Dog – House

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Friday morning we got the first real rain we’ve had for about a month and a half. We ended up with nearly two inches. That was both good and bad news. The good news, of course, was that we got some much-needed rain. It was bad news on two counts.

The first was that some time during the morning while it was still raining, we somehow left a door open and Zeke escaped for a long morning romp. He came back some time after noon looking like this.

dirtydog

If you know Zeke, you know that he should be more white than Georgia-clay red. He has been muddier, but not much. I had given him a bath only a few days before, but now he really needed another one. In fact, he really needed two, but he only got one.

The second part of the bad news comes along with some really good news. The good news is that we now have a framer who could start as early as this Monday. Our Realtor neighbor, who handled the sale of my mother’s house and our purchase of our new lot, gave us the name of a builder, who found a framer. His price is higher than the estimate our erstwhile framer gave us, but it doesn’t matter how cheap a contractor is if he never shows up. So we’re going with the new framer.

The bad news is that we have had nearly two inches of rain and more is expected for the next few days. That means the framer will almost certainly not be able to start work on Monday. What makes this even worse is that the weeks that the first framer cost us have been nearly perfect for framing.

Cloud spotting

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The sale of digital cameras is apparently slowing down because everyone now carries a cell phone that can take pictures almost as good as many cameras, at least much of the time. I have fallen prey to that same practice; the camera on my iPhone takes such good pictures in many situations that I rarely take a camera with me. Leah and I regretted that choice on Tuesday.

We had been downtown that evening and were driving back home just as the sun was setting. We were commenting all the way from town about how beautiful the clouds were, and how they looked like a painting. Then we turned onto Technology Parkway, which turns into Huffaker Road, and leads almost due west for several miles. That put the sunset directly ahead of us down the road. This sunset was one of the most beautiful, impressive and unusual ones that we had ever seen. Most of the clouds were dark against the sky. The sun was directly behind some clouds in the far distance. Those clouds were outlined by a brilliant, neon orange rim, and pink and gray crepuscular rays shot out around them. So I pulled out my phone and tried to take a picture. Unfortunately, since this situation was not one of those that a phone camera does well, you will have to take my word for it. Here’s the photo.

silverlining

Cell phone cameras have wide angle lenses, which I usually like for landscapes, but in this case I desperately needed a zoom lens. The part of the image I wanted is very small in the original shot, and cropping down that much requires a lot more resolution than the cell phone camera can provide. I cropped it down here so you can get a vague idea of what we saw.

silverzoom

It is an understatement to say that these images don’t do justice to the scene as we saw it. I’ve learned a lesson from this: from now on, I’m taking a camera.

However, the cell phone did a great job for this image.

K-Hinstability

These clouds show a Kelvin-Helmholtz instability in the atmosphere. They are basically just like breaking waves in the ocean. There are plenty of much better examples online, but this is one of the best I have seen recently.

One of the things I like about seeing phenomena like this is that they tell you what’s going on in the atmosphere. From a distance I can tell that the atmosphere is stratified and that there are layers of air moving at different velocities. The wave clouds are right that the interface of those two layers. That kind of information doesn’t give me any practical benefit, but I like having it anyway.

No news

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They say that no news is good news, but when it comes to building a house, that isn’t always the case.

We have been waiting for the framer to start work for about a month. First he had some small jobs and would be available sometime in late summer. Then he said around the first part of September. When I called on September 10, he said since he hadn’t heard from me, he took another job. My impression from our previous conversation was not that he would wait for my call, but that he would show up and start working. Since then I have been looking for another framer without any luck. The original framer might be ready to start before I can find someone else, but I would really prefer not to use him.

So now we have a well, a septic system, basement and garage slabs and poured concrete foundation walls. The next step – the only possible step – is to start framing. But we can’t.

I had hoped that the framing would be completed by the end of the summer. Silly me. Now I think we’re going to be lucky if we can get someone to start by the end of September. That means we are going to be at least two months behind schedule.

If I thought I could do it, I would start the damned thing myself.

