There's a rule here that you can't own roosters. Chickens are okay, but not roosters.
I was out mowing the lawn when a police officer stopped by. She asked me about hearing a rooster in the neighborhood. I told her that I heard it fairly often, but only from my bedroom and could only say that it was roughly west of my house.
I just thought of the obvious response, but I'd have to ban myself, so I'll skip it.
Here we can have up to 4 chickens or rabbits in any combination of the two. They also must be "registered" though I'm not sure how the license plates are required to be attached.
I didn't see any mention of roosters, but I wasn't looking too hard. After seeing rabbits categorized as "poultry" I found this and decided a cold beer sounds good:
In the United States, rabbits are classified as birds. Yes, birds. Since chickens and turkeys are excluded from the two federal laws offering minimal protection to farmed animals, so are rabbits.
Spring in Idaho means the "Green Up". It's the window of time when the hills are green, which lasts only a couple weeks before the hills turn brown. How long the green up lasts, and when it starts, depends on how much water there is and how cool the spring is. This is the one time out of the year when everything feels comfortable.
The forecast for the next few days is haze, which means that forest fires have already started. We're still in the green up, the only time outside of winter when the forests can't burn, but the forecast is still for haze. In this case, it's fires in Canada. They're robbing our brief time when we can breathe free. Even the winter tends to have inversions, so the air can be bad then, too.
Yes, our remaining local weathercasters always note the resumption of "Western Pollution Season."
Even when the haze isn't visible it can easily be detected by noting how filthy rains become. Bad enough that many people will quick-rinse cars after a rain to avoid needing to do full car washing. Nobody here did that in the past.
Can this really be considered natural? The crud level has increased dramatically over just the last decade, far outstripping every measure of climate change in its rate of increase.
I suspect changes in land use and tillage are factors. The crud seems to be dirt as much as smoke.
I'm not sure that's all from fires. A brief rain will leave your car dirty, out here, and that has nothing to do with fires. It has to do with tilling dry fields. A long rain will clean your car, a short rain will make it muddy. It's much worse in the spring, and not really an issue in the winter.
When I lived in Lewiston, we'd get windy days. The wind would start blowing, and all would be fine for a couple hours, but them the hills would vanish in a tan cloud as the Palouse came to visit. I imagine it was great for our lungs.
I don't know if that counts as loess. We get loess blowing across the Pacific from the deserts of western China. It's tan, fine, and accumulates out here...interspersed with ash, but I don't know whether it can be said to originate here. If so, then our loess is your gain.
There are two sides to this story - I'll start with the Bobcat's point-of-view.
Bobcat POV: Sun's just coming up. I'm sneaking around the St Lawrence / Holy Trinity playground. Bird feeder is full of activity in front of Steve and Patty's house! Time to stalk! So many tasty choices!
Steve POV: Sure looks like Cocoa needs an early morning walk! Almost 16 years old, blind, down to four pounds - barely able to stand. I've been carrying him outside for a few months now - walking 10 feet is a chore but he is still a happy old pup!
Bobcat POV: Birds, Birds, Birds - and then the front door opens wide - a man steps out and drops a small brown dog into the front yard - then returning to the house! Door is closed! So many options - birds, dog, birds, birds and a dog! Start sneaking forward slowly!
Steve POV: Time to step back outside and see if Cocoa is done!
Bobcat POV: Door opens - my cat instinct says FREEZE!
Steve POV: Picking up Cocoa - then OMG! That's a big cat! Lots of face fur! I think it's coming towards me?!?
Bobcat POV: Dog... Birds... So many choices! WTH is this guy doing back?
Steve POV: Total disbelief! Do I stand up straight? Back away slow? Fast?
Bobcat POV: I'll do a quick pirouette - moving a couple feet down the hill! Still facing my prey - should I stay or should I go now!
Steve POV: That cat is spinning around and facing me down all at the same time!
Bobcat POV: ...If I stay there could be trouble...
Steve POV: Cat is spinning and moving down the hill...
Bobcat POV: Time to leave!
Steve POV: Cat runs back into St Lawrence!
