Our neighbor's cat is a real hunter. I don't mind him catching voles or mice- it's the birds I have a hard time with...This is an illustration I did of him yesterday. I thought about doing a blog about dead things I have found in my garden...We have found lots of dead voles thanks to our neighbor cat, but once I found a dead mole (actually it wasn't quite dead). I noticed the mole up by my mailbox because a crow was tormenting it. I don't know why it was out during the day- it didn't look like anything was wrong with it...perhaps it was poisoned that could explain why it wasn't trying to get away from the pecking crow. Anyways, I told my husband about it and he went up to the mailbox with a shovel and killed it. "Monchichi!" I exclaimed in horror. I guess the viking blood does still course through my husband's veins ...he just thought it was better than letting the crow slowly peck it to death.
Then there was the garden snake that lived up by my mailbox. I first discovered it when I would plant flowers or weed beside the mailbox. The snake would slither by and scare the bejesus out of me. This happened a few times until I realized the snake lived under a rock by the post.
Last summer the top of an old cotton wood snapped and fell on to the power line- I thought we were being attacked by terrorists (I guess after 8 years of Bush- the scare tactics work). I peeked out of our window and realized what happened when I saw the treetop still bouncing and sparking on the line. Part of West Seattle was out of power due to this incident (luckily not the part I was in).
Within minutes the fire department appeared along with a bunch of cowboy contractors from the utility company who proceeded to drive their huge truck down to the scene not on the road, but on our neighbor's lawn (because the trees weren't trimmed by the city and they didn't want to damage their truck) and our lawn. After a few moments, the cowboys assessed that they couldn't do anything and decided to leave. They had to reverse out because the road is so narrow and almost hit a fireman in the process due to their recklessness. They didn't hit the fireman, but they did manage to run over our mailbox. One of the fireman was kind enough to set it back upright by pounding the post in to place with a rock.
The next day I went to collect the mail and discovered the snake- flattened near the rock and drying in the sun.
More photos from the Union Bay Natural Area taken almost 2 weeks ago. The trails were quite overgrown with tall grass and we wish we would've brought our machetes. However, I did get to see a female American Goldfinch gathering fluff for its nest and a gorgeous osprey.
Last week I went on the Twin Falls hike near North Bend. We hiked up to the suspension bridge that overlooked the 2nd waterfall and I saw my first male Western Tanager! What a beauty- it had a bright yellow body and black wings with a fiery orange/red head. It flew down in to the clearing and landed on contrasting dark green boughs of douglas fir- which would've made a great photo with the waterfall behind it, but it flew away just after I got a close look at it through my binoculars.
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