Thursday, March 7…She’s A Rainbow (The Rolling Stones)

    I’ve been getting emails about the Burrowing Owl Project…thanking all the volunteers for the work completed last weekend and giving updates about constructing the release tents, which will be put over the openings of the burrows.  This will allow the owls to acclimate to the habitat and give them a little room to wander beyond the burrow.  Once I saw how the burrows were constructed, the purpose of the tents became obvious.  But what I hadn’t thought about was how the owls were going to get food if they were confined in tents for thirty days.  The emails cleared that up…there are owl feeder volunteers. And what do they feed the owls?  Frozen mice, which are available for the volunteer feeders to take home in quantity to facilitate feeding the owls over the course of thirty days. Oh, hell, no!!  Gave an involuntary shudder when I got to that paragraph in the email. 

   There will be at least 42 owls, possibly up to 50, relocated on March 16^th.  I applaud the efforts of Greg and the others at Wild At Heart and I know I signed us up on the 16^th to see the project to its conclusion, but I’m having a hard time with the thought of purposely putting myself in the vicinity of mice, even if they are frozen. That just creeps me out. Haven’t totally written off participating yet…I have about 10 days to talk myself into or out of it. The tents will be up for 30 days so we could just go out later and just get pictures of the finished product.   

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   A squadron of 3 adult, 2 juvenile, and 2 baby javelinas came under the fence at about 7 o’clock this morning and stopped short in front of the camera. They, just like the coyote and roadrunner, seemed aware of it…it was fun to watch their noses twitching as they tried to figure out a smell for the intruder in front of them.  Some looked at it and walked by it while others held back, sniffing some more and staring right at the camera before turning around and scurrying back under the fence. It gave me some fun video to share with my mom and the grandkiddos.

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   Day started out cool but sunny.  Didn’t get out for a walk because I started sorting pictures to send to the WonderKids and simply lost track of time.  My plan from that point on was to take a bike ride to Casa Grande so I could get some sewing supplies from Joann Fabrics.  I decided to use thread to do the shell design on my turtle.  My sewing skills are far greater than my needle felting skills, especially when it comes to fine detail. 

   The forecast had predicted rain so before I committed to riding, I stepped outside. Temperature had dropped a few degrees and dark clouds were now on the horizon.  We decided to take the truck…and I’m so glad we did because when we turned down Florence Blvd. in Casa Grande, the rain hit…and it hit hard.  So, so happy to be in the truck instead of on the bike!  First stopped at Joann’s for my supplies, then stopped at Walmart for a new wiper blade and a suet cake holder for the birds. I brought suet cakes with us but thought they’d be used as bait for a road runner.  Kim didn’t think that would be an attractant for them, so I decided to give the cardinals and swallows something else to fight over. Once we were done with those types of errands, we stopped for lunch and headed back to camp. Got to camp and put the suet out just before the sky opened up again. It continued raining into the evening, so it was another stay in the camper kind of afternoon.      

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   Stopped at the Eloy IGA for some piggy cookies…yesterday was delivery day and we didn’t make it over.  I turned down the aisle and couldn’t believe my eyes. There were no piggy cookies!! None!  But there were other goodies on the shelf so I bought a package of croissant looking Mexican pastries instead. Didn’t realize they had a filling until I got in the car. Kim took the first bite and didn’t spit it out, so I took one out of the bag to try.  Not bad but neither of us could determine what the filling was…looked like play-dough but tasted much better.   

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   Early evening the sun broke through the clouds to the west while it was still dark and a bit rainy to the east…time to go looking for a rainbow.  Stepping out the camper I could see one…the colors were so freakin’ vivid backed by the dark sky!  Couldn’t get a good picture from the campsite so I jumped in thetruck to chase down a better view.  Got to the campground entrance and boom! there was a full rainbow staring at me.  Couldn’t get the entire rainbow in the frame but I snapped a picture anyway.  Turned south on Picacho Highway hoping it would stick around while I searched for a better photo opportunity. It stayed about 15 minutes; the south end seemed to come down right by Picacho Peak and eventually a very faint second rainbow appeared on the other side of the Peak.  The ends of it were thick, or maybe wide is a better descriptor, where all seven colors were on display.  Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet.  Not sure my pictures do the colors justice, though.

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   My Tribe on the shelf is getting larger; there’s Star Bright, White Flower, Bendy Man, Rocky,

Jackson, and now Bill, the turtle. I went for a little more realism with Bill…I was going to make him stand on four chunky legs because flipper feet seemed a bit difficult for the size of turtle I was making. But I woke up one morning with an idea on how to do them and had to give it a try. The front feet turned out good, so that set the stage for making the turtle look like a turtle, meaning using appropriate colored wool for the shell, legs and head.  Was going to skip the tail, again because of the size and also because I thought that not all turtles have tails…but Kim almost insisted because every turtle he’s ever seen has a tail. Google agreed with Kim so Bill does have a tail.

    I’m pleased with the results and am thinking on what to do next. I have a couple of ideas but the first step is to work them out on paper and then work through the step-by-step process in my head. And who knows, maybe something will come to me in my sleep again.