Big Blow and a Visitor

OK, this first picture has nothing to do with the rest of my posting, but I had to include it just on general principles, because when you're married to such a great looking babe, you just have to flaunt it a little.

Now, back to the topics at hand, here is what the sky looked like last evening. The weather forecast didn't sound particularly threatening, suggesting only some scattered showers. However, as the night came on, the wind picked up and picked up, and we ended up hunkered down while a very, very strong and gusty wind prevailed. Eventually, we heard trees crashing down, though we couldn't tell where they were in the dark. We simply hoped for the best and rode it out. Power went out for about three and a half hours too.

This morning, I started out to assess the damage. That was when I encountered our visitor. Snapping turtles are moving around the countryside looking for soft, sandy places to dig a hole and lay eggs. This one was right in the middle of our driveway. Her shell was probably 18" by 12", and so we gave her a wide berth. Those claws and the reach of their necks and jaws make one think twice about attempting to relocate them. She generally ignored us and moved off into the woods.

I had planned to drive to the bait shop for some minnows, but that plan was thwarted by this scene at the end of the driveway. There were three trees down there, and you can see that others have snapped off.

And for the fourth time since we bought this place, a tree fell on our original garage, breaking through the shingles and sheeting. I'm guessing four or five hundred dollars worth of damage plus tree removal.

Another four or five trees fell across the road to both the right and left of our driveway.

We called our neighbor Jerry, and soon Kathie, Jerry, and I were hard at work clearing trees so that not only we, but also all the folks on down the road, could come and go. Took us several hours, and I have to say I'm pretty wiped out now and plan to be resting most of the remainder of the day.

Recent Events

Ron and Paula visited at the beginning of the week. We were having so much fun that few pictures were taken. However, Kathie did take this very nice shot of Ron trying out his new two-person inflatable kayak. While Paula, Kathie and I tried our hand at fishing, Ron cruised around the bay. Later, we motored over to The Landing for dinner.

Neighbor Jerry has a birthday just a few days prior to mine, so we annually try to do some bit of celebration together. This year, Jerry and Kathy came for dinner on Tuesday night when Kathie took this photo of the two of us. After dinner, we played a new card game that Betsy and the kids gave me for my birthday. Called There's A Moose in the House, the game involves attempting to penalize your opponents so that you can become the winner. Henry and Clara taught me to play, and there is necessarily much silliness involved and plenty of opportunity for comments of every variety. If you are interested, check out gamewright.com.

Gang At The Lake

Remember that we had the whole gang of kids and grandkids here for my birthday? At that time, we had a professional photographer come out for group and individual shots. I'm preparing to place an order for prints, but I thought all of you might like to get a glimpse of what I think is the best group shot. (If you click on the image, you can see a slightly bigger version.)

What a great time this was, and what a great family this is. I'm so proud of every one here and love them all! I'm a very lucky 70 years old father and grandfather.

Bat Houses

Mosquitoes here at the lake are HORRIBLE right now. They have been HORRIBLE for at least ten days already. I can tolerate them up to a point, but they do seem to like my tasty self, and even with repellant, I accumulate more bites than I'd like. We have been waiting for the dragonflies to hatch, but they have been slow in arriving. Dragonflies eat lots of mosquitoes! Bats are also good mosquito hunters, and so I've tried to encourage populations of them around our property.

We have had a couple of bat houses fastened to the back side of one of our lake home garages for several years, and I know there is a small population of bats living in them. Last winter, I built two new houses based on a design promoted by the Organization for Bat Conservation. I encourage you to become familiar with them by visiting their website located here. They have lots of interesting information about bats, threats to them, and efforts to protect them. Bat populations have been threatened in recent years because of a white nose syndrome disease and general public ignorance about the benefits of bats. Also, there are books and bat house plans available on their website.

Anyway, the current mosquito unpleasantness has motivated me to get my two new houses put up. I'm not sure I picked a perfect location, but the guidelines suggest having them near water and open enough so that bats will have free flyways to and from the houses. Kathie and I agreed to try putting them about halfway down the slope to the lake. If this doesn't prove to be an ideal location, we'll relocate them someday.

I started by constructing a pole arrangement using a twelve foot 4x4 sandwiched between two eight foot 4x4s. The main pole is fastened with two threaded rods, so that I can remove one in order to swing the top of the pole down for maintenance or other reasons. Everything is made of cedar, including the houses, which are lined with a screen that will facilitate the bats entering and clinging to the interior surfaces.

Next, I dug a hole. (Thanks, Rob, for donating a post hole digger to me. I used it for the majority of this part of the job.)

Next, I lowered the contraption into the hole, and ...

straightened it up.

Tighe guarded the two houses (black things in the background) and watched me work but wasn't very helpful in keeping the mosquitoes away while I worked. He snaps at them when he sees them in the house, but there are just too many outside, I guess. I had slathered on a good batch of repellant, but between sweating some of it off and the mosquitoes' general preference for my tastiness, I was still swarmed by them.

I tamped the loose dirt back into the four-foot-deep hole, again making sure I had the rig nice and straight.

Then I removed one of the threaded rods and lowered the main pole back down so that I could fasten the two houses to opposite sides of the pole.

To be honest, at this point, I gave up for the day, because the bugs were just too oppressive.

This morning, I got back to work, finishing the task of bolting the two houses to the pole. Then I raised it back up, reinserted the threaded rod, added washers and nuts on each side, and snugged everything up. Here is the end result.

Now, I need to figure out how to attract a nice, big population of bats. The houses I built can each hold several hundred bats, or so the plans claim! I can hang out a vacancy sign. Maybe I could label it a bat bed and breakfast place, since there is lots of food around. Or, maybe I can pipe some macho male bat sounds and/or desirous female bat sounds from a small speaker on the pole. Any suggestions you may have about capturing the attention of bats needing a home are most welcome. I just want the mosquito eating to commence.