Toadfish Monastery

I usually prefer spruce gum (one has to get just the right consistency, or it becomes a sticky mess that stay in your teeth for hours), or black poplar buds - especially if I have a sore throat (analgesic and anti-microbial) - but birch has its uses. That birch bark tar is supposed to be a reliable adhesive for many things and would likely have been manufactured in significant amounts for other uses. Haven't got around to making a batch here yet.  I do have a pot of chaga (birch fungus) tea brewing today.

Really!!!!!!!?  Is that true?!!!!!

It's not a diseased mind right now, just a damaged one. I've been nursing a concussion for a week and a half:

Quote from: SteepsWell, some unexpected snow decided to show up, so I got the chance yesterday to try the Stickies out in some moderate (7-10 cm) powder conditions. They were great! Lots of fun dropping into steep terrain. Didn't tweak the binding settings, and I think next time I'd set them back a bit more. Might be a while till next time though....

Near the end of my first run, ripping a green groomer to get back to the lift, I swung to the right under the path of a snow machine to avoid a fast but wide-turning run hog while overtaking said hog. I'm not sure exactly what happened (snow plume reduced visibility for a couple of seconds), but my guess is that I dropped into some sort of a powder-filled hole or depression and caught my tips at speed. Cue a sudden, high-speed green run tomahawk of at least two full rotations. The first impact was pretty much smack on the top of my head, and my head made it back to the ground at least once more before I stopped (kind of lost count...). I wear a helmet at all times, of course. After coming to a stop and doing a quick self-assessment, my upper back between my shoulder blades was pretty cranky, and my bell had been pretty firmly rung, but nothing seemed broken. When I went to get to my feet, one of my boards felt a bit... floppy.

(photo omitted)

Yep, clean break through the top sheet, core and sidewalls (ptex and edges survived). I was pretty close to the bottom of the hill, so it wasn't a problem to make it down, hit the truck, grab my Spliffs and get back on the gondy. I rode till the end of the day, another 5 1/2 hours or so. Lots of stretches along the way to nudge my back into shape, and by the end I was starting to clue in that I had a minor concussion, but hey it was the first fresh snowfall of the season.
​

To be clear, the break was 100% the result of the crash and not a contributing factor. I'm pretty sure it must have happened on my first rotation, after my head left the ground... I'm guessing my tail planted in the snow when my feet came around and snapped as my body rotated up and around for my next head-plant. Seems pretty consistent with the placement and degree of the break. So no fault on the Stickies, here. Not sure on my travel speed but it was probably somewhere in the 60-70 km/h range given the terrain and general feel of it (that's fast-comfortable, as opposed to the scary-fast 100 km/h top speeds that I sometimes hit on steeper groomers).

I guess I shouldn't have opened up my mouth about being willing to buy another pair of Stickies if this one got trashed. I was picturing some core shots and chewed up edges, not catastrophic dismemberment. I guess I've got a spare board for next time. Ah well, it was a fun 4 days, while it lasted... and I will be back for another pair!


Woke up this morning feeling thoroughly sh**kicked, to see that we got even more fresh snow (11 cm) overnight. I was too smashed to shred today, with a lingering headache and sore muscles all over the place, especially my shoulders, core muscles and for some reason, my inner thighs. My back, where it felt like I has done some damage post-crash, is actually feeling all right, so continuing to ride and stretch much have done it some good.

The moral of this story?? Green runs are dangerous. Stick to double-blacks.

Or a couple of exclamation points!! 

What's the difference between a cat and a comma?


A comma is a pause at the end of a clause; a cat has claws at the end of its paws.

I mess with the crows (mostly ravens, actually) around here a bit, but not in any malicious way. I just try my best to mimic them, and manage it well enough to have them circle around a few times looking for the strange crow with the terrible accent. 

I think it spooks them a little, the way you'd feel if you heard a human-ish voice saying "Hello, Hello" from a tree, but kept looking and could only see a bird there...

The chickadees and nuthatches are my friends, though. After the bear ripped down my bird feeder this spring, I couldn't leave much food out for them, and started just putting a little bit of seed out on the railings of the deck for them (not enough to attract evening raiders). Once they got used to me providing for them, I tried hand-feeding them, and most are now brave enough to take seeds from my palm. The only problem is that the little beggars started to show up in mobs as soon as I got home from work or stepped out the back door, but they are a lot less intimidating than a murder of crows.

