boolie

Templeton! Who Raised You?

Templeton was not sticking his tongue out at Scout but rather licking his lips after chowing down on catnip, which was usually followed by him laying on his back on the concrete sidewalk and wiggling around, a legacy now claimed by little Sam. While he is definitely his own cat, he does share many of Templeton’s traits.

He’s a full-on no-apologies I’ll-sleep-on-your-legs-until-you-can’t-feel-them lap cat, just like Templeton was. He sticks his head out the door to greet me the moment I come home, just like Templeton did. He then goes downstairs to his food bowl and meows loudly to be fed, meows even if his bowl has plenty of food but he can actually see a bit of the bottom of the bowl, meows just because he likes the comfort of having me come down and go through the motions of feeding him. Just like Templeton did.

He’s an excellent groomer and yet never has hairballs, just like — well, Templeton was an excellent groomer.

Where Did All The Birds Go?

Scout can’t quite figure out why there aren’t any birds in the birdbath when she sits beside it, even though she sees the birds playing in the water when she’s watching from inside the house. This is another picture from 2003, I broke the birdbath not long after.

Gargoyle

Templeton used to love to sleep atop the bookcases but as he aged he had trouble jumping that high. If he sat beside my bookcase to indicate he wanted up, I’d place him up there for a catnap and get him down when he woke up. On this particular day, I climbed on top of a chair so that we’d be eye to eye when I took the picture.

Waddling Clothes

Two young marmots play in a mountain meadow as one of the adults looks on. We came across this colony in the early fall beside the Skyline Trail in Mount Rainier. You can see how chubby even the youngsters are at this time of the year as they prepare to hibernate through the long winter on the mountain. Despite being wrapped in waddling clothes, the marmots move with surprising speed when they want to, bursting across the talus fields with a speed that belies their bellies.

Cone Free

After a week of house rest Ellie is doing much better. She’s finished her meds, the plastic cone has come off, and she resumed her walks a couple of days ago. The vet wants us to hold off a bit on allowing her to run or play rough, which means hedgehog time has been curtailed except for times like these when she lays on her back and waits for me to wrestle it from her mouth (these pictures are from before she hurt her leg).

Ellie is very anxious to be active again. While I was watching football the other day and working on my laptop, somehow baby hedgehog kept landing on my keyboard. I’d look over at Ellie and she had a look that said “I don’t know how that got that there, but since it is, let’s play!”. I’d get her to lay down with it, but a short while later hedgehog was back on my keyboard. The battle went on and on until I eventually put hedgehog in the closet.

Soon, Ellie, soon.

Sharpshooter

This blue-green sharpshooter is another species of leafhopper I found on the rose bush while photographing a katydid. These leafhoppers lack the red stripes of the rhododendron leafhoppers that were also hanging out on the bush.

Synchronized Preening

Early one morning on Mother’s Day, I stopped along the auto tour at Ridgefield to watch wood ducks in a quiet channel. A sudden dark form in the water caught my attention, I hoped for a beaver but knew it was more likely a nutria, the most commonly seen of the large rodents. Muskrat frequent the area as well but it was too large to be a muskrat.

My first impression from the size and shape of the head was that it probably was a beaver. There was little doubt left when its large, round form emerged onto the far bank, and no doubt remained when its broad flat tail finally came out of the water. I was feeling pretty blessed, watching the beaver preening, when a second dark shape swam onto the scene. To my delight, a smaller beaver climbed up onto the bank next to the large one and began grooming itself before finally snuggling up to the larger beaver.

Upon getting home, I learned that there is no difference in size between beaver sexes, but that the young often stay with the parents for the first couple of years, so this is most likely parent and child. I don’t know the sex of the older beaver, but given the day, I’d like to think they were mother and child.

Radio Free Ellie

The riverdog came tumbling down,
Now a cone adorns her crown.

Ellie’s training has advanced far enough that this summer I’ve been letting her off-leash in appropriate areas. One of our favorite things to do is to head to nearby Kelley Point Park, where the Willamette River gently flows into the Columbia. There are a number of places along the trail with beach access, so Ellie can (dog) paddle the rivers that Lewis & Clark once paddled.

The last few visits I’ve brought a tennis ball and our riverdog just loves to chase it, either in the shallow water next to the beach or out into the deeper water where she can swim. We weren’t able to go a week ago because of a Hempfest (she’s already got a permanent case of the munchies), but this past Sunday we took advantage of the lovely afternoon for another visit. After about an hour of play, she came up limp so I decided it was a good time to head home. She does this whenever her foot lands on something unexpected so I wasn’t concerned, she was soon walking normally on the path back to the car and played vigorously in the evening.

By morning however she was limping noticeably and constantly licking her paw. My wife took her to the vet and it looks like she may have rather painfully sprained her ankle, she’s on painkillers and has to wear this cone to keep her from licking the troublesome paw.

Ellie joins some fine company of pets in cones, Templeton wore a similar hard plastic one while Emma’s was flexible cloth. This picture exaggerates the size of the cone, it doesn’t stick out much farther than her nose, but it reminded me of a radio transmitter, sending out Radio Free Ellie on all channels.

Mac OS X 10.7

I’m pretty excited.

It’s not often that I get to break big news here on the blog, particularly not in relation to my favorite computer company. But today I get to announce the code name for the next release of Mac OS X. As you probably know, Apple has been using cat names since they first introduced OS X:

Mac OS X 10.0 Cheetah
Mac OS X 10.1 Puma
Mac OS X 10.2 Jaguar
Mac OS X 10.3 Panther
Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger
Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard
Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard

So it comes as no surprise that they are continuing the theme for 10.7:

Mac OS X 10.7 Samwise

You might question Apple’s thinking, going from the big predators to sweet little Sam, but only if you’ve never had to give him his flea treatment. I understand it’s not pleasant to have something squirted on your back, but Sam reacts as though I’m pouring battery acid down his spine.

The claws come out and my blood flows.

Brown

As the heron slowly stalked its prey through the tall brown grasses, mostly obscured from sight, it paused and stood upright for a moment. When it glanced over in my direction, a gust of wind blew out its neck feathers and I had my picture.