I put my trailcam out last night for the first time in a long time. I checked it this morning and we had a mystery cat snooping around at 1:30 in the morning.
I haven’t been able to go hiking in the woods for a while because of all the rain we’ve had so I have been walking around Lafortune Park here in Tulsa a lot. I followed this squirrel down the trail for a 25 yards or so and he finally climbed up this pole and was looking at me chattering and flagging his tail. It was like he was saying “What!!”
We lost our beloved Abby (right) to lymphoma on Wednesday. She was a bright, energetic, highly engaged dog almost up to the end. She was the straw that stirred the drink, so to speak, among the pets in our house. On the left is her cat buddy Lizzy.
Abby always liked to update her barkbook status first thing in the morning despite our efforts to shush her. We had a cranky neighbor who more than once came over to our front door and pointed at her and growled at me about the matter. Fortunately, he moved somewhere else. I miss Abby but I don’t miss our miserable neighbor.
Abby’s loss was proceeded by the death of our dachsund mix, Ginger last September. Ginger was the boss dog of the house and brooked no nonsense from either the dogs nor the cats and would give me an earful if I was late with her meals.
Abby loved barking at my drone, at the neighbor’s dogs, at dogs, cows, and horses on television. She was very verbal.
These are LJ and Lizzy, brother and sister. They play with each other a lot.
Our remaining dog is Rascal, a Pomeranian. He’s kind of our baby but he is old now and has lung, heart, and hip problems. We don’t know how long he is going to be around.
He and Abby loved to hang out together and loved to go on walks with each other to go bark and their friends in the neighborhood. Rascal I think wonders what happened to his buddy Abby.
But he still loves walking even though we have to pick him up and carry him home after he sees his friends.
You know our pets just don’t live long enough but we have them and love them anyway.
It’s the love season for dove. Here’s a couple doing some mixed bathing, almost concealed because the blend in so well with the fence.
Mr. Squirrel gets kind of thirsty also.
And we have another cat roaming the back yard at night.
We have lots of sparrows stopping by.
I love the cardinals.
I was walking at Lafortune Park the other day and saw this goose checking everybody out. As I approached it he started acting restless so I backed off so he could chill down.
Grackles everywhere. I run them off whenever I can.
And a brief kerfuffle between a sparrow and a cardinal.
And I completed another jigsaw puzzle on my ipad. I am really slowwwww on these. But they are fun.
I’ve been putting the trailcam out at night. Most nights I don’t get anything but I got this cat one time. I think it is somebody’s pet. It doesn’t have that lean hungry look of a feral cat.
I’ve caught him a few times stalking birds near our feeders during the day.
And we had a bunny one evening. I hope they don’t have a nest in the yard as it is quite sad when our dogs find the nest.
I captured this house finch the other day. I am thinking the bird right next to it is a sparrow.
And a dove scavenging seeds on the ground. They are not as skittish as other birds. They are not too smart with their nesting sites.
And our Lizzy chilling out with us in the living room.
We are having it all this past week. We had 80 degree temps, then snow with well below freezing temperatures. Today we are having dry winds that are going to create a fire hazard. Oklahoma weather in the spring is always interesting.
We’ve kept our feeders full. The squirrels dominate the feeders so I’ve been checking the action underneath. Lots of birds play well with others, dove, juncos, sparrows, cardinals they all see to get along. Bluejays and Grackles are more aggressive.
Sorry about all the orange flagging. The telephone company had all the lines relocated.
Them grackles are like a group of noisy teenagers.
Here at the end of the ten second video a bunch of them fly up to the tree.
We got a finch feeder and guess what, finches showed up.
A little bird bath action
And Rascal, our Pomerania shows up to see what all the fuss is about.
Rascal’s thick warm coat comes in handy when it is snowing. Sorry about the bad photo.
We turned our fireplace on for a little bit. LJ loves the fire.
That’s it for this week. I’m linking with Eileen’s Saturday’s Critters. Check it out, lots of great posts there.
We’ve had a little weather here. Sleet, freezing rain, and snow. Not too bad, the main thing was that it was cold. We’ve kept our bird feeders going. Cardinals and squirrels are the main customers.
We have several squirrels and they each have distinct feeding styles. I like this dude. No inverted positions for him. He just sits down for dinner and goes for it.
The back yard is cold, the patio got kind of slippery.
We had a blue jay show up for lunch. Sorry for the ugly orange flagging. Our internet provider put it up to mark other utility lines.
I love the female cardinals.
A video of the blue jay.
Cardinals and juncos co-existing.
A female cardinal video.
Lizzie the cat checking out the patio action. She doesn’t like outside at all. She is a rescue critter. When she was just a baby kitten somebody drove through a store parking lot and threw her the window.
