Arrived Safely..........

[starfire]

Thank you all so much for the lovely responses to my "goodbye" post. Ya'll really know how to make a person feel cared for.

I have gotten through some of the posts but may not get through them all. I believe I am more tired today than I was yesterday. I got in about 1 or 2 pm. Woke up in the motel about 3:30 and was on the road by 4 am.

Vickie and Mom were on time but the trip was hard on Mom. She is having a lot of back pain (osteoarthritis & bone spurs). She is pretty wobbly on her feet. She has gone back to the walker.

It is great to be home. Had a nice 6 point buck in my yard this evening along with another smaller one who only had one horn with 2 points. Also several doe visited. Hung the birdfeeders as soon as I got here. Have already had a cardinal pair, numerous small birds, blue jay's (of course) and I even had a pair of bluebirds on my porch rail. The female had caught a catapillar and she lit there and ate it. I imagine they are on their way south.

Hope everyone who was in a flare is better by now.

Came home to nice weather. Highs in the low 70's. May last as few more days.

Love, Shirley

[Martha]

Glad you got home safely, Shirley. It sounds like a long, hard trip. It always feels good to be home, isn't it?

Does your mom take anything for the pain?

My son lives in Pennsylvania, near Philly, and is also enjoying the warmer weather.

[tex]

Shirley,

I'm glad you're safely home again. Lucky you - it's about 10 degrees warmer up there than it has been here in Texas, the last couple of days.

I hope that your mom will feel much better after a few days of rest.

Thanks for the wildlife report. That's almost like living in a game preserve.

Love,
Tex

[Polly]

Welcome home, Shirley!

Glad that the long haul is over and you are back where you most want to be. Is there any fall color left there? - we still have quite a bit here, one state below you.

Love,

Polly

P.S. I hope your mom's difficulties improve.

[JoAnn]

Glad you're home safe and sound Shirley. You do have some great wildlife around your home. Hope your mother recovers soon and that you can relax and rest. JoAnn

[starfire]

Well, up a 5 this morning to take out the garbage because I forgot to change the clock on my nightstand. HaHa Thats going on my "to do" list today.

Tex, Funny you should say that because Bill and I used to call this our private game preserve. I do love it and hoping to see some turkey soon. I buy shelled corn to entice the Deer and Turkey to stop by. It sure didn't take the deer long but turkey seem to need more time. Once they do they make it a regular stop. I only put the corn out in the late fall & winter. My daughter & family are flying up for Christmas and she has ordered "Snow, Deer & Turkey". Can't control the snow but hope to have the deer and Turkey visiting daily by then. She also wanted Bear but I think they'll be sleeping.

Polly, No color here but I did see some from S. Carolina & north for a way. I hear the trees here turned early and dropped early due to a lot of rain. They tell me it wasn't a great fall or color. Maybe next year. I thought about you as I passed by Haggerstown on the interstate.

Martha, It is a long trip but it didn't bother me too much this time. I wasn't as tense and Sat. morning seemed to be a good time to make the northern leg of the journey since traffic was fairly light. That always helps. Mom has taken Darvoset for a long time for pain. She has been taking some extra for a few days plus supplementing with OTC. I do hope she feels better today.

Joann, Thanks Can't take too much "time off". I gained 5 lbs while in Florida and I need to get it off (and continue losing). However, thats just the physical part. My mental health should improve greatly. And I have to start thinking about dragging out the Christmas decorations because my daughter also ordered a tree, etc. I haven't really decorated much in several years. Guess I'll try to go all out this year. I don't mind putting everything out but I sure hate having to put it all away afterward. HaHa

Love, Shirley

[MaggieRedwings]

Morning Shirley and Welcome back home to PA!

So happy to hear the trip was pretty stress free. Your home sounds like the one we sold to move to the over-55 community - a real nature paradise. Miss that but not the work for the 10 acres. I actually thought about putting up the outside decoration yesterday since it was mid 60s and with going away for the holiday it would seem late for me. Well, it will be when we get back home after the holiday.

Love, Maggie

[Kari]

Hi Shirley,

What a wonderful report on your home arrival. Your place sounds like a nature paradise and brings back all my fond memories of our place in the Adirondacks (had to give it up when moving to Colorado). We had deer, turkey, moose, bear, martins, otter, etc. and a variety of birds. I used to sit quietly on the porch for long time periods, until the chickadees and nuthatches worked up the courage to come and feed from my hand - such an amazing treat :). We don't have cardinals here in Colorado, so those I really miss - they are so beautiful and also have such lovely, fluty voices.

Anyhow, so glad you're home and feeling well. Thanks for sharing with us some details about your life-style. Best wishes to you and your mom - hope she recovers nicely after traveling.

Warm regards,
Kari

[Gloria]

So glad that you've made it home OK. It sounds like the wildlife is glad you're back, too.

It's so hard to watch our parents in decline. I hope your mom will stabilize and be able to get around with her walker without much pain.

Gloria

[Linda in BC]

Glad to hear you made it safe and sound, Shirley. Your place sounds wonderful! How lucky you are to see cardinals and bluebirds! We have a lot of wild turkeys around here, too. And pheasants. The turkeys were almost gone from here but they have made a real comeback in the last ten years or so.

Best wishes for your mom to feel better soon.
Regards,
Linda

[starfire]

Linda,

When I first came to this area (in 1961) we never saw a wild turkey but there were pheasants and grouse. Now we never see the pheasants or grouse but, as you say, the wild turkey has made an amazing comeback. I'm not sure why the pheasants are gone but I wish they could come back also. they are so beautiful.

