Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, once again it is I, your popular host, Mani the purebred border collie, here today to bring you up to date on all the thrilling events of the last week or so. You may remember me from such posts as “Chasing Hawks”, among so many, many others.
Here I am in a characteristic pose.
Maybe this isn’t so characteristic after all; you can see how muddy my paws are. We worked in the garden today.
The snow is melting, and the weather has been very nice. It may snow again later this week, but right now it’s nice, and, according to the guy I live with, that’s all that really matters.
I feel I ought to say that for someone who worries a lot this “staying in the moment” business is a bit hard to take, but in his defense he says that no one is perfect.
Speak for yourself, I would say. We purebred border collies set a standard for total excellence.
Basically what happened here is that it got cold, and it wasn’t very pleasant to deal with, and now it’s not cold, and nothing really happened to the plants in the garden.
But one very interesting thing happened to me, just the other night. (The guy I live with was there, too, but this really was about me.)
It was late at night, around midnight, which is Tinkle Time for me.
When the back door opened, there was this loud, very strange sound, kind of like a cat screaming really loudly. The guy I live with tried to make a movie of it but the sound didn’t come across at all.
Naturally I started barking, because defending the homestead with a lot of noise is one of my duties.
And then we saw glowing eyes out by the creek.
It was a fox. The guy I live with said there must have been two of them.
I think I’ve never seen a fox before and so this was very interesting, and I made the guy stay up even later so I could spend more time barking at the glowing eyes. By this time other dogs had been let outside so there was a big barkfest after midnight.
So that was the real excitement in the last week. We don’t do much of anything, so our threshold of excitement is fairly low.
Just today I got to do some exploring north of the canal. This was very interesting, too.
Those big piles of trash were dumped there illegally but no one seems to care. This isn’t part of the green belt behind our house.
I wanted to go all the way down into this gulch, which is where the creek is, but the guy I live with said there were too many branches in the way, for him. He’s a lot taller than I am, which is a problem for him but not for me.
I’ve been down here once or twice before.
This is way lower than, say, our back yard, because the creek bed descends quite a bit once the creek goes under the canal.
We often see glowing eyes here, on my evening walk, but those are raccoons.
And that’s essentially it, for now. It got cold, and now it’s warmer, with a lot of mud; I heard and saw a fox.
I’ll leave you with another atmospheric picture of me on my evening walk.
Until next time, then.
the miserable gardener 
A fox! That can certainly sound unearthly. We had one screaming outside the window one night a few years ago and I thought someone was in trouble. Took a long time for me to go back to sleep after that. Living in the moment is very, very difficult for some of us. I tend to think a lot about the future, which leads to lots of anxiety. Being a purebred border collie seems to be an advantage in many regards.
The guy I live with said we can constantly hear that sound on British mysteries on TV, like “Midsomer Murders”, and he thought that sound was from foxes, but when he heard it near midnight it was really loud, partly because of the lie of the land here, where lots of sounds echo.
He has seen foxes here, but a very long time ago.
He also said living in the present moment can be difficult, especially for gardeners, who tend to project into the future a lot.
Oh my! That sounds sort of scary, since foxes can sound so . . . . odd. There are a few theories about how Los Gatos got its name, but I believe that the simplest and most credible is that it was named after numerous bobcats who made strange noises at night. Mountain lions make stranger noises, but they are not as numerous, and do not make such noise so continuously.
The guy I live with said we have bobcats here, but I’ve never seen one. The way things are going, though, that may be the next scary creature I encounter.
We have mountain lions here. too, but generally, you know, in the mountains. Fortunately.
Yes, that is exactly how they behave here. It is rare to see a mountain lion. Bobcats are more common. Both make strange noises.
They sounds scary to me.
I think that mountain lions sound scarier because they sound so unfamiliar. It is difficult to believe that they are who they are supposed to be. There was one at home that the neighbor named Sasquatch. It sounded like someone speaking in Vietnamese, and even responded to me when I talked to it. It did so a few times, like three times in four years or more. I never hear its mate respond. It was very creepy and scary.
That does sound scary.
We still have the odd fox in our part of the city but usually only see them around dawn. Then again we generally don’t go outside late at night when they’re wandering around. Yesterday I saw the beginnings of some bulbs breaking through the ground. That was a lovely sight, wasn’t sure if the subzero temps would delay them or not but they are in a sunny spot so maybe that part didn’t get as cold.
We stay up really late because the guy I live with worked the late shift for the phone compnay and got used to it. He wrote the books late at night, too.
Then when Chess got sick it was easier to let the fan cool off the bedroom at night before going to bed, so it works out pretty well for us, though the guy I live with has had some issues getting out of bed in the morning, ever since the time change.
Bulbs usually aren’t damaged by cold weather, and muscaris here have been up for months. Not to mention snowdrops.
Sorry wee so late Mani an Guy. Thingss a bit haywire heer. THE Barkfest soundss like it was fun. Foxess are purrty kewl. They nevurr hert mee when mee was on THE meen streetss of Wireton.
Wee love yore fotoss, muddy pawss an all……Sunset foto iss lovelee two!
***purrss*** BellaDharma an ((hugss)) BellaSita Mum
Thanks.
The guy I live with said he thought he heard the fox last night, so maybe I’ll get to see it in person.
Wee hope you an Guy get to see the Fox! They are furry cute!
We didn’t see one tonight. It was surprisingly chilly because there was an inch of snow at noon today, but it all melted so that made everything super humid.
Yore weather iss so weerd! Then again, so iss ourss!!!
Our weather is very different from almost everyone else’s, according to the guy I live with.
Next week it will be over 60F.
Over 60 deegreess Mani an Guy?? Mee-yow wow! Wee are at 35 deegreess an think it’ss a heetwave! Mew mew mew…….