Bad Hair Day

 

This animal looks a bit raggedy so you might think it has the mange.  It doesn't.  But it's definitely scruffy as the animal is beginning to shed its fur.  Antlers are first; winter coat is next.  As the days grow longer the additional sunlight triggers hormonal changes in whitetail deer that bring-about these changes.  For boy deer testosterone levels gradually rise.  As a consequence antler growth begins and for all deer the gray winter coat, with its thick guard hairs, begins to molt.

Hormonal changes bring about a molting process twice a year and deer alternately grow a faded gray coat consisting of longer guard hairs and replace it with the ruddy red-colored coat of summer.  Better-suited to reflecting the heat of the sun the deer really stand out when they're gathered in a bright green hay field in July.  The summer coat will only last about three months before the critter begins to regrow the extra layer of longer, stiffer, hollow hair over the softer hair closer to the skin.  

Until the transition is complete the local whitetails are going to continue looking a bit raggedy.   

Hair everywhere. 

Death To The Queen!

In another rite of spring I deployed this.

 

 

 

 

It's baited with a pheromone attractant. 

 

If I can trap and drown a queen yellow jacket wasp awakening from her overwinter slumber I eliminate the possibility of an entire colony. 

 

It works most years.

 

Bastard, sociopath members of the insect kingdom. 

Mom's Day

Someone once said that the term "working mother" is redundant. 

Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms in the world.

The struggle is real…..

 

WWJD

I don't know what variety of Christian church Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth frequents, but I've read Jesus's Sermon on the Mount, commonly called the Beatitudes (New Testament, Matthew 5:9) where Jesus says: "Blessed are the Peacemakers, for they shall be called the sons of God."  Nowhere in the Beatitudes does Jesus praise Hegseth's hyper masculine death-dealing Christian knights of vengeance. 

There are many situations in the New Testament where Jesus eschews violence, including when he is arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane.

Nevertheless, none of this comes as a great surprise; if you follow the polling as I do MAGA World overwhelmingly likes war. 

And I'm not ashamed to share that I pray daily for deliverance from the war.   

Sunset

Good look’n sunset tonight. 

Shot an azimuth to record Old Sol’s relentless march north. 

Love me some spring…..

 

Mom's Day

Tomorrow we celebrate our mothers.  Why, you ask?  Probably because we all have one.  And they are celebrated for nurturing, protecting, teaching and launching us into adulthood.

Almost 100 years ago this photo was snapped of my mom during a stay at the family cottage somewhere on the Fox River.  There was a critter involved.

Apple doesn't fall too far from the tree.... 

 

The Return Of The Oriole Cam

Last Monday I could’ve sworn I spied an orchard oriole. 

And on Tuesday morning the Missus spotted three male Orioles quarreling over the humming bird feed she had recently deployed.

I spotted some rose-breasted grosbeaks in the yard along with the white-crowned sparrows passing-thru on their way to Canada.  Consequently, we put out three additional feeders and I moved the rickety-old trail camera previously used to monitor the peanut feeder to a post on the west side of the porch. 

The oriole cam has been deployed.  

 

 

And a couple of the first photos uploaded yesterday....