I enjoyed our last (at least I hope last for a while) days of our heat wave.
A few days with friends who live near Montreal and have a backyard pool and air conditioning ... Kenya and I both enjoyed our visit with them. Then back home with company over the weekend ... canine and human.
I hear that Russia's fish stocks have been hard hit by their heat wave ... and I suspect that our lake's fish have probably gone much deeper than usual to escape the bath tub temperatures of the water. But those same tepid temperatures provided us with great swimming last night. Rob and I worked on getting Charlie (the 9 year old black lab who was afraid of the water) to swim. By the end of the play time he was having fun and swimming well. Rob and I ended up covered in long scratch marks. Rob's are all over his legs, chest and arms. I have four bruises and a deep surface scratch mark from Charlie's fearful first attempts.
Even Carlos went in last night ... and he has a Mediterranean horror of swimming in water that is less than body temperature.
Shea gave Tammy and me rides and Kenya swam with all of us.
I never stay up past 10 p.m. but it was after 1 when I headed up last night. Good food, flowing wine, and great company.
This afternoon I heard two explosions and thought that our local yahoos were making good their threat to kill all the mergansers on the lake. The meeting did not go well ... and I do not enjoy being outvoted by people who are wrong ... they grudging agreed to allow us to try alternative ways of getting rid of the Canada Goose menace next spring ... but clearly intended to shoot to kill if it didn't work ... and then they brought up the merganser menace as well ... blaming the absence of large minnows on the ducks. In view of what is happening in Russia and also taking into account the blasting that has shattered the peace of the lake, I would be more likely to blame things on disruption of habitat.
Today when I heard the explosions, I phoned my buddies who also feel that wild life have a right to co-exist with us ... and then heard from one of them that he had been setting off fire crackers to scare away some Canada Geese. His method worked ... let's hope it keeps on working.
Rob, Scott and I played tourists in the village yesterday ... while the train was in. Whew! Not my favourite place to be on a sweltering afternoon, but interesting for a change.
Tomorrow I start a week of accompanying Yoshiko, the 84 year old Japanese student who is back again this year. We are starting out here at the lake tomorrow and deciding what we want to do with our time together.
It will be fun, I expect.
I hope you enjoy our break from sweltering temperatures and some cooler nights.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
5 comments:
Yes, we turned off the A/C for the first time in 12 days. It is quiet, too quiet... (Just the 6 fans going...) This year was the first in three we had even turned it on. Wasn't sure it even would work.
You are lucky have a lake to flop into.
I would jump in our swimming pool, but it'so toxic to me, the water might as well be Clorox.
Our geese pair left two months ago. The jackhammering (now in it's 3rd month) may have
been the cause.
I sympathize with your thuggy neighbour problem - there are only two kinds of people: creators and destroyers. Neither can understand the other.
Sometimes the destroyers can become creators with age. We live in a world that rewards the destroyers and mocks the creators more often than not. But with advancing years a destroyer sometimes pauses to question why and doesn't like the answer.
Takes all kinds I guess. There must be a reason in the scheme of the human race's survival for the destroyers but damned if I can think of one.
(Perhaps the justification for destroying the "old" is to make room for the "new" -- but most of the time I like TV detective Monk's OCD plea:
"Don't change anything -- ever.")
Well ... apart from my real friends, I am now persona non grata here at the lake ... and ... I suspect that the geese pipe line reached all the way to the meeting on Saturday ... because a group of 8 Canada Geese just arrived at the lake and seem intent on staying.
The fireworks only worked for a while!
I took Kenya out on patrol today but they simply keep their distance when they see a dog.
I wish to hell I had kept my mouth shut ... and closed my eyes ... because now they want to kill the ducks as well as the geese.
Killing is the answer. We can't get enough killing.
What these boneheads don't seem to understand is that new geese will move in when the others are killed off. Nature deplores a vacuum.
I have a crazy neighbour at my lake (there are only two of us)that gets someone to shoot all the beaver. As soon as she exterminates them, a new colony moves in. It's a never ending story.
She is furious that I won't pay half of the execution fees because it's my lake too. I told her that I my pockets are not deep enough to pay the exterminator in perpetuity. I also reminded her that what she is doing is against the law. A futile argument I'm afraid.
Ignorance trumps knowledge every time.
Post a Comment