Say hi to Patrick and Paddy

Here is one of Jewel's twin ram lambs. I distinctly remember Aimee saying I could pick names for them in her absence. It is St. Patrick's Day tomorrow, and I just got a card from my buddy Pat, an "Irishman of note."

So in Pat's honour we will call these guys Patrick and Paddy. I know that's redundant, but I'm thinking ahead, see: Twin lambs, nursing the same ewe, the same age?

We'll never tell them apart! It's best for all concerned if they have interchangeable names.

Off course, none of these executive decisions I'm so boldly making might survive the wifey's return. But we'll see.

In other news, I decided it was Mary's turn for a nice long walk in the snow. Mary is a Redbone Coonhound (say that with a nice fakey southern accent for the full effect -- lots of extra vowels and syllables!) and likes to run free in the woods, which is not good, and she is a fidget in vehicles, trying always to stand on the dash and flap her long ears out of the window and drool on the car behind.

As a consequence, she is not often allowed to go for walks that require the preliminary of a ride in the pick-em-up truck, so she never gets to go to Mount Harris, unless Aimee comes along. But she is allowed in the woods behind the house, where she generally runs right for home as soon as she figures out that we've reached the turn-around point in the walk.

Here she is risking her neck on the ice. And a nice shot of an old snag overhanging the beaver pond.

Up to the overlook

As advertised, Haggis and I went up to the overlook above Howes Pond today. The day was warmer yet than yesterday, plus we were up at higher altitudes, in a shady corrie where the "sun don't shine" much, and so there hadn't been as much freeze thaw action on the snow surface, while some snow was definitely thawing in the warm sun, so I had to wear snow shoes much of the time, for about two-thirds of the hike.

The first shot shows one of the post-holes that convinced me it was time to put the snow shoes on. This was a tough hike, and I would have had to turn back without the snow shoes.

Then there's the view, with and without clown-feet.

A shot of Haggis posing. Such a poseur. He's a very photogenic dog, and the problem is, he knows it.

Last but one, the unobstructed view, which is what we went up for, right? That and the exercise.

Finally, what animal has five toes on each paw, is about 18-24 inches long, has rounded paw prints about 3 inches across, and can either walk step by step in its own tracks or bound along two-by-two like an otter? The answer at the bottom for those who like to puzzle out animal ID problems

When we had gotten back and had some lunch and a nap, we went out to the barn to feed, and noticed Jewel the ewe-l was off her feed. About time. Her bag is fit to burst, big as a balloon and as pink as a baboon's bum. So we separated her into a lambing pen. We being me and a couple of chickens, the other half of this farm business being off in Nicaragua swanning around in the tropical sun. Luckily, Jewel is not a difficult sheep.

We were observed by our neighbors, mom and two girls, who came to see the lambs and get some eggs. I'm not sure they were ready for the sight of a fat middle aged man wrestling with a pregnant sheep.

Sounds like the kind of thing a Yorkshireman would do!

Once the girls were gone I watched Jewel closely for a while. The lambs have definitely shifted. There's these two big hollows on either side of the small of her back that were not there yesterday, while her belly almost reaches the ground.






































































The answer to the animal ID? I think these are fisher tracks. Click on the photo to enlarge it. A fisher is a giant polecat/weasel-type thing, a mustelid, big as a house cat, that preys on porcupine, and is often called a "fisher-cat" here in Maine, although not at all feline. I worked with fisher reintroduction when I was a biology student in Montana, and am familiar with their habits.

The only thing that give me pause is that the animal was stepping along one foot at a time in its own tracks. Fisher do sometimes walk along like that, but their usual gait is a sinuous bound. If I'd gone further and seen the typical side-by-side bounding gait prints of a fisher, that would have clinched it.

Here's a link to a copy of the IFW tracking poster. See what you think. The tracks were quite large, about 3 or even 4 inches across, almost too big for a fisher, so if there were only four toes, they could be lynx. And there could be four, since they were obscured by the animal having stepped in its own tracks. It's hard to tell. But fun to try.

A long walk on hard snow

Today was a fine and warm and pleasant early spring day, and a good day to go for a big hike. The nights have been cold, the days warmer, and the snow has set up well, so that although it is still several feet deep in places, and a least a foot in most places, you can walk on top of it.

Spring snow is the best hiking.

After a relatively successful earlier walk demonstrated that conditions were good, Haggis and I decided on an expedition to the Howes Pond basin. We started out on a snowshoe trail, which was firm and pleasant, but soon realized we could hike anywhere we wanted.

The snow and ice covers all the wet spots and underbrush, and so is in some ways easier walking than in summer. This first shot is of the pond, which is shallow, a lead in the ice which we crossed on a snow-bridge. The next shot is of the old beaver lodge, which seems disused. We chatted later with the landowner who said he had had some beavers trapped close by a while ago because they were flooding the road.

Then there's a shot of Haggis running the snow shoe trail.

Finally, mud season is here, and the roads get sticky in the afternoon or in the rain which comes every few days. This mud will stay with us until the ice that is below the surface melts, allowing the water to actually go somewhere. This is what a dirt road looks like in Maine in mud season. Click on the image to get the full effect. This, and the snow and ice, is why we drive four-wheel drive vehicles. Aimee and I used to have to drive three miles of a dirt road like this to get in and out when we lived at the Bale House. Here at the "New House" which is actually 109 years old this year, we only have a quarter mile of mud to get through before we reach blacktop, and that's not so bad because it's steep and drains well. The ruts in this mud were only about nine inches deep at the most.

This was a good walk, and I even managed to buy a third of a cord of very nice dry firewood from the landowner, who logs this forest lightly for fuel and sells it. I was glad to get it because my pile was almost out. With that La Nina, it's been a cold snowy winter, and I used quite a bit more than I thought I would.

Now, after walking three miles and stacking firewood, I'm nicely tired.

Walking the cat back

Our she-cat, Shenzhi, likes a nice walk almost as much as the dogs do. In this case she accompanied all three dogs and I on a walk in the woods.

But she was upset that we only went a few hundred yards.

Poor cat. But it was dog-dinnertime. The dogs all ran home for their food, leaving me and the cat alone in the woods.

How cat-astrophic.