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.

As I sat looking around the cabin the other day, it began to dawn on me that we had an awful lot of things depicting moose. I knew then I should blog about it. With camera in hand I began to seek out moose objects, and was surprised to find more than I had realized.

Some we bought, some were gifted by friends, and many came in a steady stream from my mom.

Before you judge us too harshly on our cabin decor let me gently remind you that this is, after all, a cabin. A cabin that sits in a meadow surrounded by aspens and pines. The world outside our cabin consists of moose, coyote, bear and the occasional mountain lion (or so we’ve heard). It just seemed natural to bring them inside with us. Let me show you our moosey things.

On our kitchen curtains:

On our dinner plates:

On our coasters:

On our placemats:

On a sign:

On our flag:

Our doorbell:

On our front door:

On our toothbrush holder:

On the curtains covering some storage shelves:

Holding Rick’s spare change:

On our rug:

On the wallpaper header in our bedroom:

Just sitting around:

On a lamp shade:

I think I found all of them, but then again there may be more hiding somewhere that I missed.  I could probably do the same thing with fish and bear. We have a lot of those too! In fact, some really cute fishy things ...

After eating dinner, walking the dogs and cleaning up the dishes, we decided to sit on the screened-in porch and have dessert and an after dinner limoncello.

We turned off all the inside lights and lit the lantern on the porch. The dogs melted into contented piles around us. We sat listening to the trickle of water left over from our little shower that waited until we were home to really cut loose and rain.

Not long after we had all settled ourselves, we were treated to a coyote concert. The dogs don’t like it much. They prick up their ears and cock their heads from side to side listening. Is it friend or foe they seem to be asking?  They really don’t know quite what to make of the coyotes.

As we sit, the silence is absolute. The lack of sound is deafening to our ears. It’s a very strange sensation.

An owl starts hooting in the distance. Is it our owl, the one that has been here all the years that we have, or another? He keeps up his insistent song for ten minutes or so, but as the light fades deeper and deeper, from twilight to something beyond, we hear him no longer. It seems that he has found his bed too, as we must also soon.

It’s been quite a day, and I’m sure Bella will have at least one story to tell you tomorrow about her swimming activities. Gosh is that beaver pond cool!

Until tomorrow ...

I thought I would post a few photos from our morning walk. I am going to think of all our beetle-killed pines as just changing color for the season. If I think of it that way they don’t look quite so bad.

Bella liked the boggy area of our beaver pond (of course).

The aspen trees in the bottom of our woods are thick and lush. Some of them are so big we can’t get our arms around them.

The little aspens on our “avalanche slope” (as we like to call the huge hill that collects snow in the winter) are changing.

Alex trotting up the road on the last leg of the walk.

Alex and Bella on the road at our driveway. Not sure if you can see them in this photo, but the dark trees on the mountain across the way are all beetle-killed. It has really spread since last year. In my blog header you can see the same mountain as it was two years ago.

Bella says “are we there yet, wherever the heck we are going?” I’m a good traveler, mom!

After a relatively short day yesterday we arrived in Laramie about 12:30. We did our mega grocery shopping, getting groceries for meals for a week, then headed straight for the cabin. The drive in, on washboarded dirt roads, is pretty scenic. Lots of antelope and weird sandstone ridges and formations.

The western sky welcomed us with a pretty show of clouds. You don’t get skies like this in New Jersey!

The dogs and cats immediately knew where we were when we pulled into the driveway. They haven’t forgotten. After unloading all the groceries and all the things we had brought with us, we set to the task of putting it all away. Quite the chore but it has to be done first.

It was sad to see that the beetle kill is extensive in our pine forest. So many more trees have succumbed to the those beetle devils that are decimating the forests of Colorado. I’ll have photos later on.

The dogs enjoyed a walk to the bottom of our road before dinner. Here are Hailey and Bella.

We all need to adjust to the change in altitude. From nearly sea level to 8,600 feet above is quite a bit of change.

Here are Sam and eBay on top of the kitchen cabinets trying to decide which one is trespassing on the other’s territory. I think eBay had it staked out first.

And, our full moon last night, rising up over the trees.

It’s good to finally be here. It feels like home.