery about going out after them and yet leery about not going. In the morning all four bird feeders were on the ground somewhat the worse for wear. That came as no surprise. The thing that gave me the creeps was the faux wrought iron stand in the yard with two hooks designed to support potted plants or bird feeders. It was not only down; it bent 90 degrees at the ground level. My only available conclusion was that a bear had visited us. Conclusive evidence was discovered yesterday evening when the young man who mows my yard came across a significant pile of bear droppings. Needless to say the dogs will be shut in at night until further notice. Ever since Al died I’ve worried about the dogs being trapped in the house if I stroke out or something. Same thing applies when I’m gone. If there is a fire I sure want them to be able to vacate the premises.Friends who live four miles down stream of me have gotten very involved with bee keeping and recently they transferred eleven hives to some property near me at this end of the creek because they were having trouble with Winnie the Pooh visiting the hives for a bit of a smackeral. They are installing an electric fence around their bee area and will then move the hives back. It’s fairly obvious where my bear came from. He showed up elsewhere in the immediate area last night. Unfortunately the bee owners, I hear, are on their way to visit family in Tallahassee for the weekend. Nobody else around here has a bee suit. Bears are out of season so the many bear hunters around here are no help.
Well, that’s the latest news from the Caney Fork Valley. My rehab is coming along nicely and I’m driving myself around at long last. I’ve bought myself a hiking pole and a pricey GPS “locator”. There is no wireless service in this area because of the mountains so, of course, it cost a bundle for this device. I have to register it with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and sort out the myriad directions (if you excuse the pun) that are published in English, French, German and some other languages I don’t recognize. The device is used by mountain climbers, pilots, sea going types. With a push of a button the small device sends your coordinates to the appropriate authoriaties so they can rescue you. I might fall again but at least someone will come and pick me up unlike the Feb. fall within sight of my house when I was forced to use the fractured wrist and torn rotator cuff to get off the ground. I love my dogs but they are NOT Lassie and wouldn’t go for help until they’d missed a couple of meals. Instead I got cold noses in the neck inviting me to play with them.
Jane in NC
PS My email address associated with this site is no longer active. Let me know if you want the new one and we can talk on the phone or I can send it via snail mail. I've become leery of giving my location away because there are no doubt a couple of my former clients getting out of prison who have the miss understanding that it was MY fault they ended up where they did. Right Jean?
posted by Jane in NC @ 12:02 PM
1 Comments:
Jane, life in the mtns is a slice of life fun to read about. It's different to my more bucolic life in the country. Bears: I can believe bears where you live but not where I live, yet, a bear was found last week in a village not far from here. One half hour south of here this past week, a 3 ft. alligator was found in a pond and I do not live in the tropics. I'm an hour north of a major southern Ontario city...the populace around where I live is considered part of the greater city area; it's a commuter town to the city. A deer was found in Toronto yesterday; coyotoes run freely in the city (unfortunately as they are preditors and eat dogs and cats, etc) and they live around my home here in the country; racoons are the norm and a nuisance everywhere. What you need up there in the mtns. is a service such as we have here, called Telecheck, where volunteers call a person living alone once a day to check on them. If there are medical issues, we report to our supervisor and she will assist them; if we get no answer within the hour, we call their first contact to check on them, if they can't contact the person, we call our supervisor, she calls the police, the police check the residence. It all started because one man's wife died and left him with five cats and he was at an age, like you, concerned if something happened to him, what would happen to his cats. The service falls under the 24 hr. hot line of the Distress Centre but is run entirely by trained volunteers. I'd be closing my escape hatch at night from now on, if I were you. Maybe all those guys you put behind bars are too old to remember why and who put them there.
Rosey
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home