With the dark days here, I don't get to see them much anymore as I'm only home in daylight hours on the weekend. I did get to birdsit some budgies for friends for a few weeks and have some cheerful indoor companions (during which time I avoided contact with the wild birds - bird flu risk).  Started using the bird feeder again lately with the bears in bed, but have found that one or more hairy woodpeckers likes to pick through the seed in the feeder and scatter it all over the ground, wasting a lot of it (the deedees and nutters get some of the spilled seed but not all). I've taken to just scattering the day's ration on the deck in the morning, and have been rewarded by a small flock of pine grosbeaks showing up to feed. They do tend to displace the smaller birds, but my little friends are usually first on the scene and quick enough to get a share, I think.

Last _{nuthatches make me laugh, they sound like a pissed-off Donald Duck when they're telling off a competitor} Post

It's the giving time of the season, and I encourage you all to give what you can to those in need.

Just be sure that you drop your donations off with the correct organization. There was one unfortunate year where I mixed up my donations to the food bank and the sperm bank. Now there's some poor kid out there whose biological father is Hellman's Best Mayonnaise.

Anyone want a BLT?? 

I have enough trouble distinguishing between bidet and Biden.

One temporarily flushes the shit out of your orfice, the other temporarily flushed the shit out of office...

Last _{why does every American election feel like a South Park episode (about American elections)} Post

The prospect of anti-cat armour in the form of a spiked collar has occurred to me (in case of being pounced from behind by big kitties).

Kitties in my neck of the woods (not all felines):

Bush Kitty - Pine Marten
Bob Kitty - Bobcat
Snow Kitty - Lynx
Big Kitty - Mountain Lion / Cougar
Stinky Kitty - Striped Skunk
DON'T PET THE KITTIES!!!


I see the word Chateau on a lot of French wines... I always thought it denoted notes of cat's urine on the nose, more delicately phrased as 'cat water'. Apparently that is a desirable note for some wines.
https://timatkin.com/cork-talk/cats-pee/


Last _{make sure to douse yourself with eau de toilette before the tasting} Post

The cat armour will not let me pass the subscriber wall. I can think of several places that could stand for a paw(s) in the fighting.



Last _{Would a French AI feline be powered by Chat GPT?} Post

Quote from: Swatopluk on November 10, 2023, 08:20:19 AMI guess a simulated cat* will not work? Are there cat rentals for the purpose of pest control?

Or a mechanical mouser? I think there would be a market for it.

A Shi-mi? Perhaps. I could get a cat (had always intended to) but a cat outside would likely take a heavy toll on the songbirds, especially the chickadees that pester me for seeds, will eat out of my hand and occasionally land on my head. Then there's the eternal issue of predator/prey dynamics... house cats are not alpha predators around here. If it was only let out at night (to protect diurnal songbirds) I'd fear it would be dinner for an owl, a lynx, a cougar or some other hungry forest creature. There are foxes in the general area, but I've never seen one out this way.  There are few if any coyotes around this area, as the wolves scare them off.  There are too many rodents in the area for a cat to make much of a difference. The martens are at least as effective as rodent predators, and don't require additional care.

I did buy a tin cat, which has caught a few rodents; it's a live trap, but unlike a Shi-mi it does not contain a food dispenser and must be checked daily to prevent horrific ends to the captives.

Last _{starvation to the point of cannibalization is too Stalinist. A quick death by snap trap is acceptable.} Post

I went to battle with the rodent clans this year over my vegetable garden. Due to a series of atmospheric and biological events (heat dome two years ago caused the trees to produce a larger crop of seeds last year, because they figured they might die and had better reproduce to the max now) it was a major rodent year. I noticed it mostly with the voles, which I rather like, but were very prevalent starting in the spring. Voles look like chubby mice with short tails, are active in the day, and not nearly frightened enough of humans, so I'd see them moving around frequently when working in the garden. One swore at me in the spring when I was setting up the greenhouse; I had laid a tarp down on the earthen floor to suppress weeds after shoeing one of these little "mouseies" out of the structure. Apparently it wasn't impressed with the changes, as upon its return I heard a loud and very definitely profane 'squeak-sQUeaK-SQUEAK-SQUEAK!!!' from 20+ ft away.

Throughout the season, they periodically would clip off one of my pea vines, but it was a tolerable level of loss (I surely harvested over 1000 pea pods over the season). I mostly tolerated them in the greenhouse, until they started to nibble the tomatoes. The tomatoes are a sensitive topic as, pre-greenhouse, I lost 10+ lbs in 24 hours to a hungry deer. I went on a bit of a trapping binge to clear the greenhouse one weekend, and was catching voles as fast as I could reset the traps. I also caught quite a few deer mice, mostly at night, and unfortunately a couple of jumping mice, which are pretty little things that I would rather not kill. Traps are not selective. I suspect the deer mice were the main culprits in attacking on-the-vine tomatoes as voles prefer to operate at ground level.

