Hot Weekend

 We had a very hot weekend here.  Temperature rose to 80's.

I'm not sure if that's an April record.  I doubt it.  Recent years have been strange.

Yesterday I returned the two cats to the two Sweet Home colonies where they came from.

On the way home, I stopped at the park, which was jammed with people.  I walked up the short trail, up river.  It's a rough trail that is often submerged parts of the winter.  It's rocky and rutty so you have to watch your step.

The first little river beach off the trail was full of people.  So was the second but I took the trail (only 15 feet) towards it anyway, then walked down away from the people by 20 feet and sat on a rock and ate my lunch.

People were fishing mid day on such a hot day, something that astounds me.  I don't think fish are feeding in such hot weather and shallow water in the middle of the day.  I could be wrong.  A drift boat was out in the water, just off the highly used beach where kids were splashing around.  It made me laugh.  Seemed like the fly fishers on the boat were just trying to be seen.  At one point they lost control of the boat and it went in circles.  Their lines were chronically tangled between the two of them.  I finally couldn't look their way, embarrassed for them.

I think these are perhaps Caddis Fly larvae 

There were three of these bugs, two of them smaller, clinging to blades of grass above the river.  They didn't move while I was sitting nearby.  But after I moved a couple feet away and looked back, all three were gone.   This bug is also a stone fly, probably having just emerged from the water and about to moult.

I came home and slept then, being very tired from the last few days work.   Today I tried to weed eat the back lawn.  As luck would have it, the weed eater just ran through the line on the spool almost instantly, as soon as I'd reload it.  I visited youtube over it and decided it would either be the feeder lever on the bottom, the knife blade that cuts the line on the guard or the spring on the line feed cap.  It was the latter giving a problem.  I spent some time trying to "small" the spring, and whatever I did worked at least temporarily.  I can buy a new cap with spring for a couple dollars online.

A shelter in Salem had called me and asked me to hold two boys, so they wouldn't be euthanized, until placement could be found, or I could just release them in some colony.  Yeah, that isn't how it works, with relocating a wild cat.  Anyhow, I signed the boys up for Meow Village barn cat program.  It's a list though and I'm probably way down it for the boys.  But they qualify since they are Marion county cats, fortunately.  Blizz is white and Moon is black.    I have room in the garage and two big cages and I thought if holding them a bit will save their lives ok, I can do that.  

This is Blizz

This is Moon

If you know anyone who'd like a shop cat, Blizz is your boy.  He can't go to a barn in predator country because white cats stand out like neon, but would be just fine on rat patrol in a shop or warehouse, greenhouse, etc.  He's cuter than cute and has attitude also while Moon just seems completely confused by all these changes in his life in the last few days.  But at least you're alive, I tell him.  Both use the litter boxes in their respective cages and eat well too.

Other than fussing with the weed eater half the day to try to get it not to kick out all the line in under a minute, I have done very little.  I'm proud of that.