Black Bear Visitor

Skinny found some mosses dug up on our trail walk this morning and I thought it was probably a black bear visitor. This afternoon I had just fed the corn for the deer and in walked this fellow. He was very much at home and sat right down to eat.
I walked out on the deck to get a photo, however, and he scampered off.

Happy Mother's/Grandmother's Day!

Sloppy

Red in the Morning...

Sailors take warning! We already have about two inches of snow on the ground,
sagging tarps, wet dogs and a little girl's birthday party forced inside.
More snow to come!

Red at night, sailor's delight... maybe tomorrow?

or... "Rain before seven, stop by eleven?"

Cats

Again today I saw a medium size wild cat. This time it was at the opposite end of the land, coming up from my waste pit. I was hauling waste with the ATV and saw it launch itself as soon as it heard me. It ran fast and I chased after it to try to identify it.... I saw it two more times, first with its back legs extended, 'flying low' through the underbrush... then again 'flying' through the brush headed for the road. I didn't mean to scare it, of course, but I then ran down to the road, of course, to not see it. It was solid gold color, about the height of my Elkhound.
In reprocessing it , it was possibly a young (yearling?) cat (cougar?). I later saw a dead domestic cat, reminding me that the gold one was at least 3x the size of the domestic cat. Tonight I have the field cameras out, just in case we can grab a photo of it.

Photo: an unidentified animal near the front gate, a favorite spot for the wildlife... a trail crossing... a deer? a fat coyote? don't know.

Free Fun Runs

The dogs always love free running but maybe the best time is in the spring with all of the great fresh
smells to chase.   Today was a good day for all and , in the morning, it was beautiful.  

Photos: Apple blossoms, Yo out running the trails, Frita and daughter, Yepa(white) ran with Medio. We did see what appeared to be a large cat
(as in wild with a long tail) in the area that Yo was running... we surprised it and
it leapt the steep hillside in a single bound (like Super cat). Skinny was with me
at the time and he went a bit wild about it.

Still Hauling

Today we kept working on removing doors and raking/hauling straw from inside the houses.  We used
a small bit of it to cover new grass seed where Skinny had dug numerous craters on the front lawn.
Still no rain to measure, but predictions for it in the coming days.   The flowering trees are beautiful all over the trails.

Skinny had his first bath after he madly dug in a ground hog hole and came up smelling musky.

On the cottage front, we put the pontoon boat in yesterday, in spite of high winds.