Monday Morning: The prognosticators smacked it on the proverbial head. We got our snow here in Paradise, the first of the season for us. Using the looking out the window method of measuring … I’d guess about six inches have fallen. Whatever the actual number is, it is water on the ground and that has been in awfully short supply this year.
We have hopes that it helps the brave firefighters out here on the Western Slope as they go about their perilous work. Ever come across a bunch of those young men and women sitting down together for breakfast at a local café? First of all they reek of a level of physical fitness most of us can only dream of having. Secondly, their morale seems to be super-high, if one can judge by the character and volume of their table conversations. They have a sense of mission, an esprit de corps that is altogether admirable. Each time I come across a group, I develop a reflected swagger in my step just from observing them for a few minutes.
Our closest local fire is west of Silverton about 12 miles. It’s called the Ice Fire due to its location along the Ice Lakes Trail, a trail that Robin, granddaughter Elsa, and I hiked in the summer of 2019. It’s a smallish fire, and before this snowfall was about 45% contained. It’s in rugged country, a steep-sided valley through which the South Mineral Creek flows. When we walked it there were a large number of downed trees on the ground caused by avalanches the prior winter. There is no shortage of fuel there.
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The Times of New York has a “Science” section, which is always worth a look. Today I ran across an article on the slow loris, one of those cute and fuzzy creatures that you are better off leaving alone, should you run across one. Why? Because they are the only primate with a venomous bite, that’s why. A bite capable of killing a human being.
That’s the bad news. The good news is that you are extremely unlikely to encounter one anywhere but in Southeast Asia, and they are becoming rare even there. Believe it or not, they are in demand as pets, at least for those among us who want to keep a critter around the house that costs $18,000 and can put a serious dent in your day (and body) unless you are careful.
BTW, the name “slow loris” implies, at least to me, that there is a fast loris out there somewhere. However, if there is such an animal, Google couldn’t find reference to it anywhere.
Interested? Here’s three minutes of loris lore.
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The cats are wandering about the house uttering complaining meows, stopping every once in a while to stare up at us with pleading faces that say: Take this away, please! (referring to the snow and colder weather). It’s as if they don’t remember previous winters at all, but have encountered them for the first time today.
In this, I am with them. Oh, it’s not that I don’t recall past seasons, but I came into this one totally unprepared, as usual. I have known for a week that the snow was coming. The meteorologists were unwavering in their predictions. And yet this morning I had to plunge through what had fallen out to the backyard shed and wrestle our snow shovels out of the tangled mess there. And I had left the sail/sunscreen up on the front side of the house, which was now filled with several score pounds of a whitish material closely resembling … snow. Who knew!
Like Poco and Willow, I started to walk around the house leaving a trail of verbal mewlings behind me until Robin called a halt to it. Her look said everything. No more, Señor.
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Authorities have taken down the first Murder Hornet nest in the U.S., out there in the state of Washington. With a name like that, this bug is not likely to make many new friends, or attract supporters and defenders. As for myself, I plan on doing my patriotic duty by having a custom-made, hand-tooled leather holster made that fits a large can of RAID. I will be practicing open-carry and will show no quarter to any of these critters that cross my path.
A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.
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Little Home In The Valley 