She wants to join the family

We live in a place where we’re lucky to see a lot of wildlife coming by at various times.  The last few weeks this female roadrunner has made it clear, she wants in the house. 

 Not the greatest pic but I had to hurry

 

She jumps up on the top of the bench we have on the back patio and pecks at the window.  This sends the cats into a frenzy watching with wild eyes.  I’m not sure what this lady has in mind because I don’t think her or the cats would actually want to meet face-to-face. 

Female roadrunner trying her best to adopt us

She makes her rounds of the backyard near the house, hopping from chair-to-chair and perching on the table.  Last week she even tried her best to fly up and land on the ceiling fans out there.  Maybe she got into some loco weed, or ate some juniper berries.

 Here she is on the patio chair

 

Today, she jumped off the patio roof and took her place on the bench to peck at the window.  Her eyes scan the place from floor to ceiling.  I imagine she’s looking for food and expects me to provide it.  I don’t have any lizards or bugs lying around to give her.  Right now I’m not sure what else she’s trying to tell me, but she looks plump enough and not starving.

At this point, I’m not sure how long this activity will last.  The bird of prey that was taking a daily bath here has gone to other areas.  I haven’t seen him in a while.

Other than that, I hope everyone had a nice Thanksgiving and spent a relaxing day being grateful for all we have. 

Below are a few pics from our Thanksgiving drive along the back highway to Mesquite NV and back.  These are taken from the car window so aren't the best photos in the world.  This country passes through an Indian reservation and is mostly sagebrush and Joshua trees.  But the day was beautiful and about 50 degrees.

 
It’s onward toward Christmas now.  Some neighbors already have their lights up.  I’m only perturbed at the one who put his up a week before Thanksgiving.  That’s disgraceful!  These days everyone rushes things. 

We have a few leaves left on our trees, but they’re quickly littering the ground.  I watched some flutter down in a gust of wind this morning and wished I had the camera ready.  I did spend the next half hour trying to capture some but didn’t have much luck.  I guess things like that are better in person.

 Most of these fluttered to the ground today

 

I hate to see winter coming but that’s beyond my control.  All I can do is count the days until spring – and I shall be doing that – in the near future.  December and January are in the deep freeze here some years.

Now that those awful ulcers are about gone from my mouth, I have a raspy cough to take their place.  I attribute this to working near the coolers all day at work last week.  I was chilled to the bone from head-to-toe by the end of my shift, so I’m now stocked up on all sorts of cold products and extra vitamin C to get me through the winter months without becoming too ill.

Added to all this was another car problem, a dead battery this time, but I can’t say my mechanics didn’t warn me about that when they replaced the radiator.  So I spent part of yesterday getting that fixed.  

Now if I can just fix the garage door, which has gone on the blink lately, I may be able to sit back for a while.  I’ll be opening it manually for the time being because the openers and the opener have become enemies apparently.  They aren’t talking to each other now and the batteries are fine.  It’s back to my old friend, Google, to see if I can find a solution.  What did we do before the internet?  It’s too bad they didn’t teach courses like this in high school – something we could really benefit from as adults.

Don’t tell me it’s another repair bill?

Free clipart

Daily life brings a lot of joy, but it also hands you crap occasionally.  Today was one of those days.  This morning we discovered the fridge had quit.  Lucky for us, we have another fridge in the garage.  We called a repairman and then moved everything to the other fridge and freezer.

The technician called us back and said he couldn’t come until Monday because he was too busy.  What?  Monday!  This will never do and was quickly becoming a frustrating situation.  He gave us the name of another repairman he knew, so we called him.

As it turned out the second guy never showed up, claiming he tried to call us, but our phone never rang.  We were here all day waiting for him too, so Tootie missed her vet appointment to get her eye checked today.  This is a whole other story about what has been going on here for the last month or so.  I’ll fill you in on the next post.

We are giving the repairman the benefit of a doubt, thinking maybe he wrote down the wrong number, but this is quite typical behavior for where I live.  We’ve had to wait on people all day only to have them not show up or bother to call us.  I won’t miss this when we move.