Hummers, mantises and caterpillars

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The hummingbirds have been with us all summer, flocking around the feeder and usually draining it once a day. We sometimes see a dozen at a time.

This is the time of year that other things start showing up. We have been noticing praying mantises in the last few weeks. This one thought the hummingbird feeder would make a good hunting ground.

mantis and hummer

 

Sunday afternoon I noticed this caterpillar eating leaves on one of our crepe myrtles.

caterpillar top

 

It looks like a Chinese dragon. The four yellow spots on its back are actually some kind of hump.

caterpillar side

 

I have no idea what this one is. Does anyone else know?

New stray dogs

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Leah and I have lost count of the stray dogs that have passed through here in the last 10 years. Lately it seemed to have slowed down, but a few days ago two new strays showed up. I call them “strays” but they were almost certainly abandoned here by someone who doesn’t want them. Makes me wish there was a hell.

On Tuesday or Wednesday we started hearing a dog barking somewhere in the woods. Then I saw a small white dog running away up the far side of Lavender Trail. On Thursday I heard a dog barking when I took the dogs for their walk. I followed the barking, but the dog kept moving. Eventually I caught sight of a small reddish brown dog. Sometimes the shy strays will run away but stop at some distance and look back. This one didn’t stop.

This was obviously not the white dog I had seen earlier, but it looked to be about the same size.

On Friday evening when Leah and I drove back up Fouche Gap Road we saw the brown dog again. He didn’t run from the car, so I got a good enough look to tell that he was an unfixed male. Leah got out and tried to get it to come. A couple of times it came within a few feet, but then turned and ran away.

Later that evening I took the dogs for a walk up Lavender Trail and saw the white dog. It ran at first but then followed us. It was mainly interested in Lucy. It had little interest in Zeke and absolutely no interest in me. This is a blurred shot I got with my phone. It was so dark and the dogs were moving so much that I couldn’t get a decent shot.

white stray dog

It looks like a puppy, but it seems to be an adult, unfixed male slightly taller than Lucy. Zeke was not polite. You can’t tell from the photo, but Zeke was holding his head and his tail up, while the stray held his tail at half-staff. If Zeke knew how to act around other dogs, he would have mirrored the little dog’s behavior.

The dog has a hint of a goatee and its body is a little elongated. It may be a mix of some kind of terrier and maybe a dachshund. It’s almost exactly the same size as the brown dog. I’m convinced that they’re brothers. It’s odd that they aren’t staying together, but it may be that there is some rivalry since they are both unfixed.

At least three people, including us, are putting out food, so they will probably not starve, although there are plenty of other dangers around, like cars and coyotes. If we could catch them, we would probably take them to the pound, where a local rescue group could save them. We contacted the rescue group but haven’t heard back.

Leah and I have taken photos of only a few of the dogs that we have rescued. This was one of the first. I really don’t remember where he came from. He was fairly young.

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He was probably one of the many dogs that a former neighbor brought home for his kids and then basically abandoned. They always ended up at our house, and we always found new homes for them.

This was one of the saddest cases. I found him on Fouche Gap Road one day when I was walking Zeke.zepplin

He was afraid at first, but he came when I called him. I got him to follow us home, but he kept lagging behind. Later we found that the pads on all his feet were worn off. They looked like they had blistered and then peeled. I think that meant he had been traveling a while before we found him. He stayed with us for some time and Leah named him Zeppelin. Eventually we sent him with a rescue group up to a shelter in some midwestern state. We checked the shelter’s Web site and found a reference to him. They said he had special needs and would take some work before he could be adopted. He didn’t have any particular problems (other than not being housebroken) when we had him, so we think the special needs were caused by the stress of the trip north. We felt pretty guilty about that.

This is one of the later ones. Zeke and he got into a fight, so he ran away. The rescue group told us to let animal control take him and then they would rescue him from the pound, so that’s what we did.

tandog

There were so many others we can’t remember. We did the best we could for them. We hope they were, or are, happy.