I am so behind in posting photos of our walks! The re-threading of the serpentine belt was successful the other morning and took half the time of our messing around that night trying to achieve the same results. Thank goodness! Rick is my main auto mechanic! If I had been here by myself I would be stuck. Anyway, no more rat talk!




Old man sage.

The dogs do so love it up here.




Hailey




Alex




Bella (dry version)




Bella (wet version)

We walked to the UFO landing sight (or at least that’s how we refer to it) which is just a barren circle of ground where nothing grows. Every year it yields up what I call Colorado Turquoise. This year it was just small nuggets, but I have a whole collection here at the cabin of larger stones.









The views are always expansive up here.




Not much left in the way of wildflowers, but still pretty even in their dried state.

Star arnica still blooming!

More pics coming soon!

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We are now minus one pack rat. But not quite in the way in which we had intended.

Last night right after dinner we decided we were going to drive around and see if we could spot any elk or moose. We all piled in the truck (including Bella who hates these just-before-dark drives and we can’t really figure out why) Rick started the truck and backed up.

Eeeeewwwwwwww. What was that smell? All of a sudden Rick announced that the truck didn’t have any steering. What????? We knew what the stench was—pack rat—but why didn’t we have any steering?

We all got out of the truck that wasn’t going anywhere and I put the dogs in the house. Rick popped the hood and started scooping out a lovely nest made of ferny material and some black chewed on piece that used to be covering something in the engine. He peered closer. Yup, there was the “monster” (as Rick called it) pretty chewed up with guts and gore splattered everywhere in the engine compartment. He said “the belt is gone!” At first we thought the monster chewed the fan belt in half or had run off with it, but then he found it lying there completely off its gears or whatever they are called. Apparentely he got caught in the belt when we started the truck and it threw the belt off the heads.

We got rid of the pack rat carcass and stood there for a minute trying to understand just what this meant. Did we have to call a tow truck to come all the way in from Laramie? We saw a diagram under the hood that shows how to thread the belt back on, so Rick got busy trying to figure it out.

It’s not a simple thing to do since it’s not just the fan belt, but drives lots of other things too. They don’t call it a serpentine belt for nothing! It winds in and around all the little belt heads (don’t laugh I don’t know what to all them) in a rather intricate pattern.

Rick tried his best while I offered moral support and held the flashlight. By now it was starting to get too dark to see very much, so we gave up after coming very close to having it back on. Rick came in and went online, found a video of how to put it back on and now we feel pretty confident we can get it back up and running today. Good thing we hadn’t planned on going in to Laramie to shop until tomorrow!

So, therefore the score above: pack rat: 1,  us: 1. We got him but he got us too.

Traps were set everywhere last night: under the truck, near the entry to the fireplace where they had been getting in, by the canoe. One trap was sprung with nothing in it, the one under the truck netted one mouse.

So, if you are still thinking in the back of your head that pack rats are cute, maybe you’ll change your mind when you see the havoc they can cause.




Starting to change! Another post still on the way today with photos from our walks of the past couple of days. I need to catch up if only these dang pack rats would leave us alone!

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This was last night’s sunset as seen through our dining room window. This is a sight we never used to be able to see. In other words, we couldn’t see the sunset for the trees. So, there is some good in losing all those trees to beetle kill.

This photo was taken outside the cabin and looks more like an advancing forest fire.

And again, more late night bedside scribblings led to this:

As I lay in bed awaiting sleep I can see the last of the fire’s light flickering on the logs of the ceiling above. I hear the deep satisfied breathing of tired dogs.

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Our new “street” sign.

I am attempting to blog from my iPad this morning instead of using Rick’s computer. I have a nifty little program called BlogPress, so we’ll see how it goes. Please bear with me if the photos come out smaller, or something else weird goes on. I may switch back if this experiment doesn’t work.

I am sitting at the table looking out the window at the stellar jays having their breakfast of peanuts at the bird feeder. The sun is just now high enough to light up our pines in the newly opened meadow. It looks like it’s going to be a nice day.

Rats aside, the cabin feels like home. We don’t have to adjust, nor does it feel foreign even though we’ve not been here for a year. When we’re here; we’re home. When we’re at our house in New Jersey (which we love); we’re home. The dogs and cats feel the same way. They do have different behavioral patterns here which they just fall into from the moment they arrive. Take Sam for example, on the cat tree that Rick built for the cats on the porch.