Now Tootie won’t make her vet appointment tomorrow either because we’ll be waiting for this man again.  We have no time as to when he’ll be here.  I probably won’t take her in now until next week.  I think her eye is on the mend anyway.  It would just be nice to have the vet confirm it.

I hope that this will be a simple fix and we won’t need a new fridge.

May Pole

On another note, today is my mother’s birthday, Mayday.  Everyone’s going out for Mexican food.  That’s no surprise.  Mexican is the one thing they can all agree on to eat.  I wish I were there too, but maybe next year.  I hope one of my sisters will take pictures to send to me, and to my little sister in New York.

 My mother

Raven’s now six months old and getting to be quite a handsome boy.  We had company today, our Aussie friends, and he was all over them, purring and playing and being a social butterfly.  This is my handsome little man.

 Raven - six-months-old

The resident lizard is still making herself at home in the fireplace.  She must have been out on the town last night because she wasn’t in there.  Hee-hee.  I don’t know if she had a hot date or not.  I determined this was a female lizard because she doesn’t have the colorful underbelly the males do.  The cats enjoy watching her through the screen.

 Lizard in the fireplace

 Lizard in the fireplace

It’s windy here in the desert again today.  This makes day number three of wind gusts up to 40 mph.  Big earth movers are stirring up the dust preparing the ground for the new house going in two lots down from us.  I kept the windows closed, which I hate to do, being there are so few days in the year we can open them.  The building crew is keeping long hours over there having run into the underground stream we told them was there.  They’ve had to change their plans so the house doesn’t start to sink and crack later.  A guy has owned that lot for twenty years and finally decided to move down here and build a house on it.  I guess we’ll hear the noise from all the construction soon.  The cats love all the action that’s taking place.

 A to Z survivor's badge

Congrats to all who entered and finished the A to Z challenge this year.  It was fun.  I enjoyed hopping over to read others blogs.  Thank you to the ones who read my posts and to my new followers.

Until next time...

An Accident that Turned out Okay

  Hummingbird - Sunni's Photo's

We have large windows on the back of our house. From them, we can look out at the patio and the desert landscape beyond. Since we’ve lived here, many birds have hit the windows. Some of them fly off and others aren’t so lucky. The windows are low E and double pane because it is very hot here in the summers. We need all the help with the heat that we can get. We do have roller shades, but the windows are reflective and it looks like the desert to the birds, reflecting the scene behind out house.

Hummingbird - Sunni's Photo's

A couple of days ago, two hummingbirds were playing chasing each other as they darted back and forth, landing on the feeder and then the trees. They were having a gay time when they both hit the window. As always, we hated to see that happen. Usually other birds hit the windows. I always wonder if I’ll have to dig another grave. It takes the birds a bit to come around. They sit there awhile until they steady themselves and get oriented again. I’m sure they’re wondering what just happened to them.

Hummingbird - Sunni's Photo's

We both went outside after one of the hummingbirds flew off. The other was lying there askew, so my husband picked it up. After another couple of minutes, it started to wiggle a bit and then sat up. I ran and got the camera to get these shots. We both touched it and it was so soft. It sat staring at us the whole time. My husband says, “It’ll probably poop on my hand.” I just laughed, glad that it was okay as it wiggled a bit more and gradually made its way to his fingertips. A couple minutes later, it flew off to the bird feeder where it sat awhile before flying into the desert.

Hummingbird - Sunni's Photo's

I wanted to share this story. The only other time we’ve been that close to one of the hummers is when we rescued one that was stuck in an open house we visited years ago. Someone left the front door open and it flew in and to the big window where we found it. It didn’t know how to get out. My husband grabbed it by the beak. The little thing was wearing itself out from flapping its wings so hard to fly away, so it wasn’t that hard to grab. We let it go at the front door, glad that we came by because it probably would have died in there.

The Windows are Open! Yippee!

Finally it is getting warm enough to open the windows!  This is supposed to be short-lived because we have a storm coming over the weekend but I'm really enjoying it now.

And of course the cats are too.  They love watching the birds who are really chirping away and having a great time in the birdbath and eating us out of house and home.  I'll post a pic of that community pool when I find it.  I've got too many pics that are disorganized - no time to take care of things!

My life is really one BIG rat race all the time!