Chicken, birds, footprints

Quiet times here.

The weather is middling.  Not cold.  Not warm.   We have had a few instances of snow the past few days but it appears to have added up to less than a half inch.  The snow is not good for cross country skiing, yet there is enough old snow to prevent hiking or doing much else outside.

So I read.  I have many large stacks of magazines around the living room waiting to be read.

Today I cooked a chicken (plus garden potatoes and carrots) in a crock pot.  My first time ever cooking in a crock pot.  It turned out good.

So I eat and read and get fat.  And dream of Summer.

The other day I had a bird in my garage. The way the garage was built the big garage door doesn't completely close.  The bird was flying around inside banging into walls and the window and crapping on things.  I was afraid it would break the window.  I once had two flickers in my bard and instead of flying through the open door they went through two windows.  The bird then had flown into the attic above the bunk room attached to the garage.  I walked around the outside of the bunk room and banged on the wall to encourage the bird to leave.  Eventually it walked out of the garage and flew away.  A flicker.  *sigh* Those birds get into such trouble.  In addition to breaking my barn windows, I once had a flicker fall down my house chimney.

Other animals about was a large cat I surprised in the pole shed when getting firewood.  And owls hooting in the night.  Get those mice!

A few days ago I visited Bob and Jan.   I bicycled over and in doing so I noticed trampled snow in my hayfield on my southern boundary. Hmmmm.  I followed the foot tracks across my hayfield then south pasture all the way to the river.  It looks as if they crossed the river channel.  I didn't.

Along the way I found a few young tree branches broken.

It appears they followed the power lines that led to the neighbor's irrigation site across the river channels.  From the broken branches they must have felt the branches would grow toward the power lines years from now.

Bob and Jan told me that the day before I got home the electric transformer on the power pole near their property blew with a loud bang and they temporarily lost power.  The electric company had to come fix it.  That would explain the foot tracks across my property following the power lines.  I imagine they had to find out why the transformer blew up. If you remember I had heard last week noise from the neighbor's irrigation site across the river. He must have shorted the electric lines or something to blow the transformer.