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animals in your life

Started by billy rubin, April 23, 2020, 01:04:42 AM

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billy rubin

this animal is not in my own life. but i would happily baby-sit for a day

https://www.facebook.com/mark.celestino.5/videos/3681856588542529


"I cannot understand the popularity of that kind of music, which is based on repetition. In a civilized society, things don't need to be said more than three times."

Icarus

My mangy old computer is giving me a hard time. I had typed a nice description of one of my latest animal adventures.  For no reason the whole damned thing disappeared from the reply page.  Ok I will start over but with less verbiage.

Yesterday, mid day, I noticed a small brownish object on my front porch.  After examining it, without touching, it appeared to be an infant Bat.  It was only a little larger than a golf ball and had what appeared to be wings about an inch long and black.  I have not been aware that there are any bat colonies in my neighborhood.  What the  hell is that little thing? I did not disturb the tiny little thing even though I was tempted to poke it with a stick or other probe.   

Later, after dark I checked on the mysterious little creature.  It was gone.  Did a mama bat rescue her baby?  Did the owl that often hides out in a front yard palm tree use it for dinner?  How and why did it get to my front porch in the first place?  I will never know what happened. 

Given the choice, and/or the knowledge, I would have tried to rescue the little thing. Bats have a bum rap. They are an important part of our ecology. Most recently they have been blamed for causing the "Chinese Covid".  Maybe a bum rap. No matter, bats are an important part of our environment here in Florida.  They consume more mosquitoes than any other counter measure has achieved.

billy rubin

i love bats.

weird, impossible things.

i'll never forget once in the paiute reservation in arizona, looking west into the sunset over an alfalfa field, horizonatal golden sunlight, the h5our of ong shadows,silhouetted against the light in the distnace were tiny flickering shapes darting over the field

swallows i thought, as i got ut th efield glasses.

no, they wee hundreds of bats, dipping and whirling against the fading light, out early to catch the midges and moths flickering above th ealfa,

beautiful.


"I cannot understand the popularity of that kind of music, which is based on repetition. In a civilized society, things don't need to be said more than three times."

billy rubin

whereas these days near late afternoon all i getwhen i come home  is the supper commitee informing me that i am late with dinner



"I cannot understand the popularity of that kind of music, which is based on repetition. In a civilized society, things don't need to be said more than three times."

Icarus

Goats are most interesting critters.  That picture shows that they know where dinner is coming from.  Hey you can make Manchego cheese if you have some cooperative nanny goats.

billy rubin

damn

back at the house and the cats are spawning everywhere. there's two newborn kittens upstairs in my underwear drawer, at least two more females that look like they're going to pop any day now.

springtime.

so my last day hauling sand i went up on top of the sandbox and scooped out about twenty pounds of clean hundred-mesh. beautiful pure silica sand, not rounded stuff like beach or aeolian sedimensts, but cracked and crushed frac sand. it will be sharper than natural sand but it's so pretty i decided to give it a try.



so here it is in the most recebt twenty gallon tank on the south side of the dining room. no animals yet, as i just got home. i have to buy a dip net and go down to the creek and start scooping fish. generally at this time of the year the stream downhill from the bridge is full of new darters, etheostoma. about one every 18 inches on the stream bed under the tumbling water. all hatched, not so many eaten yet by the bigger fish. they stay on th ebottom, perched on their petoral fins until something floats by. then, ZOT-- they dart up, grab it, and sink down to th ebottom again. very pretty in cold water, red, white , and blue stripes. the colors go faint when the water is warmer.

we'll get some minnows, too, various notropis species, and if i'm lucky some suckers. maybe an odd thing or two, depending on what comes uyp in the net.

but that will be tomorrow. i still have to open up th ebeehive. haven't even looked at it yet.


"I cannot understand the popularity of that kind of music, which is based on repetition. In a civilized society, things don't need to be said more than three times."

billy rubin

#246
went to the beehives. i thought all but one were dead, but one of the dead ones wasn't. not very strong, tho. but there were drones everywhere, which is what i needed to make this successful.

so i got my number two daughter out of bed, the introvert genius one, and we went out to divide the hive.

i didn't know whether it had swarmed. probably not, i thought, but it would be due very soon. and it was. there were queen cells on the bottom of four frames of brood. if i had left it,, the hive would have swarmed in less than a week.

so i set out some empty boxes and commenced my personal technique of brutal hive multiplication. the beehive was three boxes high, with brood in every box. and there's a honey flow on, which i could see by shaking a frame and watching the nectar plash out.

so i set the empties out and put a frame with at least one queen cell in each one. then i divided up the sealed brood among the four boxes so all of them got some, and gave them all a frame of pollen and all the honey to work with.