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Old guy two doors down from me called me over to his porch when I walked past. He was having lunch on the table on his long, wide porch. Seems that when his wife is away "he can have" his favorite sandwich. Pumpernickel with Velveeta and thick onion slices. Something he called "green tea punch" too that might be alcoholic.
Turns out he just wanted to know what it said on the front of my hat and what it meant.
Growing up in NH, I wandered all over the valley around my house. In the winter, I knew what animals were around and how many, based on the tracks. I never saw bobcat tracks, but then again, I never saw bear or moose tracks, and both of those have moved into the area since I left. Turkeys are there, too....and ticks, which are considerably less welcome.
Growing up in NH, I wandered all over the valley around my house. In the winter, I knew what animals were around and how many, based on the tracks. I never saw bobcat tracks, but then again, I never saw bear or moose tracks, and both of those have moved into the area since I left. Turkeys are there, too....and ticks, which are considerably less welcome.
The occasional visit became seeing multiple cats in the same day - seems we have a family in the woods now. I saw an aerial photograph of my neighborhood from 1934 and the lack of trees was incredible. Maybe count 10 trees in the dozens of acres that were in the pic. Seems European settler greed and need for farmland made removing trees a commodity!
Moose hit by a car and killed in North Haven on the Merritt Parkway last month - so they are moving down from Maine and NH and VT to southern New England as well.
Mammals I've never seen before in CT that are now regular - and that have moved through my backyard as well: mink, river otter, coyote, bear and now bobcats! I know where there is a beaver dam within a mile of my house! In the past an occasional red fox was a cool visit.
Problem I see with all this is that the bobcat really has no natural predators - I guess wolf might have done that job in the past. With these cats we simply have less squirrels, chipmunks - even ducks in the brook are on the decline.
[edit] you got that Clash reference - saw them open for The Who in Shea Stadium in the very early 80's, lol! [/edit]
Last edited by szlamany; May 22nd, 2023 at 04:58 AM.
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I don't believe in bobcats. For one thing, how do you know their name is Bob? I realize that would be worse than finding a mittenscat in your back yard, but still, isn't that just stereotyping. The other reason is that I've never seen one in the wild. I've been with numerous people who've said, "look, there's a bobcat!", but when I turn, they say, "it just left." That has happened so many times it's pretty much a joke. Heck, I took a picture of one of those mini-front end loaders just so that I could show people that I had seen a bobcat in the wild (seriously, it was from the Pacific Crest Trail, and I still have the picture).
Bobcats are like sasquatch: Lots of people believe in them, several people think they've seen one, but I'm skeptical. I've seen Florida panthers (highly endangered), and a family of mountain lions (same thing as the Florida panther, really, just in a different area), yet I've never seen a bobcat.
Growing up in NH, stone walls were just a part of the scenery. They lined every road, passed through the woods in odd places, extended out across swamps, and I even found one going across the open, rock, ledges of a small mountain...the name of which I wouldn't even TRY to spell. They were so ubiquitous that I often overlooked the implication of those walls: They were the border of some farmers field. The walls were built because a farmer hit a rock and moved it to the edge of the field.
That shows how much New England is changing. At the turn of the last century (1900), my understanding was that New England was 90% cleared. Now it is 90% forest, and growing. The stone wall across the mountain meant that where now there are rock ledges, there was once enough soil for a farmer to till the land. The stone wall through a swamp meant that the land was once dry enough for a farmer to till. The increasing forests show that the land is returning to the way it was before white settlers began clearing it.
I had always heard that the moose couldn't live in southern NH because of a brain worm parasite, but they're certainly moving south, now. Either the parasite is no longer an issue, or it never was an issue.
There was a Germanic tribe known as the Alans. Is that where we get the name Alan from? We certainly have the Goth name from a different tribe, but why not the Ostrogoths?
I think that name should be brought back: Ostrogoths by gosh!
Last I heard, this was Post Race...still looking for a cat named Bob. Feet on desk not a concern here, lol!
Wasn't meant to "concern" you. Just found it interesting. Not worth starting a separate thread. I also heard this was Post Race, are you the Post Race police?
I guess technically Shaggy and I are the Post Race policy. Albeit corrupt soviet style policemen where if you give us enough interesting/random topics then we overlook things.
