Urban Deer

•     We spotted these deer yesterday, right in front of this apartment complex in McBride.  Food is less available in the winter due to the heavy snow, so deer often become pests in their search for it.  Not only is wildlife more visible in winter, but every time they walk around they leave their tracks in the snow, so even if you didn’t see the actual animal, you could tell they were around.
•     Below is a moose track that I spotted on the dam of my pond.  I never did see it, but it left this calling card.

View my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

Undertow/Rip Currents

    In 1969 after graduating from university I joined the Peace Corp and the group of us volunteers were flown to the Big Island of Hawaii for our training.  We were located in a rambling old school building in a tiny hamlet named Pepeekeo.  The biggest urban center close to us was Hilo.  On one of our rare “free time” periods, some of us went into Hilo to check it out.

    After spending some time exploring Hilo, some of us “mainlanders” ended up in a grassy park on the edge of the ocean and decided to go for a swim.  It was not a sandy beach, but a rocky shoreline.  We got into the water and swam around for a while.  When everyone had had enough, I started swimming toward the shore and got a shock.  It seemed that even though I was doing my normal swimming, I really wasn’t getting any closer to the shore.

    A bit of panic shot through my brain, I had heard of “undertows” that pulled swimmers out to sea, and wondered if that was what I was experiencing.  I didn’t yell out or anything, but began swimming with all of my might toward the shore and luckily the undertow wasn’t that strong, so I made it.  With exhaustion and a great deal of relief, I climbed back onto the rocks that lined the shoreline.

    The experience was one of the first times of my life that I had come across the real power of nature, and it was sobering.  I was very lucky.

    What I had thought was an “undertow” is more accurately termed as a “Rip Current”. 

    During the 1990’s while working for the BC Forest Service, I encountered a guy in Valemount through my work.  I didn’t know him well, but I was shocked one day upon receiving the local weekly paper to read that he had been killed while vacationing in the South Pacific.  He had gone for a swim in the ocean and had encountered a rip current that pulled him out to sea.  Reading of his death, caused by a rip current, certainly reinforced my respect for the phenomenon.  

    I have since come across an article about how to deal with a rip current if you find yourself in one.  The current will pull you out to sea and if it is strong, you will not be able to swim to shore no matter how hard you try.  What you should do instead of trying to swim to shore is to swim at a right angle to the current, in a direction that parallels the shoreline.  That should get you out of the area where the rip current is occurring and allow you to then swim to shore.

See my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

    

    

 

Lady Fingers

 

    I am always surprised at how quickly the scraps we put on our compost pile disappear in the winter.  Everyday I take a small bucketful of things to compost out to our compost pile, but sometimes an hour later everything I had dumped there has disappeared, except for the egg shells.  The photo above shows a deer eating an delectable banana peel.

    Yesterday my wife decided to make a lemon-flavored trifle.  The recipe called for using Lady Finger cookies instead of cake, and we had a large package of Lady Fingers she had been saving in the old freezer cabinet that we use for mouse-squirrel proof storage in the shop.  The Lady Fingers had been out there for about a year.  

    When my wife taste-tested one, she found they had “gone off”, so I took the 400 gram (almost a pound) of Lady Fingers out and dumped them on the compost pile.   After dumping them there I forgot about them.

    Yesterday evening we were walking Kona on the snow-packed path around the pond.  When she stopped and began nuzzling in the snow.  I didn’t know what she was up to, but figured it was not anything good, so I urged her on to continue our walk.  It was then I noticed that she had something in her mouth, so I forced her to drop it, and she did.  To my surprise it was a Lady Finger.

    The pond path is not very close to the compost pile, so I figured on of the deer picked up the Lady Finger and then walked away munching it, and dropping it when the deer got to the pond path.  

     When we got back to the house, I walked over to the compost pile to see how many Lady Fingers remained.  There was not a one.  Only a coffee filter and some egg shells remained.  Every last one Lady Finger had disappeared.  (Photo below)

Take a look at my paintings:  davidmarchant2.ca

Well, At Least It Is Running Again

    The night before last we got about 4 inches (10 cm) of fresh snow.  Yesterday morning after I got my painting and blogging done, I went out to clear the driveway.  Clearing the drive has gotten a lot easier since I got my new snowblower.  I went out to the workshop to start it up.  I opened the garage door, pushed it outside, then pulled the crank.  It started right up.

    I put it into gear, pushed down on the forward lever and it started to advance into the drive.  I then pushed down on the auger lever that throws the snow, and nothing happened except the motor started to labor.  I tried it again several and got the same result.  I started to smell something like burnt rubber.  This wasn’t a good sign and I started to get worried.

     My snowblower is a new machine and I have only used it about 5 times.  It didn’t take long for my worry to turn into a mild depression.  When my old snowblower quit working a last year, I took it to a local repair shop and it is still sitting there; they can’t get the needed parts.  My new snowblower was beginning to seem like deja vu “all over again.”

