Animals, machines, and other things

Well, the cows are back - only some of the herd and easily scared away. Can't wait until the permanent fence goes up! When the cows are elsewhere, the deer come by. Three bucks this morning with huge antlers. They are in velvet right now, which sounds sweet, but after I read the description, wasn't so sure how cute this is. Technically it means soft tissue filled with blood vessels feeding the growth of the bone underneath. They'll start rubbing the velvet off early fall so the bone can harden. The only point of this evidently is to win the fight against other males to win the waiting female. That's nature for ya...

We went to our first homeowner's picnic and annual meeting this weekend. For Star Mt. it was the 17th annual. Met a lot of very nice people, learned about other bear sightings, and important here, met the man who maintains the roads and plows driveways in the winter. We plan on going back to Florida the end of Oct, but will be back for Christmas celebrating with the family, so we will need him for sure. They get a LOT of snow here. It's been recommended we buy snowshoes now. Hmmm.

Mark took the chainsaw in to be serviced today. Just like everything here, nothing moves fast. The guy said he was caught up on chainsaws and come back in a week. Pretty funny we even have it - it's not been used for close to 20 years. There are literally hundreds and hundreds of trees fallen in our woods. Should be a fun project - at least we won't run out of firewood.

Oh, done the "bear" walk for two days in a row - no sighting, but Mark wants me to take bear spray if I'm by myself. In the fall they have to gain 1.5 lb a day to be fat enough to last through the winter sleep - far more active. Sounds like a good idea to me!