The dogs seem to play more. Alex and Bella like to play tug-a-toy and most of the time Alex initiates the play.



The aspens are just now thinking about changing. Strange, because last year this time they were well on their way. There are only a few actually changing right now, while the others are only showing the barest hint of yellow. We’re hoping they get on with it while we are here! Bring on the golden show!

Here are some sky shots from our walk the night before last just before dinner.










We sat on the porch with the oil lanterns lit and listened to the wind sighing through the trees. No owl. No coyotes. Just the wind. No television that night. Just to bed.




I feel like I am one day behind in my blogging due to the rat story, so I will probably post again today. Stay tuned for more cabin-y news.


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Definition of ratification as taken from the dictionary of Lynne:

Rat-i-fi-ca-tion:
The infiltration of one or more packrats inside the cabin, thereby allowing for one heck of a packrat party at our expense.

UGH. I hate packrats! We’ve always had to deal with them up here at the cabin getting under the hood of the truck and building nests, but NEVER in the house. You probably remember my writing about them.

Packrats love to collect things. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to the things they hoard, just whatever attracts them at the moment. I guess they are known to drop an item they are carrying for another one if they like it better.

Before you start thinking oh, how cute! think again. They are not good to have around!

We got an email after we had left New Jersey from the people who watch and act as caretakers of our cabin in our absence. They said they had come over the other day to turn on our fridge and he found quite the mess. They had just been over to the cabin the week before to check on it and it was fine then, so at least the rodents hadn’t been inside for very long.

We didn’t know the extent of damage, only that it had been messed up and the unwanted visitors had been on the kitchen countertops, window sills, the bed, etc. With this in mind we gathered an arsenal of cleaning products at the grocery in Laramie.

The poor man scrubbed away the pee and vacuumed up what he could of all the rat turds and left windows open to air it out. By the time we arrived there was no odor (thank you Larry!) and it was hard to tell anything was amiss.

We were so tired and with the fiasco with the internet not working, we did minimal cleaning before falling into bed. I disinfected all kitchen surfaces including the stove, and most of the window sills, the table and anything that food would touch. Our bed looked okay and we couldn’t see that it had been bothered other than the rat running across the top of it, but we didn’t plan to sleep on top of the bedspread!

Then the de-Ratification began. Yesterday morning we tore the cabin apart, from top to bottom and cleaned every surface. Furniture pulled out, swept behind and floors mopped. Every flat surface was dusted and polished or cleaned with disinfectant. It was quite the job. We aired out the bed linen and changed the sheets. Upholstered chairs and couch were sprayed with Febreeze just in case. Nothing was left undone. Now the cabin looks great! We hadn’t given it such a deep cleaning in years.

While cleaning I found a packrat’s stash in one of the drawers of the breakfront we keep puzzles in and various things. When I saw it I knew for certain it was packrats and not just mice or chipmunks. Take a look.

Before I realized what I was looking at I had removed a whole bunch of cat toys. At first I thought I had put them there, but I didn’t. So, here in the above photo we have: two stingy dried up cloves of garlic, one liquid cold pill (the orange thing), one piece of aluminum foil, cat toys, a pine cone, a nub of what was left of a candle,  a battery (just in case) and a piece of popcorn. Such treasures!

Larry stopped by this morning to see how we were doing and he said that at first he thought someone had broken in as there were towels, dried flowers and just things all over the place. Then when he smelled (and saw) the pee trails and rat turds he knew. But how did they get in? Good question.

We still are not sure how they got inside the house. I saw that above the fireplace screen there was some missing mortar with straw sticking out of the tiny gap. I took a clothes hanger and poked it around up inside the gap and rat turds and bits of nest fell out. They can’t get out this tiny gap and into the house.

We explored the outside of the house and found that the where the fireplace meets the logs the mortar had fallen out and left a gap large enough for the rats to get inside the framing of the fireplace. Their nest is somewhere outside of the fire box (so opening and closing the flue has no effect on them) and inside the framing. No way to get at them. We can only close the gap and hope they don’t get trapped inside with no way to get out. Nothing worse than the smell of a dead rodent!

So far we haven’t found a good answer as to just how they got inside the house. I hate to poison things, but that is what we are going to have to do. We tossed some inside the gap so maybe they will dine on that and leave us alone. For now we are stuffing a tarp in the gap to keep them out. We have someone coming on Friday that was actually one of the people who worked on building the cabin, so hopefully he can help us “bridge the gap” in a more permanent way.

It’s always something up here!