Bye, bye birdie my ass.

Me and birds.

Back in 2002, I had to call Animal Control because there was a peacock in my back yard.

I had a pigeon follow me around the Chevron in 2010.  Once again I had to convince Animal Control that I wasn’t some lunatic making false calls.

Today, I had to chase a family of ducks out of the driveway so they wouldn’t fall prey to my cat.

Tonight, just as I was falling asleep, my windows open, I heard what I thought was the air conditioning unit to the apartment complex next door.  Squeek, squeek, squeek.  I got up and shut the window, laid back down and started to doze off again.

Squeek.

What the hell?  That sounded like a bird, IN MY ROOM!

I flipped on the light and started to get out of bed, looked down to watch my step and at first thought I had the biggest spider ever in my room. (Hey, I was half asleep).

Nope, it was a little duckling, looked a lot like the ones in the driveway earlier, but wasn’t one of them because he was a lot younger.

I put him (or her, I didn’t check) up on the bed because I was afraid he would get lost under the bed or in a closet and I’d never find him again.

He really didn’t want to have his picture taken but…

eventually stood still enough for me to get a good picture.

Did try to make one last run for it before I got him in a bucket so I could take him outside.  I know he has little chance of survival at this point, but I did hear some ducks a couple houses down and I put him in their front yard hoping they’d take him in.  Not likely, but one can always hope.

Things are supposed to come in threes, so what is the next weird thing that’s going to happen?

Thrice Natural

I wasn’t expecting to do a third Thematic Photographic, but this one literally showed up at my doorstep.

I saw a duck and her ducklings, sitting in the driveway as I was heading out to Home Depot.

So I stopped to get some pictures.

Things were going fine, got some good pictures.

They let me get pretty close.

And then Denny decided to crash the party.

Now I know cats are cats.  Mine are not declawed and I let them go in and out through their cat door at will.  I don’t even give them trouble when they come in with a “present” for me.  But the couple of times they brought in unharmed birds I did get it away from them and (eventually) get it out the door, and I’m certainly not going to let them hunt right in front of me.

So I brought Alan back into the house and encouraged the ducks to leave.

I had to get right on top of them to get them going.

But they finally headed to the end of the driveway,

and down the sidewalk.

Past the neighbor’s house and

into the tall grass in the parking strip.

Bye, bye birdies.

 

 

Update : 12:08 PM

Strange things are afoot at the house of Max.  Click HERE to see what happened next.

Natural Utah

I couldn’t contain this theme in just one post, so here’s another entry for this week.

The sky above the Arches National Park campground at night

Looking at Canyonlands National Park from Deadhorse Point

Sailboat on the Great Salt Lake

The Jordanelle Reservoir.  We’ve got a bunch of reservoirs to give us water throughout the dry summers

Lambs Canyon, a half hour drive from the city

Bonneville Salt Flats

Skyline Arch at Arches National Park

The “Three Sisters” down in Arches National Park.

Outside of Wellington, between Price and Green River, on the way to Moab.  There are dirt roads criss-crossing all over the place here.

The West Desert, out by Iosepa, in April.

The West Desert, out by Eureka, in December.

Au natural.

One of the things that keeps me in Utah is the natural world around here.  Fortunately for us, the Federal Government controls the majority of the land in our state, and they have been excellent shepherds of that land.

A slot canyon in Capitol Reef National Park

In less than an hour, in a couple directions, you can get so far away from civilization that if you get stuck there unprepared, you are bound to perish.  Go 3 hours to the south and there are millions of acres where you can stand and not see a single sign of civilization.

On the road between Capitol Reef and The Notom Trail

And in the 80’s, before the rest of the world discovered them, there were quite a few National Parks that you could pull into late on a Friday night and still find a camping spot.

The cliff where we threw mom’s ashes to the wind.

Lake Powell used to be one of those places, and in 1980 the whole of Free Wheeler Pizza (my first career) closed up shop and headed down there.

Lake Powell

My best friend Ed Byrnes, another employee (if I remember correctly her name was Kathy Johnson), her dog and I headed down there in my 1979 Mazda GLC wagon.  We spent a night at Capitol Reef National Park before heading down the Notom Trail, almost 100 miles of dirt road between Capitol Reef and the Bullfrog Marina on Lake Powell, which passes “The Tree” and the spot where we spread my mom’s ashes to the wind.

Once we got to Lake Powell we were picked up in the Free Wheeler Company Yacht and ferried out to an island where we camped for the next several days.

The Free Wheeler Company Yacht

On the island we slept on

It was a blast, and even with thousands more people on the lake, there is still enough room that you can find a spot and be left pretty much alone.

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