Don’t you hate it when someone beats you to the buffet line?
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The only thing you can do is use your superior size to muscle out the competition.
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Or so I’ve heard.
The next two pictures aren’t the best quality…blame my zoom lens and our resident buck’s propensity for showing up at dusk…. but I thought someone might be interested to see the antler shedding process.
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One half gone, one to go. Talk about being lopsided.
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Right after the shed. What’s left are big boney bumps with an active blood flow.
It always looks painful to me, but I’m assured it’s not. Though how any anter-less naturalist can vouch for that I don’t know.
Our old baby barn/shed has a dirt floor with heavy duty rubber mats on top. Due to numerous woodchuck holes and tunnels, we had to drag all the mats out. That sounded easy enough until I realized each one of them weighed the equivalent of an African elephant…
Seriously.
A pregnant, morbidly obese African elephant carrying a suitcase I packed for an overnight trip.
Did I mention they were all covered in pounds of dirt as well?
So as we’re moving the next to last mat…..
This.
A chipmunk burrow with tiny scraps of paper, plastic and leaves.
Upon further examination…
A maze of tunnels, which I thought was pretty cool, until… it moved.
Do you see the leg?
Yeah.
Not a tunnel.
A nursery…
Which means we had to find the other end of the tunnel and relocate them. Not an easy task.
Five minutes after we found them?
Momma found us.
And she wasn’t happy.
She ran around squawking and chirping and looking for her babies.
After a while I think she found them, because she stopped searching and started stuffing.
Stuffing her little cheek pouches full of all those little scraps of paper….
And scurrying back for more.
Within minutes she’d cleaned up the whole lot.
Watch her cram a dried leaf that’s almost bigger than she is below.
(And please pardon my husband’s cursing. Things were not going well with the rebuild at this point…)
After we wasted time relocating chipmunks, we realized we had to relocate a bird’s nest as well.
So many evictions.
I felt like an evil slumlord.
Back to work…. and things did not go well.
Which was completely the husband’s fault.
He had the crazy idea he could square the building properly (After 40 plus years of Maine frost heaves? Madness!) and changed the original footprint….. which in turn threw everything off kilter.
More good times.
Did I mention he uses tools from the 1950’s picked up at a yard sale or the dump?
This little jewel feels like it weighs 50 lbs.
But he has the original box… and vintage lube.
So it’s special.
P.S. For those of you who pay attention, this post is actually out of sequence. That back wall is gone now. Apparently my blog scheduling has run amok.
You may remember me posting pictures of our little red barn/shed.
We use it as a shed, but it was originally a small barn complete with horse. The horse is long gone…. and 40 odd years later?
The barn/shed is almost gone as well.
Falling apart?
You could say that…
Rotted wood?
The mere fact that it’s still standing never ceases to amaze me.
It’s horrible. An eye sore on our otherwise lovely property. The bane of my existence for a long, long time.
It’s state of disrepair is the main reason we spent $50,000 and 7 years of nights and weekends building a new and much larger barn.
The plan? All the mowers and weed whackers, the snow blower, the tractor and assorted yard tools that were in the shed/barn were supposed to go into the new barn…. and the eyesore would be torn down.
But that never happened, and now the husband….. who has already filled the new barn with CRAP wants to rebuild the shed/barn to continue housing the mowers, tractor etc.
So this is happening.
Husband deemed part of the interior framing sound, and started what I thought was deconstruction of the back half…. which needs to be completely rebuilt..
Now my idea of deconstruction consists of ripping off the roof, then the walls. The husband’s?
I’m not quite sure.
He put up a new piece of wood…
Ostensibly to brace the roof… though why you need to brace something you’re tearing down is beyond me.
But look at the piece he’s bracing! Rotted doesn’t begin to describe it…
Then…
Yeah. He trimmed it…
The rotted piece of wood.
He sawed off a section of wall… by hand, even though the chainsaw was right there.
And made a bigger hole.
He elongated the brace….
And added wood running along the bottom.
He was supposed to be tearing it down…. so WTH?
Naturally I had to ask.
And naturally, he wouldn’t answer.
It was hot, he was cranky and I dared to question his technique.
Silly me.
Where there's only one step from the sublime to the ridiculous.
River's world..... 