Abby likes going outside but she burrows under a blanket afterwards.
I finished another jigsaw puzzle. I’m loving doing them on the ipad. I’m not very good at it. My wife just flies through them. We are not racing though, are we?
That’s the critter roundup this week. I’m linking with Eileen’s Saturday’s Critters. Lots of great posts there. Check it out.
I’m also praying in support of Ukraine as they bravely defend themselves from naked aggression by Russia.
Big excitement this week is that my trailcam captured a raccoon very early Monday morning. I don’t know if it is a Rocky or a Racquel. If you have any clues let me know.
And a short ten second video. I haven’t seen him since so I guess he was not impressed with what we had on offer on the patio which was nothing.
Also exciting is that Rascal our pomeranian graduated from physical therapy. He got injured in November and has been getting acupuncture and PT since then. The progress really has been remarkable. I thought we would never be able to walk him again but now we do it every day. Just a mile or so because he is still building up strength and stamina. The staff posed him in a graduation cap and he loved it. He is such a diva.
I saw Lizzie grooming herself the other day and getting big mouthfuls of fur so Heather got out the grooming tool. Lizzie loved it. We are trying to avoid hairballs.
A robin all puffed up in this fuzzy shot to try and keep warm.
A bird in our birdbath.
A female cardinal at the feeder.
And a bright colored male.
And both of them in this ten second video.
That’s about it for critterworld in our neck of the woods. I’m linking with Eileen’s Saturday’s Critters. Come join in!!
Rascal, our Pomeranian (the black blob to the left” sufferred a hip and knee injury some months ago and has been getting therapy including acupuncture and it is really paying off. We have been walking him and Abby for a mile every day and they love it and pout when we can’t take them out. We have a one-mile route through our greenbelt that takes them by the backyards of several houses with dogs. The dogs give each a good barking.
Our lady of leisure, Lizzy, has taken over this tray on our coffee table. She has a number of favorite napping spots in the house.
Here’s an artsy shot of LJ in the shadows getting some sun. Sun is the next best thing to the fireplace for him.
All our multitude of birds have disappeared. I put out the trail cam one day and all I got was this female cardinal, all day long.
I love to capture the blurs of birds as they fly off, so this was a week and a half ago.
It got cold here on Tuesday or so. Our Lizzy has discovered the fireplace. She toasts both sides evenly. She hasn’t quite figured out why sometimes it’s not warm there. She will lay in front of it when it is not on with a quizzical look on her face.
She also loves reclining on things like a Roman Empress. The foot of the bed, a stack of freshly laundered towels, she loves leaning on stuff.
And she hates being wakened up from a nap. Here she looks like an unmade bed. Talk about grumpy.
All LJ, Lizzie’s brother, cares about is treats. Greenies or deli turkey slices are his favorite. Here is on the back of the sofa standing watch at the refrigerator.
And here is Abby, our happy girl. She loves eating and giving other dogs a good barking.
And Rascal, our rescue Pomeranian (all our animals are rescues). He’s such a diva. He has a hip injury and gets acupuncture and physical therapy. The ladies that run the place love him and he knows it.
Our in the back yard we are continuing to feed flocks of birds. I love the cardinals especially.
Here is a male making a sideways jump. Male cardinals are divas also.
On the ground below the feeder we have a whole other group of birds including mourning doves and bluejays and tons of sparrows.
Squirrels eat more food than all the birds combined.
Some of them are getting very plump.
Lots of snow, ice and cold weather in the USA right now. I hope everybody is staying warm and safe. There is a burger place here in Tulsa that serves coffee in a cup and saucer. Something about that is warming in itself.
Here’s LJ our stately elderly, wild eyed cat. Surveying what is going on in the house.
And Lizzie, our plump little lady, has finally learned that the fire feels good. Took her a while. She’s still kind of confused. We don’t typically have the fire during the day but she goes and lays down in front of the fireplace with a look of not understanding why it’s not warm.
Here she is warming up her other side.
And LJ and Lizzie, cheek to cheek so to speak.
And here is a Lizzie Portrait
And poor Abby, she started licking her paws for some reason. Morning, noon, and night. We couldn’t figure it out, took her to the vet and they couldn’t figure it out either. We got her an inflatable cone of shame. I put it on her and she flopped over on her side for a few minutes, I guess out of shame. We kept it on her for a few days and took it off and no more paw licking.
My new trailcam, still messing with it. I have it set so that when it trips it takes a still photo and ten seconds of video. I ended up with hundreds of little videos. Wading through all of them is drudgery.
Most of them were of starlings fighting each other at the suit feeder. I got tired of that really quick.
So I’m still trying to figure it out. I think I’m going to do mainly photos. Lots faster to go through.
