A Mini Mini-Break

Yes indeedy, I did ignore the opulent gas prices and point the Honda north for a drive through the Avenue of the Giants where the Redwoods tower, on to the north coast for my annual visit with northern buddies.

Scaresly made any stops on the way north. Instead of the scads of wild Dwarf and/or Roosevelt Elk, there was only this one Rooseveldt stag, traveling - well, he was traveling stag (his pun, not mine).

He was mowing his way across someone's front yard; a BIG boy he was too.

Crescent City is just a hair short of the Oregon Border. I picked up some Thai food and dashed over to my friend Inez. We had a chatty picnic in her back yard - I'm talking Olympic quality chatting here - and when the sun dipped below the pines we were tucked into our sleeping bags (seen the background of the photo below), watching bats flittering around as they chased moths and other bat dinner selections.

Inez having a rest

Believe it or not, in Olympic chatting, Inez would take the gold and I'd be slinking home with a bronze, at best. Inez is a teller of tales and this go-round she told me what has happened to her since she left her last job - a stunning and facinating story that I asked, no, demanded she write down for a book. Honestly, chatting doesn't get any better than a chat with Inez. She writes Gopher Gulch for Crescent City's paper, the Triplicate. I added her nook to my links list.

Next morning we ate creamy rice pudding for breakfast, watching the wild birds squabbling over birdseed on her front lawn. Then I was off south to Eureka.

In the Eureka area, in the eensie little hilltop town of Kneeland I visited my friends the Aggelers; Jennifer & Rick, daughter Carolanne (home from the University of Utah for the summer). She's working the summer as her Mom's 'girl Friday'. Jennifer is a lucky duck who works out of her home doing captioning and such, while Carolann is her brilliant technical 'nerd' and I mean that at the highest level of the meaning. While I was visiting, daddy Rick was bulldozing, flattening a slope behind Carolann's cabin where one day Jennifer tells me she hopes to house yaks! I'm pretty excited about those future additions to their critters.

It was a nice visit and I got to meet the newest, unexpected member of the clan, who hasn't even got a name just yet. Jennifer spins & knits and has angora rabbits who generously supply her with nice soft angora wools in several lovely colors. Anyway, Jen's oldest bunny is 9 years old and that is VERY old for a bunny. Just about the time Jennifer was expecting the old gal to give up the ghost, what did the old hunny-bunny do? She dug a nursery den, lined it with straw and bunny wool and had a kit, that is, a baby bun-bun.

You can see the little darling in sitting in his favorite spot, right on his mama's back. He is all black checkers on a field of white. Isn't hims cute? I'm voting for him to be named Checkers.

While at Jennifer's I picked up my long abandoned Baby Wolf loom. I've missed it and have high hopes this winter of producing a scarf or two or even something more daring. What would that be - a placemat?

This little Common Murre was California surfing

Cowabunga!

Rad surfing in Crescent City Dudes, Dudettes!

Annoyed

DAMN IT! REVEAL THE HOAX AND GET IT OVER WITH ALREADY!

There are numerous hoax watchers that say the Bigfoot revealing tomorrow in Palo Alto have all the earmarks of a stunt. Am WAY disappointed. Oh well. This one will probably go up there with the famous 'little girl with fairies - and a brownie camera. Oh well. I guess there is still a chance it's real, but I've already given up.

I'm talking Bigfoot, not Obama, though expectations for them are probably the same at this point.

Speak of the Devil...

A couple days ago, I picked up a gift card at Barnes & Nobels. Now, heavens forbid I enter a book store and not exit with a book, and since I've always been fascinated by Cryptology - the study/search of undiscovered animals, when I spotted The Search for the Last Undiscovered Animals on the sales table it was a done deal. I posted it at the bottom of my blog here.

Well, speak of the devil, last night I discovered there are BIG Cryptozoology doings. Out of Jimmy Carter's Peachy state of Georgia, has come a possible Bigfoot. Mind you, not some more muckity footprints or fuzzy video, this time there is a honking big, 500 lb carcass, DNA tests and a news conference tomorrow - in Palo Alto. Oh pinch me Please, I must be dreaming.

Maybe, just maybe, this isn't some half-cooked scam. Just maybe, I might get a wish and be alive when the existance of a MAJOR unproven critter revealed as fact. This week Sasquatch, maybe next week the Loch Ness Monsters.

Humans are only genetically 3% different from Bonobo Chimpanzees. So, I'd expect there to be only an ensie bit of DNA diff t'wixt a genuine Sasquatch, and a human. Will that too little a difference to make the nay sayers declare a hoax? Oh well, you never know; might be the real deal, and with a body to pick at, the people who say 'no such critter' may be the ones scrambling for proof of their beliefs.

Meanwhile, there a loads of very interesting articles on line to whet one's glee while in search of proof that a HUMONGOUS fuzzy primate - one of which, my friend Inez saw years ago as a girl, in the Redwood Forests - is not imaginary but is a genuine bit of North American fauna. Uh... please note that even I'm not ready for it to be shown to be a live Cro-magnon or some such Huminoid.

Heh... in a short time I'll be camping out with in Inez in her Northern California back yard... it's Bigfoot country up there. Here's hoping we don't come across any critters more mysterious or interesting than the odd banana slug.