took Blossom on a loop around Little Campbell Lake today. ran into a few pairs of moose mama's with a calf. this guy seemed to be showing his annoyance for Blossom and i disturbing their slumber. we turned a corner and there was these two moose laying right on the trail. they jumped up super fast upon seeing us.
this is actually a rare sighting. Blossom rarely takes a nap on the couch...at least when i'm around. i just never see her up there, she may do this while i'm at work?
of course, her cat is always near.
this above demonstrates why i am needing my own chair. will need to call tomorrow as they seem to be intending to deliver the chair in the middle of my sleep...not what i had in mind at all.
chilled again when i got home so i snuggled under my heated throw and dropped off to sleep for a bit...yes, i have no life and can nap whenever i feel like it.
a few disturbing things on the ebola front. the guy in Dallas passed away. i think my thinking was that this bug would be less of an issue when facing western medicine...clearly i was wrong and the bug kills in less developed nations and developed nations alike. found that a bit disturbing. these things tend to take out those who have other illnesses or are unhealthy to begin with. it could be that this guy had more medically going on than we are aware of...HIV/AIDS is pretty prevalent in Africa....who knows.
sad for him and his family...hopefully nobody else in his family or in the area comes up positive for this. no doubt a few more cases will slip through before this is all over with.
was also sad about the nurses aid in Spain that has this. the government there decided that her family dog should be put to death and so it was done. panic does set in and the dogs death was the end result of that panic i suspect. if i come down with Ebola...please save my sweet pups and kittens...they do not need to be killed! something i read said that the animals could carry the virus and be asymptomatic...could they pass it along easily? i doubt that.
of course, the killing of this dog caused outrage all over Spain and indeed in many parts of the world...one reporter postulated that the dogs death caused more anger than all the human lives lost.
Hell, dogs are our best friends, our families. they don't judge, they make us laugh, they bring us comfort. people can be jerks...so it's never really surprising that compassion is given more freely to animals...and to kids really.
cloudy in town and actually snowing some on the hillside, but from Kincaid park the big mountain was visible...that is Denali
here are more of the moose on the trail today
young male. they didn't seem too concerned with me, but you never know how these things will go...especially as i have a dog with me.
they were on the trail and i needed to pass them somehow to complete my loop. hikes are often held up while you wait for moose to move on. they are rarely in any sort of hurry to move on either.
so i stood near some trees with Blossom and watched them and took a few photo's
eventually the younger moose moved off into the woods.
off he goes.
mama moose wasn't budging though.
she was quite happy on the trail there.
this lady came by me...she felt she could move right past the moose and she did. she walked pretty dang close to the moose. i have a dog though and i'm not sure what she did was smart...mostly we get away with stuff even if it's not smart though. survival of the fittest does apply but there is also this element of survival of the luckiest.you can screw up a lot...it just takes that one time.
the lady seemed to think she'd seen this moose before and therefore she knew she could pass it. moose are big and they are wild...anything wild has unpredictable element to it. i mean i have walked very close to moose...even walked right up to one. if i hadn't looked up when i did i literally would have walked right into the moose on the next step.
i do know that just because you have passed a moose 10 times doesn't mean the 11th time won't go well. you just don't always know...a dog or bear could have unnerved it or the wind or who knows what else. i take each encounter on it's own merit and try and determine the best way to deal with the situation.
i crept in closer and eventually lead Blossom on a big circle off trail around the moose. that moose watched me like a hawk but didn't charge.
so on we went....Blossom looks very cute in all these fall leaves!
this pair i about walked right up to. i think i must have heard them. they are amazingly difficult to see in the brush...these are big animals too!
again i went off trail and gave them some room. they allowed us to pass without an issue.
back to the lake and Blossom got to go swim. not many days of swimming left for her. she got to do some jumps off the dock. there was ice forming on the lake on the sides.
on my way home i saw this bull in the ball fields off of elmore.
love when moose kneel down to munch on grass so i pulled in and took a few minutes to watch him.
eventually he wandered off as well....that was my day of moose.
heard a bit of an interview with the nurse aid with ebola...she thought she may have touched her face with her gloved hand while caring for the ebola patients...that this is perhaps how she'd gotten it. doubt the plan is for us to be in full hazmat suits if we encounter ebola...no doubt we will be in anything in the ER...should be screened before the triage nurse even starts their questions....have you been out of the country recently and if so where, or have you been in contact with anyone who has been out of the country...
a guy who has fostered about 100 kids was killed by one of those kids. very sad, the guy has been a radio host for the local NPR station for decades as well. sounds like a really good guy. just one of those cases. this is the second time in a year that a foster kid has killed a foster parent...makes the idea of being a foster parent pretty unattractive. we screw up on these kids from the minute they are born though.
it's more about parental rights than the rights of the kids to have basic/decent parents. imo if you come in to deliver a baby and you have a positive tox screen you have just lost your parental rights. that kid is not yours and now has a chance from the start to have a decent life...instead they keep going in/out of the system while these horrible parents try over and over again to get their crap together...eventually the state finally takes the kid away for good, but by then the kid is old enough that finding a new family is tougher and they are damaged already from all the early childhood crap they were put through. kids deserve a stable environment from the start,..you can't get this in the care of a drug addict.
great obit today. Barbara Polk Washburn was the first woman to summit Denali. she wasn't really an adventurer to start with but she married one and he seemed set on her joining him on his adventures..so she did. it was a really interesting article/obit. some people live ordinary lives and others live extraordinary ones.
been layering up...haven't put the down coat on yet...holding off as long as possible. for sure the hat and gloves are out.
this was after i'd passed her. she didn't seem to upset to see us go. was worried she'd come down the hill after me.
better get some stuff done...back to work tomorrow night. grateful for. A. chance moose encounters that go well and don't end with me being charged and stomped to a pulp. B. my heated throw..love that thing C. silence...i love silence
I envy the spontaneous naps!
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