I meant to be biking today. I was supposed to have started on a 5-6 week bike trip on Saturday, but Thursday evening, I got a hint that things might be what I was expecting. A bit of calling around and then a road trip on Sunday, showed that spring has been a bit delayed on my route. There's so much snow remaining at elevation that I would have been walking over snow for about 20 miles, with few, if any, spots where I could actually ride the bike. The weather would have been fairly warm, though the snow would have kept it cooler.
This will mean that it will be hotter and less pleasant once I get across the mountain portion of the ride, but that's life.
Last gas powered Camaro will come off the assembly line in January. I jumped on the chance to trade in my current blue Camaro for this gorgeous Red Camaro RS! Those blacked out 20 inch rims put me over the edge!
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I have no picture with me, but I picked up a Rav4 Prime about a month ago. They're very hard to get, as the waiting list tends to be up around two years, but I got crazy lucky in that I called a dealership just as they got an unexpected delivery. The Prime is the second most powerful car that Toyota has produced, so the acceleration is impressive, especially at highway speeds, since it's also a plug-in hybrid. I can now do my commute and anything around town entirely on electric, while having gas as a back up for longer trips. I took one of those longer trips this last weekend to scout out snow levels in the mountains. I ended up averaging just under 45 mpg on gas, which was pretty nice.
Not a fan, but not condemning the choice. I hope your Toyota dealership is better than ours, but that's no reflection on the car itself.
It will be interesting to see how things work out. Coping with hot and cold weather isn't their strong suit even with the added failure point of a modest heat pump. You might have to "remote pre-heat" in the Winter.
Does yours have the "exploding airbag of death" that there is a recall battle over right now?
Toyota dealers in Idaho are not allowed to sell the car. Only some states are allowed to sell them, and nobody has given me a straight answer as to why that is. I had about a five hour drive to the dealership. It was quite nice, though.
I'm very much a fan. It's the geekiest car I've ever owned.
The exploding airbags thing is mostly old news. I see no evidence that it still remains an issue with 2023 models in any brand, though it may never have been an issue for these anyways. Consumer Reports states that most of those airbags were deployed up through 2015. 2023 is a few years after that.
Coping with hot weather doesn't seem to be an issue, and I'll have to see about cold weather...though that reminds me that I neglected to open the windows, so the car is going to be more than a bit warm. Can't open the windows now, though, as there's a thunderstorm building right above me. Perhaps the car will cool down by the time I get out there?
My one objection is that I feel they are calculating MPG in a less than ideal fashion. I feel they should only calculate MPG when the gas engine is running, but they calculate it by total miles driven divided by gallons used. Since I can do my commute without using gas, that means that my MPG should start out as NaN, and could remain there for the entire summer.
For the trip I took this last weekend, I waited until the gas engine came on, then pulled over and reset the calculation such that I was seeing MPG when the gas engine was operating. Prior to that, the MPG had topped 120, because there was one long trip on gas (back from the dealership), then only a gallon or two used over the next 700 miles, or so. That's technically correct, but not in any way useful.
Interesting. I hadn't heard that one, but after reading up on it, I'd say that it's unlikely to apply to me. The RAV4 Prime is manufactured in either two or three different places. One is Canada, one is Japan, and there may be a third. The Arc airbags mentioned there, which don't seem quite as bad as the earlier Takata issue, though the two are related in some ways, are manufactured in Tennessee. While no story I read mentioned them being used by Toyota, it seems a bit unlikely that they'd be used in the Japanese built Primes, which is what I have.
The caption of the video is kind of funny. "It becomes a bomb!" No, it always WAS a bomb. They're using ammonium nitrate to explosively inflate the airbag. That's an explosive. The goal is to use it in a small enough quantity, and in a sufficiently open area, that the components can take the force. The issue with the Arc airbags, as alleged by the TSB (and contested by Arc) is that there are constrictions created in the manufacturing process that will concentrate the force beyond the tolerance of some of the parts, thereby resulting in shrapnel.
All airbags are bombs, they are just supposed to be bombs weak enough not to cause too much damage.
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Originally Posted by Shaggy Hiker
