I told you I was sure more moose would show up. Look what I found in the drawer the other night while trying to find something in our limited collection of things for setting a table.

Another place mat and matching napkin avec moose ...

... and this napkin holder.

The best though was on our evening drive right at sunset last night. Take a look!

Isn’t he grand? I walked right out into the meadow where he was standing with my telephoto to get this picture. I could have gotten closer because he was not spooked by me at all, but another car (filled with hunters) pulled up while I was taking photos and he spooked.

Finally, the real thing!

hello adoring fans! it’s me, bella. mom finally gave me some computer time of my own. i begged and begged and said please please please can i use the computer. now i can tell you what i’ve been up to. this place is really cool. i get to go on lots of walks and i don’t have to be on a lead. mom and dad say i’m a really good trail dog. there are woods with lots of logs to jump over, a little stream to get a drink in and wet your feet, and bestest of all is the beaver pond. well, the beaver doesn’t really live there anymore and daddy says the pond has a leak now, but it’s lots of fun. the minute i saw it i jumped right in! mom and dad couldn’t see me at first but they could hear lots and lots of splashing and they think i was actually swimming. i have swimmeded—i mean really swimmeded—twice. i think it was by accident when i went too far out and lost my footing, but i swimmed anyway and it was okay. i prefer to just stand there up to my shoulders. here are some photos.

here i am painting water pictures in the air with the drops from my tail. way cool, huh?

every time we walk down to the pond i have to go in and do my thing. i’m a water dog at heart. i really am.

look at me—i can float!

i can jump!

i can shake off and make myself look funny!

and here i am on a walk.

onced i saw an animal go down a hole in the middle of the road. mom says it was a prairie dog but it didn’t look like any dog i have ever seen. besides, what kind of dog goes down a hole? i tried and tried to dig it up. i made dust fly everywhere.

it must be down there somewhere ... come out, come out wherever you are ...

can you tell i am having a blast?

here i am still wet from my pond swim with sis hailey. my mom likes this picture a lot.

well, gotta go now. there are walks to be taken and scents to be sniffed! bye for now!

Here are some photos of the sky over the past few days. Some at sunset, some early in the morning.

This morning’s glorious display. These were taken with a wide angle lens.

I always wanted longer legs!

This tree is not on our property, but on an adjacent piece.

The same glorious display, only this was taken about 30 minutes later. A weather system was moving in.

So much for that old song where “the skies are not cloudy all day.”

Yesterday was annoying. Evidently Rick got too greedy with our internet. He had both the iPhone and the computer hooked up so both were taking up band-width space. Our server decided to penalize us by cutting us back so drastically we basically could not even get on to do anything. How dare they! But, now we are back to normal after having to stand in the corner with our noses to the wall. Shame on us!

Bella is upset because she is really anxious to bring you up to speed on what she’s been doing but I told her she’d have to wait her turn. Later, Bella, later.

This morning we filled the cabin with the smell of baking cookies and bread. I tried a new recipe from the latest Food Network magazine and Rick made Breakfast Bread for our breakfast.

The cookies are tasty and chock full of things good for you (molasses, dried cranberries, golden raisins, ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, greek yogurt) but they don’t look very pretty. Baking at high altitudes is challenging!

Yesterday I felt like a pioneer woman. I did laundry in the kitchen sink, then hung it out to dry. I’ll spare you the photo of our underwear and socks hanging on the line. Getting the rinsing cycle down is not easy and I’m certain that I left some soap still clinging to the threads. And with all the wringing out I did it certainly makes you appreciate the spin cycle on your washer.

We had a visit from neighbors Donna and Larry, and after they left we put together a puzzle. That was about our day yesterday other than the walks with the dogs. For a few days now it will be the last of the walks with all the dogs together as Bella has entered standing heat. Not much fun for anybody, believe me! But, we’ve been through it before up here at the cabin (with multiple intact male dogs!) and survived, so I think we can do it again. It just makes things more difficult.

I need to do a picture post but none seem to go with this entry. Maybe later ...

P. S. No pack rat nest under the hood for two days now, so it must have been the only one. The furnace is still working.

Warning! dead animal photo alert ...

