Hobbit Seasons

After days of early Spring-like weather, we have returned to winter. Last I heard, we could get about 7 inches of snow. In my opinion, Michigan seasons are much like Hobbit meals: Instead of first and second breakfasts, we have first, second, and sometimes third winters, several springs, a couple summers, and a few autumns.

I was kind of halfway (but unrealistically) hoping that spring-like weather would continue because the little car we are borrowing from a friend doesn’t have 4-wheel drive and can’t make it up the driveway in the snow. Later I will walk down to the bottom of the driveway to shovel a place for EJ to turn around and park when he arrives home from work. He will park it there and walk to/from the house each day as long as necessary. The truck would make it up the driveway with no trouble, but it’s stll in the repair shop. We were told that it will likely be finished next week sometime. Repairs are costing more than estimated, which doesn’t surprise me. Sigh. We keep “tightening our belt,” trying to be more frugal, wondering how we can afford yet another expensive difficulty, but somehow—thanks to God—we always do. In better times, we’d just buy another used vehicle rather than put more money into this one, but used vehicles have gone waaaay up in price and we’d pay at least as much for a worse vehicle so….[Shrug]. At least we are familiar with our truck’s problems and are getting them fixed. By the time the truck is repaired, it will pretty much have all-new innards in an aging body.

After seeing the coyotes run through our yard the other day, which I described in my last post, I looked up information about coyotes in Michigan. I was surprised to learn that coyotes are the #1 predator in Michigan. I also learned that people can frequently see and hear coyotes during their mating season, which is from mid-January to mid-March. The animals ran so fast that I wasn’t sure if I saw two coyotes or one chasing a deer but I now believe that I was likely witnessing a male coyote in hot pursuit of a female.

Yesterday was the second of EJ’s two mid-week days off. In the late morning, we went out the door to take Hannah Joy for a walk and noticed a very large bird in the “crow tree.” (That is what we named the tree that the crows like to perch in.) The bird made very strange calls. It flew off and joined another as they slowly circled down out of sight. They were backlit so we could only see their silhouettes but EJ said, “They are bald eagles!” I wasn’t certain because I couldn’t see any white head and tail–and EJ couldn’t either but we couldn’t figure out what it could be. A hawk of some sort? I said, “Maybe they are golden eagles???” When we got back, EJ looked up “golden eagles” on the internet, and, sure enough, the audio of their call was the same as what we had heard. Cool! It’s the first golden eagle that we’ve ever seen!!!! I hope they come back and sit on the rocks in front of the trail cam!

I’m really enjoying the trail cam. It’s interesting to be able to observe animals up close that I would never see without the cam. I have the cam set to take one photo and one video each time it’s activated. It takes many photos/videos each day. Every day or two, I transfer them to my computer and look through them. I select a few favorite photos to save and I upload a few of the videos to my Rumble channel. You can see them here: TJ’s Critter Cam

At first, I mostly saw crows during the day and an opossum or two at night but a couple days ago I checked the trail cam and found deer on it. Since then, the deer have been coming by regularly. There are at least two deer–and sometimes more. This morning I looked out the window and saw seven deer! I haven’t checked the cam since yesterday afternoon, but I can’t wait to see what it has captured. I took a photo of them through the window with my phone. If you look closely, you can see the cam strapped to the wooden post at the right.

During the night of February 13, a raccoon was captured on the trail cam. Raccoons (I learned) are not true hibernators. They hibernate—sometimes for weeks at a time—only if the temps drop below 15 degrees. The opossum was not happy to find the raccoon eating leftover birdseed at his rock table that night. He tried to join the raccoon but then decided to return later. When the raccoon finally left, I noticed that he was holding up his paw and limping. I wonder what his story is?

I’ve been working on redesigning and updating a couple blogs that I had set aside years ago. I probably would have completely forgotten and discarded them, but I get notified every week that a few people are still reading them so I figured it might be a good to restart them. Each of my blogs has a different purpose. This one is about my daily life. My Most Favorite Things is my database of favorite quotes. I’m restarting “I Love To Go A Wondering, on which I share good/interesting photos, videos, and sites. I just learned that I can have multiple channels under one account at Rumble so I divided the videos into two channels: One has my general videos, many of which I share here. The other is of my trail cam videos. I’m working on updating/restarting another blog, but I haven’t yet decided whether to continue with that one. I’m creating a page that links to these blogs and channels. You can find it on my home page or by clicking HERE.

Originally I uploaded all my videos to YouTube and I had many from throughout the years. However, when Rumble was created, I switched to uploading there. Since I don’t have as many videos at Rumble yet, I decided to include a link to my YouTube videos on my list. However, I just discovered that YouTube had “disappeared” all but two of my videos. I was dismayed and appalled–the FIENDS!–but then I shrugged philosophically. Videos are probably much like old photographs. They are important at the time, but they eventually end up in boxes at auctions where they are nameless people that no one remembers. Some things are only important to the people who acquired them.