I can't believe the pheasants and grouse disappeared solely because of haitat disappearing since the area hasn't changed all that much. I suppose a lot of America would consider this particular area depressed and backward. I'm just glad it hasn't "kept up with the times" as much as more "progressive" parts of the country. It's much more peaceful. If I were told I had to go back to live in the place where I grew up in Georgia it would be "panic city" for me since it "progressed" to the point of being intollerable for me many years ago and it only gets worse every time I'm there.

Black bear is the same story as the wild turkey. A person never saw one unless they went into the mountains. Now they are often seen in the local area.

Love, Shirley

[tex]

Shirley,

I'm guessing that back before you moved to that area, (in the 1940s and '50s), there were small grain farms nearby, that probably were abandoned somewhere in that time frame, or soon thereafter. Pheasants seem to do best on the fringes of grain fields, where food is plentiful, and cover is available on the fencerows, or nearby. When farms are abandoned, and allowed to go back to the "wild", the food supply of pheasants is sharply curtailed, and they can run out of food, during "hard years". They may do OK for a few years, if they're lucky, because abandoned farmland almost always immediately grows up in weeds, but as the trees begin to take over, the weeds are slowly starved out, and the pheasants run out of food.

I'm going to guess that grouse disappeared because of a combination of factors. They are easy targets for poachers, (too easy, so that anyone can easily kill them without special skills), and the addition of federal protection for raptors probably sealed their fate, (because again, they are easy targets for even the dumbest hawk or owl, and those predator populations really increased, once Federal protection was granted).

I still live in the area where I grew up, and when I was a kid, we had absolutely no rattlesnakes, coyotes, bobcats, or deer. There were no whitewing doves, or inca doves, and there were no fire ants. Horned toads, and bullfrogs, though, were plentiful, and so were morning doves, bobwhites and roadrunners.

Now, rattlesnakes, coyotes, and bobcats are everywhere, and deer are almost everywhere. The imported fire ant has greatly reduced the numbers of morning doves, (mostly ground-nesters), and bobwhites, (ground-nesters), and whitewings and inca doves have partially replaced them, (since they're tree-nesters, and tend to live in cities, farm yards, and barnyards, where fire ants are controlled). Horned toads seem to be completely gone, (the fire ants exterminated the big red ants that were the mainstay of the horned toads' diet), and the bullfrogs were apparently wiped out by a combination of drought, and plentiful coyotes and bobcats. Some song birds seem to have moved on, but a few new species have taken their place.

All in all, we have more wildlife now, than we have had at any time in my memory, but of course, the mix has shifted. The subcategory of Luddites known as Environmentalists, bemoan changes, but change is inevitable, (look at everything that happened before homo sapiens ever set foot on this planet), and whenever one species is "phased out", something else takes it's place. I don't know if change is good or bad, but it has been driving progress ever since the beginning of time, and there is no way that we will ever stop it, so we might as well enjoy it.

Tex

[starfire]

What you said makes perfect sense, Tex. And you are correct. This was dairy farm country (and still is to a MUCH lesser degree) so I'm sure the reduction of the growing of corn, oats, etc. took it's toll on the pheasant.

Praise God we do not have fire ants here (crosses fingers). Plenty in Florida, of course. We have had "temporary plagues" of other things though such as the gypsy moth and Japanese Beetle. We thought we were going to lose most of our trees at one time to the gypsy moth. Then they seemed to wane but I'm sure they could reinfest us at any time.

I can remember a time when Kudzu vine took over whole areas in Ga. where I grew up. Due to the "infestation" of people that has been cut way, way back. HaHa

Seems like every time there is a big problem with an insect or a particular bird (starling for expmple) or even types of eels it's been brought here either on purpose or by accident from another country. More of the "change" you were talking about, I suppose.

Love, Shirley

[Linda in BC]

Very keen observation, Tex, about the pheasants. Around here, it is a huge agricultural valley (hay, grain) and we have lots of hedgerows on our property. They are so beautiful, I agree , and I love to hear the males making their squeaking barb-wire sound all spring.

The turkeys are so plentiful that they actually opened a bow hunting season on them for the first time last year. Another animal that is really on the upswing here is elk. They opened a season on cow elk too last year (unheard of!) and my partner got one. We eat a lot of wild game, and the elk is the best meat I have ever had! Grain fed, lean, tastes just like the best beef and no, I don't react to it, tho for while I thought maybe I did.

We are also right on the edge of large wildlife sanctuary, the Creston Valley Wildlife Management Area, which is a designated RAMSAR site. It is on the fly over path for hundreds of migratory birds. We get to see some neat ones but they are usually just passing through. Here in Canada, the leopard frog that used to be everywhere ( I grew up catching frogs for my entertainment in Ontario) was almost extinct three years ago. In the last three years, they have released 7,000 leopard frogs per year into the swamps in the sanctuary, as part of an attempt to reintroduce them in BC. I have heard it is being successful. We even had some croaking around here this summer and that is a lovely sound that has been sadly missing for years.

It is very interesting to watch the ebb and flow of insect and animal life, as you said, Shirley. One year there will be a ton of flying ants around, the next year cedar bugs, last year lady bugs and this year, flea beetle. Every species seems to get their " day in the sun", then it is time for the next one. Must be the time for mankind to flourish.... I hear you about the urban sprawl.. our area here is undeveloped, backward and could be called depressed too, but like you, " mmm.... I like it that way!!@"

Linda