Vandalism By Raccoon

I still want to know how they opened that cabinet!

They'll be surprised tonight when they find all the bird food is gone.

Raccoon Attack

As you may have noticed from my previous posts, I feed birds in my back yard. I keep my bird food in a metal garbage can on my deck. The top fits really tight and I have a bungee cord across the top of the lid. I have more feed in a little free standing wooden storage cabinet that closes with one of those slide in latches.

Recently a herd of raccoons attacked my bird food. They chewed through the bungee cord and took the top off of the metal garbage can and scattered the containers of seed all over the deck. They ate the peanuts and some of the sunflowere seed.

I cleaned up that mess and replaced the bugee cord. A couple nights later they staged a repeat performance. I heard the banging of the garbage can lids and caught them in the act. This time they had the storage cabinet open as well. How did they do that??

I banged on the window and they just paused to look at me and then continued their destructive actions. Finally I opened the door and yelled and they ran away. I heard them out there again later, but I surrenderred and let them have at it.

The mess remains to be cleaned up.

Here's some video of one of the little bandits

Barred Owl Identification All About

I took this picture through my window with my Canon camera with the big zoom. He was very cooperative and didn't fly away when he saw me.

There are several of these owls living in my backyard. They are quite large. Once I saw one carry off a squirrel. They can also be quite loud when they call to each other in the early evening. Check out the link below; there's a really good sound file

Barred Owl, Identification, All About Birds - Cornell Lab of Ornithology

In Native American culture, many tribes saw owls as related to death. When I worked on the Meskwaki Settlement, the tribal members said that seeing an owl meant a death was coming.

OWLS IN AMERICAN INDIAN CULTURE

Among the various Native American Tribes there are many different beliefs regarding the owl.

Apache: Dreaming of an Owl signified an approaching death.

Cherokee: Eastern Screech-owls valued by the shamans as consultants thinking was that they could bring on sickness as a punishment.

Cree: Believed the Boreal Owl whistles were summons from the spirits. If a person answered with a similar whistle and did not hear a response, then he would soon die.
Dakota Hidatsa: The Burrowing Owl was a protective spirit for brave warriors.

Hopis: The Burrowing Owl as a god of the dead. The guardian of fires and tender of all underground things, including seed germination. Their name for the Burrowing Owl is Ko‘Ko it means —Watcher of the Dark“. They also believed that the Great Horned Owl helped their peaches grow.

Inuit: Short-eared Owl was once a young girl who was magically transformed into an Owl with a long beak. But the Owl became frightened and flew into the side of a house, flattening its face and beak. They also named the Boreal Owl —the blind one,“ because of
its tameness during daylight. Inuit children make pets of Boreal Owls.

Kwagulth: Believed that owls represented both a deceased person and their newly-released soul.

Lenape: Believed that if they dreamt of an Owl it would become their guardian.

Menominee: Believed that day and night were created after a talking contest between a Saw-whet Owl (Totoba) and a rabbit (Wabus). The rabbit won and selected daylight, but allowed night time as a benefit to the vanquished Owl

Today

Just got to work and remembered that I needed to blog today so here it
is via iPhone. Maybe more later...

It's later, 4:00 am to be exact. Things are pretty quiet here which is good.

I have one of the Charlaine Harris books on the iphone (Kindle App) to keepme occupied. Her books are the inspiration for the HBO series True Blood of which I am a fan.

I like the work on this shift; it's the day after that's the hard part. Gettin' too old to be sleep deprived. Glad I mostly work in the daytime.
Sent from my iPhone

All Souls Day

Today is All Souls Day, when the Catholic Church honors the dead. In our church they have a special Mass where the names of those who have died in the past year are read aloud and relatives are invited to light a candle for the deceased person.

Other countries have much more interesting ways of celebrating, especially Mexico where the Day of the Dead can be quite a celebration.

I received a letter from our church inviting me to this Mass and a supper to follow. At first, I was not going to go because I had to work, but then I thought about the priest reading his name and having no one there to remember him. Not entirely rational thinking, I know.

So now I'm going, and just be a little late to work. I'll have to skip the supper.

Continuing Education

Here at nursing conference. Lots of memories in this town. Not sure it
was such a good idea to come here. Too sad.When am I gonna start enjoying the memories?

We had a good time trick or treating last night

We had a good time trick or treating last night. Ate too much as usual. One of the kids, Grady, was sick and couldn't come with us. Bummer.

Pictured are Darth Vader without mask, cat (my daughter, the aunt), lion cub, and red-eyed, toothless devil.