Rick and I laid in bed the first morning after our arrival and listened to the familiar sound of the furnace clicking on. We waited for the comforting whoosh! of the burner being ignited but nothing happened. For five minutes or so we lay in denial as the pre-burner fan whirred on and on. Crap. The furnace was not working. We got up and noticed it didn’t smell very good in here either. Rick checked all the things that he could but without taking the furnace apart, we were stumped. What we did know was that the smell was pretty bad. We assumed that a mouse or something had somehow gotten into the exhaust pipe and was blocking the air flow, hence the safety feature of our propane furnace was such that it would not turn on and asphyxiate us. A good thing!

Of course this was Saturday and the long Labor Day weekend loomed before us. We knew it would be Tuesday before we might be able to get anyone to come and look at it. The weather is very nice (70’s during the day) and not getting too cold at night yet, so all the heat we really needed was provided by the wood stove first thing in the morning to just take the chill off the room. We’re lucky it’s not winter.

So first thing yesterday morning Rick was on the phone trying to find someone to come out. He wasn’t having much luck at first. Either they didn’t work on propane furnaces or were not willing to cross the Colorado state line (we are only 3 miles from the Colorado/Wyoming border). He finally found one company that said they could even come out that very afternoon.  We were thrilled. The last thing we wanted to do was leave the cabin with winter fast approaching with a non-functioning furnace.

When he arrived he felt certain it was as we had feared. Something had gotten in or fallen down the exhaust pipe and died. He started taking apart the furnace and the smell was becoming overpowering. He started to remove the combustion air blower (had to look this up!)  and turned to us and said “it’s a lot fresher than we thought, probably been in there only a week.” He had to get a mask for his face and then removed the blower. There, with its head stuck in the end of the blower was a squirrel.

Poor thing. Somehow, and we don’t really know how, he managed to get up on our roof and drop down into the exhaust pipe. He had no recourse but to follow the pipe down and ended up with his head stuck in the mouth of the blower. So bizarre. Our roof is slick metal, so I can’t imagine how he managed it. Maybe he dropped from the solar panel. We’ll never know. Thank you little squirrel for such a welcome home to our cabin. Geez. Sorry for the photo but I just had to do it. Hopefully it will never happen again.

Then, the other morning we found this little offering on the front door mat.

We knew exactly what it meant. Pack rat. Those pesky little wood rats that make their nests out of whatever catches their eye. We’ve had them in the past and they are nearly impossible to get rid of. We had one that used to live in Beastie (our old Ford pick-up truck with a plow that we used to keep up here) and every time we came up we had to clean out the nest from the engine. He not only built a nest but chewed on wires causing shorts in Beastie’s system, which believe me, Beastie did not need.  I remember one time the dogs had one cornered in an old hollow log and in the end they did get him. We had to pull them off him.

So, we were not happy with the gifts. Not at all. RIck popped the hood of the Suburban and sure enough, there were the beginnings of a small nest. A furled, fresh green leaf from the yarrow, two dried up dog turds, some dead grass and some other things we could not readily identify. He removed the nest and we set some traps last night using dog biscuits. This morning the dog biscuits were gone, the traps unsprung, and a new nest under the hood. We removed the nest yet again and went back inside to get ready for our trip into Laramie for groceries and gas.

We got in the truck, started it up and heard a loud thunk like something had come loose. We looked at each other and rolled our eyes. Rick got out and nothing seemed amiss, so we went on our way into Laramie shopping, getting the oil changed in the Suburban, etc.

After coming home we parked in the same spot and let the dogs out to pee. They thought the front of the truck smelled pretty interesting. We figured it was just the leftover smell of pack rat pee. Bella was sniffing something on the ground and she was kind of afraid of it, yet interested. I asked Rick who was standing right there just what it was that she was sniffing. He picked up something off the ground and said ” pack rat tail.” He still must have been in the engine somewhere when we started it up. On closer inspection under the hood we did indeed find bits and pieces of something. We have to wonder if the folks who changed our oil came across more bits and pieces and just didn’t tell us?

That pack rat may have met it’s demise, but I’m sure there are more. All part of living in the country but definitely not one of the perks.