I doubled down when my zucchini started to get nibbled. I often left heavily damaged squash in place for the little nibblers to focus on (some ended up being more than 50% eaten), but they would attack almost every fruit in at least a couple of places, leaving teeth marks and scars. I had 17 zucchini plants this year    so it wasn't really denting my production, but it made them unappealing to give away to friends. If you've grown zucchini, you'll know that 17 plants necessitates a lot of give-aways, even if picked small. I suspect the voles as prime suspects in this case, as they are vegetarians, but there were probably some deer mice involved too.

Several traps disappeared from the squash patch in a short amount of time; it was driving me crazy trying to find them as they were nowhere to be found. I suspect a pine marten found the traps with a recent catch and hauled them off to eat the carcass. My winning bait turned out to be a tomato jam I made by boiling cherry tomatoes with sugar until thick. Sticks well to to the traps and is very delicious to mice. I ended up losing my small pot of bait to a pine marten, which came up on the back porch one evening while I was watching, knocked over a covered pail where the bait was hidden, grabbed the pot, and ran up a tree. It did drop the pot when I yelled at it, then bounded down the trunk, grabbed the bait, and headed for the woods. Pine martens are cute but frustrating... when a bear is on the back porch it will run away when I open the door and yell at it, but the last time a marten was on the back porch and I opened the door (a crack) to yell at it, it looked keen to come inside and settled instead for sniffing around the door after I closed it. Little shits...

In the end, I'm not sure how much vegetable damage I prevented with my murder spree, but it will help future vegetables. The compost charcoal pit is well supplied with nitrogen in the form of several dozen rodent carcasses and several pounds of fish offal. I waited until the bears were in bed (I hope, there's been snow on the ground since late October and no bear tracks) to add the latter. I think the martens have been digging in there, though... 

Last _{wild tale} Post

I think I have usually linked them in the past, to appear in thread. It's been a while since I've done so.

Quote from: Swatopluk on October 21, 2023, 07:17:26 AMI occasionally see something fluttering about at dusk outside that I assume is a bat since the movement is not really bird-like but it's too fast to see enough details to be sure.

I inadvertently tested the limits of bat sonar earlier this year; one was feeding near the surface of the water when I was fishing. Apparently they cannot detect something as small as fishing line, because it managed to hit the line as it was flying.

Last _{the bat was fine} Post

I like my Gränfors Bruk axes very much. They aren't cheap, but are good quality.
https://www.gransforsbruk.com

Guns are potentially very dangerous when someone else is holding them, but generally safe when oneself is holding them and following appropriate safety precautions, even if the user is inexperienced. I learned to target shoot at 5 years old, and my sister started around 3, with heavy adult supervision and many, many safety lectures. I wouldn't have been allowed to use an axe at that age, I think. I'm no gun nut but hold an unrestricted (simple hunting rifles) license and do a little bit of subsistence hunting for grouse with a small-gauge .22 caliber rifle. I may take up deer hunting again some day but don't like the amount of variables that can make it tough to ensure a clean, quick kill. Slaughtering livestock is more controlled and more humane (and tends to involve sharp objects). And honestly... I'm far deadlier with a fishing rod! I eat a lot of 'land food' (foraged, gardened, fished or hunted) so a gun is a food-procurement tool for me, albeit a dangerous one if used incorrectly.

Small axes are reasonably safe if one is careful, but I've had some strange deflections on the felling axe that made me realize the potential for sudden foot loss or shin bifurcation. For felling, you need to keep an axe about as sharp as a good kitchen knife; one of my friends cut himself on the blade simply by touching it lightly with his thumb (despite being warned that it was sharp).

I can't sew a foot back on, personally; shooting myself in the foot with a .22 would be painful but not potential fatal in a short period of time. I won't use that axe alone, and it has a zero-blood-alcohol rating (as do all guns). I have a one beer limit on my good Gränfors hatchet when camping; it's sharp but much more predictable.

I am a little more permissible with my (not Gränfors) splitting axe (but closed toed, preferably steel-toed footwear is required) and do not have any particular limits on my cheap, dull kindling hatchet, which could cause nasty bruises but would not easily remove pieces from my body.

Maybe I will find a new one. It will likely be a fish. Photobucket is deleting a bunch of old pictures apparently, and I've not bothered to deal with my account there, so some historical pictures I've posted are likely to disappear as well.