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suicidal squirrels Wednesday, January 8 2020
Ramona came with me to work today and we followed our usual three-walk protocol. On our third walk of the day (one of the two short ones), we walked over to the east end of an old rotting barnlike building on the ground of the Agway, because that's one of the places where Ramona likes to check her doggy peemail. While she was distracted by that, a couple of fat, cute grey squirrels came bounding across Elizabeth Street in our direction. I think it might be squirrel mating season, because they were chasing one another in an unnecessarily playful, incautious manner. Not wanting them to run right into Ramona, I quietly shooed them away, an action that seemed to puzzle them. But they turned around and went back the way from whence they'd come, but they were still visible enough when Ramona was done with her sniffing. She gave chase across Elizabeth, and I was forced to follow her. We ended up behind the former location of that glass supply place where I'd gotten replacements for shattered solar panel glazing (41.990550N, 73.873877W). The squirrel reluctantly went up various trees, but of course Ramona didn't immediately see that her chase was hopeless. Then I noticed a pen containing a number of white ducks (they weren't muscovies) in the back of a yard a hundred feet or so further north. As I walked Ramona back to the office, I chastised her lovingly in a sing-song falsetto voice about trying to "get suicidal squirrels." Usually nobody hears me when I'm talking to Ramona this way, but today someone coming out of the old window glass place actually did. The refreshing thing about this part of the world is that nobody has ever once chastised me for letting my dogs run around off-leash. And, mind you, there is a preschool on the premises.
When I got home at around 4:30 this afternoon, there was just enough daylight left for me to undertake my first firewood salvage of the new year. Using my large battery-powered chainsaw, I managed to drop a smallish skeletonized chestnut oak a couple hundred feet west of the farm road. Combined with some nearby similar wood that had fallen on its own, I was able to assemble a very heavy backpack load of ready-to-burn firewood.
Ramona rolling in something unspeakable at the edge of the new solar farm. At this time of year, most of what she tries to roll in is frozen solid and I don't have to scrub her afterwards. Click to enlarge.
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