It’s a Wild Wild Life!

This has been a very interesting week as far as wildlife goes.  It feels like almost every day we’re having a surprise interaction with some kind of wildlife.

Over the weekend we turned onto our road and saw something playing in the road. It was 3 baby badgers just romping and playing. I couldn’t get the camera out fast enough to get a picture ~ but I did try! (I LOVE my Canon Powershot! It’s so small I can keep it with me all the time and it has almost no lag time between when you click the button and when it takes the pictures so I can get some pretty good shots!)

A while back we heard this weird noise on our roof. It was bugging me so much one night I went out with a flashlight to see what it was. As I walked outside this huge owl flew off the roof and over my head. It was amazing to watch it fly silently around the property to light on the roof peak again (right over our bedroom).

I didn’t think much of it after that, the owl came back every night, landed on the roof, screeched a bit and mostly was no problem.

The other day I was trying to get Hanna to take a nap ~ we were laying on our new big bed and it sounded like someone was walking around on the roof! I went and told Ryan to go check it out. There was nothing on the roof, but he pulled out the ladder and looked in the hole (where the vent cover SHOULD have been) and in our attic was a nice little family of owls!

I guess we were pretty lucky because the mama owl was in there the first time he looked ~ and I’ve since read that if they see humans around the next the mama will eat the babies. Luckily ours sound like they’re still up there.

As you can see we have created a perfect owl nest with our newspaper blown in insulation!  We’ve learned a lot about owls since we found them up there. It’s been a nice opportunity to teach Hanna about them (and learn a bunch ourselves).  Apparently the chances of these baby owls living to see their first year is relatively slim.  They frequently can’t find a place to nest or will be eaten by predators.

We’ve decided to make it a little easier for them, and we’re going to build nesting boxes to put in our trees. I think it will be great to help support our new baby owls, but also other owls that are looking for a place to nest ~ will certainly cut down on the mouse population.

Yesterday Hanna and I decided to take a walk before dinner. (I wanted to test out my new FREE MP3 player I got  preloaded with Micro Continuity information ~ a new project I’m working on) While on our walk we saw a baby deer come walking out of a clearing.  Then a few minutes later we saw a Doe and a Fawn walk across the road in front of us.

I am really grateful that we live where we do and have the chance to interact with nature and have some awesome encounters with wildlife.

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Spring Blizzard and a Toddler Energy Switch

Just about every month we go down to Tulsa to see my husband’s family and son. This past weekend we was that weekend. In addition, my husband’s sister and her toddler daughter were up from Texas.

We has planned to go down Friday morning and come back on Saturday afternoon. However, Thursday evening there was news a blizzard was on the way. We decided if we were going to get there we had better leave early. We made plans to get all the animals taken care of, packed up real fast and headed on down.

My husband’s parents recently bought some new furniture and decided to give us their sectional. Ryan’s (the hubby) is very excited, as he’s had his eye on that sectional for a while. So we also had to pull the big ole trailer down.

No problems on the way down, and in Tulsa all it did was rain most of the day Friday, then Saturday morning it started snowing and snowing and snowing. Big FAT flakes. I called home Saturday afternoon to see what was happening up here.

My neighbor informed me that instead of a blizzard we’d had a terrible ice storm. All the trees were bent to the ground, covered with ice. Which is especially sad since most of them had already budded and had little leaves on them. The ice had also knocked out the power.

We decided to stay put. The house in Tulsa was nice and warm. We were worried about our new chicks, since they no longer had their heat lamps with no electricity. But decided the safest course of action was to stay put.

Sunday morning comes around. Tulsa is blanketed in about 6 inches of really wet snow. We had to shovel the driveway and walkways to get be able to get the trailer in, and then we moved a 6 piece sectional. Oh, and Ryan’s mom also gave us a full sized bed for Miss Hanna. (We’re going to try to get her off her futon on the floor and into a bed), we were also sent home with a coffee table. (It’s all one piece so there’s no crevices for playdough, and paint, and milk to spill down in and get all nasty).

While we were packing up the trailer, Hanna was making “snow castles” with her aunt and cousin. They each had a coffee mug and a spatula. She was having a blast. Then she decided to make a snow angel. Her very first. Once she got laid out in the snow I think she had second thoughts about that plan though lol.

We finally headed back, the roads were fine, in fact, it was 65 degrees by the time we got back here, the snow was mostly melted and there were minimal signs anything at all had happened. Except of course, we had no power.

No worries, my build it husband has a generator, so it was just a matter of getting it hooked up and running and life will be pretty much back to normal.

While he was working on that Hanna and I made a couple tiny snowmen from one last snow drift. She tromped through the “rivers” left by tire tracks in the driveway. We checked the garden ~ which I think is going to be ok.

At some point mistakes were made and Ryan managed to fry the furnace while hooking up the generator.  In addition, the TV upstairs and a clock were fried as well.

This made my husband very upset.  I had a nice opportunity to teach Hanna a little about ANGRY, and how to appropriately display your anger lol. Anyway, in the midst of this outburst my husband was having Hanna and I were just sitting on the couch. She was wrapped up in a blanket laying on my lap. My husband is banging around the house, stomping in and out, banging stuff.

I’m stroking Hanna’s hair and she looks up and me and says:

What a beautiful day.

She then proceeded to name all the things she had fun doing that day. Talk about an instant energy switch. It is so amazing to me, that even though there was so much angry energy surrounding her, she still saw the “beautiful” in this day. It was nice, because I was also able to separate from the angry energy and look at all we had to be grateful for this day and appreciate it.

Oh the power came on a few minutes after this ~ which made my husband even angrier, because we didnt’ even need the generator.

But Hanna and I were still buzzing on our positive energy. I think even a little rubbed off on him.

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