After I left my last blog entry, it basically fell off a cliff!
Things were very busy, and lots of opportunity to blog but I just didn’t have the desire I suppose?
We went on a really nice summer holiday to visit my family in the Interior of BC, where we enjoyed camping at Christina Lake, kayaking, hiking, running, horseback riding, and biking/running the Myra Canyon Trestles, a trip to the Kangaroo Farm and then…COVID when we were in Vancouver.
We also enjoyed a fantastic dinner and wine tasting at Mission Hill, courtesy of my parents. It was divine!
Yep, the big Covid hit us, pretty hard. Not unexpected, as my sister was sick when she had dinner/visited with us in Kelowna but I was still fairly surprised and thought it was just terrible allergies when we were in Vancouver (running the sea wall, going out for drinks, out for dinner…greeeat…). Nope, COVID.
That knocked us on our butts for a while, and when I was feeling better I was working from home, and then back to work, where work proceeded to knock me on my butt again too!
And failing miserably every time! WHyyyy?? I just want them to live 😦
Poor little buddy
In the spring I picked up a dead (I thought) baby barn swallow and it MOVED so I got gloves, and moved it to a nest…Where it later died. ARGH.
Last week I found a dead mouse in a bucket of mine in my locker, so I dumped it out onto the muck pile and again…it MOVED. ARGH.
So I dithered greatly about it and ended up putting it in a small tissue box with some rags. It still wasn’t really moving, so I rode and then put Oats away and checked on it. Still not moving. I microwaved the rags and put it back with the warm rags and that seemed to really perk it up!
I caught a little video of my little mousie friend, but sadly the next day it had died. It climbed out of the tissue box when I left and fell off the bench and died 😦
Wowza, climate change is real! We got temperatures reaching up to 37 degrees here on the West Coast, so I didn’t do a ton of riding this week and past weekend, more like hosing off the poor horse!
While I am a fan of the heat, I was concerned about our furrier friends. I ended up cancelling Oats’ jump lesson on Saturday (32 deg!!) and we went on a summer adventure instead! And on Sunday I got up early and was in the saddle around 8am, but it was still incredibly hot so we just did a little w/t and called it quits. Monday I got up VERY early and had my butt in the saddle at 6:35am to beat the heat- and it did the trick! The shade was out over the outdoor arena, so I rode outdoors for as long as we had shade and then I get to beat it to work- so, finished up around 7am. It was much cooler then, thank god.
Swimming time!
Our summer adventure was a great call though. We hoofed it up to the Cowichan River and went swimming and it was glorious! The water was a bit cold (I am a wimp though) and it was very hot out. Gidget came with us and we definitely enjoyed ourselves.
We then zipped over to Enrico’s for a wine slushy (yess!!) and hit up Ice Cream Mountain on our way to the barn. I rode Oats bareback at the walk for 10 mins and that was it, phew…it was smoking hot! I felt very good about cancelling my lesson that day, it just didn’t seem very fair for the horses.
Wine slushy!
And now we’re off to another summer adventure, after a ride tonight 🙂 I love summer, and it’s starting to cool off from our insane heatwave here.
So many good flavours: Peanut butter and chocolate, Raspberry cheesecake, Pralines, Caramel cookies ‘n’ cream!
Yesterday was a pretty crazy day- so many incidents with wildlife!
In the morning I was working (as per usual now that I am working from home during the pandemic) in my living room, and BANG! A poor little hummingbird just splattered hard against my patio glass door. 😦 I was instantly up and looking for it, and it did not look good…It was flat on the ground, all its feathers splayed out, not moving.
Sitting up, but very dazed.
I yelled for my husband and we gathered the poor little hummer up on a book and I brought it some sugar water. I watched it (during a meeting for work, ha) and after about 15 minutes it started actually looking around at things, and then it perked up and flew off! 🙂 SO relieved. I was very worried about the little dude.
And then after work I had some time and the weather was pretty nice, so I went for a walk with my husband and dog, and I put my bunny out in my backyard for some fresh air. I went to check on him after the walk and to my surprise, a racoon was digging in our raised gardens!! I yelled at it and he took his sweet-ass time sauntering off, and I was pretty worried because my RABBIT was still out there too! Sheesh. Except…My dog saw the racoon and ran straight at it barking like Hound of the freaking Baskervilles…And scared the bejeezus out of my poor rabbit! He was terrified! He took off, so I had to chase the racoon off, catch the rabbit (thankfully contained in my yard) and chase off my dog from the raccoon. Chaos!!
There was fluffs of fur flying everywhere, so we were concerned that the racoon had somehow scuffled with bunny, but nobody had any injuries. Tucker bun did have a bloody spot on his foot, so we cleaned it up but there was no scrape or anything there today, so who knows?? He was exhausted after that, poor bun bun.
And THEN I had a jump lesson at the barn, which was great. I finished up and went to sweep out the crossties and found this:
Poor little thing!
Yeah, a baby bird kicked out of its nest. Not again 😦 I thought it was definitely dead, so I went to sweep it with the broom and it MOVED. OMG. I freaked out, called my husband, and put gloves on and picked it up. It moved so weakly… I couldn’t put it back into the nest it fell out of (in the window-well of a locked locker, behind a grate where the window was) so I found another barn swallow nest inside the barn, got a step ladder and kind of tossed the little baby up there. Hoping for the best for it!! I hope it survives.
So, that was a very exciting and emotional day for me. It’s so hard when it’s wildlife animals…I feel so bad for them. I want to help!!
A trip to Brazil isn’t complete without the awe of seeing so many cool critters. We did see the larger capybara at the airport in Sao Paulo, but no photos sadly as we were whizzing by on a bus too fast to capture it!
Meet Mr. Agouti!
Otherwise you will have to feast your eyes on these little guys: the agouti.
Much smaller than the capybara, the agouti- also referred to as the ‘common agouti’- sidenote does anyone find it strange they refer to these cool and unique animals as ‘common’? Like the ‘common’ marmoset I posted about earlier?
They look like weird guinea pigs and are actually related to them but have longer legs and can pick things up with their front paws and sit on haunches, much like squirrels. In a large park in the middle of Rio, there were about a thousand of them. I’m not kidding. The park was absolutely crawling with agouti…homeless people…about a 100 cats…Ibis…and geese? They are apparently very fast and pretty good swimmers. They are also regarded as one of the only animals that can open Brazil nuts! Funny eh?
Like squirrels at a feeding station.
It was a very strange and unusual experience for us.
Look carefully at the top of the trees.
They all existed more or less in harmony? There was food put out for the animals in food stations, so I guess the city or whoever is okay with this little animal kingdom happening. In Costa Rica, the agouti are incredibly shy and I never saw one in the two times I visited. Go to the middle of a huge city and there they are! All over!
From me and my sweethearts (husband, Oats, Buster and Gidget!)
Who doesn’t love this cute face? (this counts for both Buster and husband).
Buster shares a moment
And this one?
Cutie
I’m so lucky!
Also- because I have a love/hate relationship with Valentines Day (think it’s a total crock but love the sarcastic and bizarre cards that come with it…)
The adventures of Mr. Oats 