The lifeblogging has been a bit slow lately, largely because my life has been (and still is) crowded. But I will say that it’s nice to be back where November feels like November instead of, I don’t know, late April.
Miss Mouser got through her spaying just fine. She was groggy and stumblebummy for a day or two, and then she was her regular chirrupy, house-tearing-through self. For her next trick, she’s going to learn that housemonkey food is not for small gray kittens. She will learn this if it kills us.
The geese on the bay are getting restless, and the cootilla has been back in full force for about a month. I saw the first half-dozen arrivals, which doubled the next day… and the next… and the next, until coots covered quite a bit of available surface area.
There’s a little grebe-gang that hangs out with them, seven or eight strong as best I can tell. I’m not sure what the attraction is for the grebes; coots are clunky, awkward birds while grebes are highly streamlined and elegant divers. Maybe they’re just poking fun. I haven’t seen the kingfisher or the green heron for a while, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t still around.
The muskrats swim slower these days. There’s only so much tail a skrat has, and what with the fall fattening-up, that tail has to move a lot more skrat. Muskrats don’t have any truck with those fly-by-night coots. I’ve seen outraged coots flap-and-paddling across the bay to avoid a muskrat chugging on heavily toward his home in the bank. The rabbits are on extra rations too. I see them whenever I walk home after dark, and dark’s quite early now.
I’ve a lot to accomplish today, talk prep and grading and whatnot, so I’ll let you folks go for now. Suffice to say that I welcome the Wisconsin fall as it shades gradually into winter.