now, all the books will tell you that you cannot divide hives unless you take the new daughter nucs to a spot at least two miles away so that you don't lose the fielders to the parent hive. but ive been a commercial beekeeper, so i know the books are all wrong.

i took the parent hive and left it in place but rotated it 180 degrees, so the entrance faced the wrong way. then i took the three new hives with queen cells and faced them forwards alongside it  in the same direction as the parent hive had been. then i went away.

over the next  24 hours, the bees will fly out of the hives and then return to a confusing scenario. but they will divide themselves among the hives facing the original direction, and the original hive will retain more bees than the divides. whichever hive still retains the original queen will end up with the most drifted bees, and in a day or two i will return and swap the hives back and forth to equalize the numbers of fielders.

in the meantime, all the hives have sealed queen cells. in about four more days, the virgins will emerge, and in another four or five they will fly out and mate. when they come back, it will be another week before they start to lay. the one with the old queen will probably have her killed by the new one, which is what bees do.

so in three weeks i will return to the divides and see who has a laying queen and who does not. if there's a queen, i will pile on the syrup and get em to grow. if there is no queen, i will recombine the queenless units into the weaker ones with a queen.

then we will will spend the year growing the hives. not as fast as i wanted== i had planned on dividing four hives this way, not one. but teh quens from tis breeder were pretty shitty-- one had died, one was supeceded, one was lousy, and one i replaced with a random swarm i caught in another box. when i bred my own queens for sale i did a better job than that.

no time for pictures this time, too busy. but i'll have some coming up soon. vthe one that wasn't dead was pretty mean, so i left it alone. i'll see about it in a day or two.i have no tolerance for mean bees.

so i asked my daughter if she had learned anything after all this was over.

and she said, no.

hard to work with those genius types. they think they know everything already.


"I cannot understand the popularity of that kind of music, which is based on repetition. In a civilized society, things don't need to be said more than three times."

billy rubin

#247
damn

more kittens

two in my underwear box, three in the linen closer

im lying on the ciuch and suddenly i hear more underneath.

my wife came home, walked into the living , stopped and listened a moment, and said, where are they?

i can hear the mother purring over them now


"I cannot understand the popularity of that kind of music, which is based on repetition. In a civilized society, things don't need to be said more than three times."

billy rubin

and another litter in the ceiling of the cellar, just started howling now

thank god we don't have cows

my earth mother wife has now gone outside with two big tubs of worms she's going to stick into the worm colony


"I cannot understand the popularity of that kind of music, which is based on repetition. In a civilized society, things don't need to be said more than three times."

hermes2015

Quote from: billy rubin on April 25, 2021, 12:21:44 AM
and another litter in the ceiling of the cellar, just started howling now

thank god we don't have cows

my earth mother wife has now gone outside with two big tubs of worms she's going to stick into the worm colony

Your life is rich material for a reality TV show. I can't wait to see it.
"Eventually everything connects - people, ideas, objects. The quality of the connections is the key to quality per se."
― Charles Eames

Magdalena


"I've had several "spiritual" or numinous experiences over the years, but never felt that they were the product of anything but the workings of my own mind in reaction to the universe." ~Recusant

billy rubin

im about drowning in too much reality at thr moment


"I cannot understand the popularity of that kind of music, which is based on repetition. In a civilized society, things don't need to be said more than three times."

billy rubin

back at the home ranch for a week.
here they are the little bastards.

two in my bedroom, now in a cardboard box instead of my underwear



three still in the linen closet but loose on the floor for the first time last night



and behibd the couch in the living room, three more





if i were a mountain stream i'd be infested with salmon


"I cannot understand the popularity of that kind of music, which is based on repetition. In a civilized society, things don't need to be said more than three times."

Tank

If religions were TV channels atheism is turning the TV off.
"Religion is a culture of faith; science is a culture of doubt." ― Richard P. Feynman
'It is said that your life flashes before your eyes just before you die. That is true, it's called Life.' - Terry Pratchett
Remember, your inability to grasp science is not a valid argument against it.

billy rubin

dammit

we blew a fuse in the cellar stair well and while rummaging for a new fuse i found three more.

theyre all the same color and i know exactly which tomcat to blame. otis blood, my daughter named him.

i came home and his fur was all matted and rumpled like he'd gotten soaking wet and dried that way

didn't think anything of it because he's always chewed up and bloody this time of year, but then i noticed that the light over the fish tank had been knocked off

. . . as if someone whose name is otis had jumped on top and ended up takingan unexpected bath instead.



"I cannot understand the popularity of that kind of music, which is based on repetition. In a civilized society, things don't need to be said more than three times."