    It seemed like something serious was going on inside the snowblower.  The auger drive shaft seemed to be locked or frozen in place.   That was something I wasn’t really prepared to mess with at that moment.  My driveway cleaning took priority, so I walked down to the carport and grabbed my snow shovel and began clearing it by hand.

    Hand-shoveling my drive and turn-around spot is a big job.  I added up the length and width and came up with a total of 3,180 sq. ft (300 sq. m).  Luckily it was a light fluffy snow, so at least it wasn’t the really horrible job it would have been if the snow was wet and heavy.  I got the driveway all done then went in for lunch, and more worry about my snow blower.

    Over lunch I began to think about my old snowblower and how moisture used to get into places and then froze.  When that happened I used to just run the motor for a while and the heat from the motor would eventually thaw out the frozen places.  I thought I would give that a try on my new snowblower, so after lunch (and a nap) I started the snowblower again, and just let it sit and run while I hand shoveled our turn around spot and the sidewalks.

    Once I got everything all shoveled I went back up to my running snowblower and with fingers crossed, pressed the lever to start the auger turning, and to my great relief, saw snow shooting from the chute.  I was so relieved.

    Even though I had just spent hours shoveling the drive, I was happy that the snowblower was working again.  Before I use the snowblower next time, I will turn on an electric heater close to the snowblower in my unheated shop, so that it doesn’t freeze up again.

Take a look at my paintings:  davidmarchant2.ca

    

 

Why There Are Sticks On The Door Mat

    Because of all of the Covid isolation, we haven’t really gotten visitors, but if we did and they came to the carport door, they might find themselves puzzled when seeing numerous sticks laying scattered on the door mat.  Here is an explanation.

    We do several walks with Kona around the pond and for some dog reason, when she gets to the wooded side of the pond, she insists upon grabbing a stick in her mouth and carrying it with her.  If she sees a stick protruding up through the snow, she will pull and worry it until it breaks off, then she proudly prances along the rest of the trail with the stick in her mouth to the house.

    She always wants to bring the stick into the house, but obeys, when I say, “Drop it,”  The stick then drops to the door mat where it lays with the all of the others in her collection, until I get around to throwing them away.

    I really don’t understand this behavior, but it seems really important to Kona.

You can view my paintings at davidmarchant2.ca

 

Frozen Fraser River

    This is a scene we see daily on our trip to town.  It is the Fraser River.  The Fraser is British Columbia’s major waterway and drains most of the Province.  It begins about 100 km (60 miles) west of McBride, then flows in a NW direction to Prince George, where it makes a sharp turn southward, cutting through deep canyons, before finally settling down and emptying into the Pacific Ocean in Vancouver.  It is about 1,400 kms (850 miles) in length and drains 220,000-square-kilometers ( 85,000 sq. miles).  

    As you can see it freezes over every winter.

You can see my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

 

The Power of Suggestion, Example Two

    In 1991 we travelled to Hawaii to visit relatives and to watch the eclipse of the sun.  While there, we decided to take an excursion to the Hawaiian Island of Kauai for a few days.  We had purchased some snorkels and were eager to try them out, so while there, we drove to Tunnel’s Beach, which was supposed to be one of the best snorkeling areas on the island.  

    It was a beautiful tropical beach with crystal clear water.   There were very few people there, and as we gathered up our snorkels from the car and walked toward the beach, I thought I overheard some of those on the shore mention something about a Moray Eel.  A moray eel is a pretty scary underwater predator with a bad reputation that is sometimes found in coral reefs.  It is not something I cared to see.

    Snorkeling at Tunnel’s Beach is a memory I will carry with me for the rest of my life.  The reef was huge and a lot of it was in very shallow water.  I was swimming around in water that only seemed about 2 feet deep (60cm).  Everywhere I could see numerous amazingly colored fish swimming, some alone and some in schools, and darting around as I carefully stroked my way through the shallow water, careful not to scrape against any of the coral, knowing that could cause nasty infections.  I was also very vigilant and kept an eye out for any moray eels.

    As I was slowly gliding my way through the water, suddenly something grabbed my leg.  Close to having a heart attack, I sprung from the water and turned around expecting to see blood spurting from my leg, where a moray clung.  Instead, I saw my wife, laughing at the trick she had played on me.

    Overhearing the discussion of the moray as we had walked to the beach, had planted the moray eel thought in my brain and even though it didn’t stop me from snorkeling, as I was swimming along, completely distracted by all of the colorful fish around me, that moray was still lurking there in my brain.

    One of the really memorable things about the snorkeling was the feeling of floating.  As I snorkeled further out from the shore, the reef slowly got a bit deeper, maybe four feet, then suddenly to my surprise, it just disappeared, leaving dark water below me.  It was such a strange sensation to remain floating along when suddenly the floor disappeared below me.  It seemed like I ought to fall too.

    It was an amazing snorkeling experience just like all those underwater nature documentaries, despite the near fatal heart attack I had when my wife grabbed my leg.

Take a look at my paintings:  davidmarchant2.ca