Blast From The Past

Scrolling thru my online photo album at Google Photos I came across a collection of digital images dating from November 2007, a couple of decades and three dogs ago.  It even predates this forum by a couple of years.

Pictured here is my Inky.  A female Labrador retriever and all-around flusher and fetcher of upland game birds including grouse, woodcock and pheasant. We enjoyed a love affair; she was my girlfriend.

She's still a pup in these photos and this was our first trip to South Dakota to chase pheasants twenty years ago.

That last photo is precious as I thought it was lost.  Now it's found and will find its way to our powder room wall. 

 

Friday Music

Tonah "El Hombre Orquesta" - whose real name is  Tonatiuh Zamarrón is a Mexican street musician from Mexico City.  He's captured attention online with his one-man band featuring up to 11 instruments that can be played simultaneously.

He sings and plays covers of classic rock and pop tracks that have gone viral on TikTok, Facebook and YouTube including Paul McCartney's social media channel.

You've officially been sucked-in to this phenomenon.  Enjoy watching, it's a lot of fun... 

 

Ditch Tigers

Last weekend we observed kittens emerging from beneath the granary lean-to porch.  It would appear that mama cat decided to take up residence in a den at that location to birth her brood.  I suppose the good news is there aren't bunnies living under there; or worse yet, a groundhog.  But now we've got cats to deal with.  And somehow remove.

Coincidentally, on Saturday we ran the trail camera trapline and uploaded a batch of new images including a spike in cat photos.  Colloquially called ditch tigers.

Roaming cats are bad news for wildlife; particularly ground-nesting birds.  These animals are higher order predators of small prey that play an important roll in the natural world's food web.

What to do.  What to do... 

 

Fall Colors

Today's fall colors are brought to you courtesy of the trees you will find in our yard.  Yes, those we planted as part of our DIY landscaping.

20+ years ago they we little runts, 1-3 year-old bare root or potted stock, when we plugged them into the ground.  Most survived some did not.

Today they're all grown-up.  A nice mix of maples and oaks.

The tamaracks seem to be running late this year.

 

 

    

Timber Stand Improvement

When we got married we gave ourselves a Husqvarna chainsaw as a wedding gift. That tool has a pile of miles on it. 

 

That winter of 1997-98 Jill and I dropped 200 ancient and decrepit bigtooth aspen along a portion of the north property line. That disturbance caused this to happen. 

 

 

And a brand-new and vastly larger stand of healthy thriving trees materialized. Thousands of trees; free for nuth’n!

 

A golden stand of aspen in the autumn sunshine is easy on the eyes.

 

Without going full bible I’m mindful of Lazarus.

 

On This Day In History

My life experience includes being born of American parents on a U.S. Army installation in southern Germany.  Crailsheim, to be exact.  When we lived in Germany my family took a trip thru East Germany to Berlin.  

I still have my Soviet Visa authorizing my passage to the Russian Zone.  Yes, back then, the Communists required that even a child might have to produce their "papers" on demand.  

This was before the Soviets built a wall and before this cold war stand-off.  By the time these photos were snapped in 1961 we had already returned stateside.  

In 2023, accompanied by two additional couples, we traveled thru what had previously been East Germany and, while spending several days in Berlin, took some photos at Checkpoint Charlie.  

What a difference 62 years makes.

Earlier, on October 25, 1961, the U.S. deployed ten tanks to Checkpoint Charlie, marking a major escalation in the confrontation over Allied access to East Berlin. 

The immediate dispute involved East German border guards attempting to check the identification of American officials entering East Berlin.  The Americans insisted that only the Soviet authorities, not East German personnel, had jurisdiction over allied access rights. 

The sequence of events is important.  October 25 was the day the American tanks were deployed, yet the famous stand-off between American and Soviet tanks occurred on this day, October 27.  Three U.S. Army tanks were positioned at the crossing with an additional seven held nearby in reserve. 

In a tense showdown, ten Russian tanks moved into position opposite the American forces.  For hours the two superpower's armor faced one another at close range creating a dangerous setting for escalation.  The standoff ended peacefully the following day, October 28, when the Russian tanks began withdrawing followed by the American tanks.

The confrontation demonstrated that the dispute over Berlin was more than about identity papers for adults and children.  It was more about the postwar occupation arrangements, status of East Germany, and the rights of Western Allies to move freely through Berlin.

We all know the end of the story; communism is a colossal failed experiment.  

The communist's wall came down in November 1989 and East Germany (the German Democratic Republic) ceased to exist on October 3, 1990 when it officially reunited with West Germany.  Today Berlin and all of (former) East Germany is free and thriving.

In short order, and after it's constituent republics declared independence, the Soviet Union (USSR) collapsed.  It dissolved on December 26, 1991.

Nowadays, like many large European cities, Berlin is an excellent destination spot.  Safe, with the S-Bahn and U-Bahn cleaner than any public transportation system on the planet.  Museums, theater, entertainment, history and food.  If you're like me you will appreciate every last bit of it right down to the beer.  I recommend it.  Visitors are witness to the miscarriage of communism everywhere. 

As for any of you scaredy-cat holdouts doubting that communism is a failed ideology I direct your attention to the last photo for incontrovertible evidence.

KFC was invented by Colonel Sanders; not Vladimir Lenin.  The Colonel was an entrepreneur; a capitalist.  Comrade Vlad was a murderous dictator.  Good guys like the Colonel win hearts and minds with fried chicken.  Communist revanchists like Vladimir Putin invade their neighbors and wage war on civilians.

Get a grip people.  

A stake has been driven in the heart of the beast.  

Communism is dead.  

And the midterms are just around the corner. 

Quote Of The Day

“If Abdul and the Democrats win, they will open the floodgates and invite hordes of jihadis to our shores, creating a nightmare of violence and terror until you cannot even have a Christmas.”

 

                                                          - Donald Trump

New Resident In The Neighborhood

From time-to-time I have written about the common fox squirrels that inhabit  our woods.  Surprise, surprise, someone new has moved into the neighborhood; another squirrel that heretofore has not been personally observed by me or made a cameo appearance on one of the trail cameras.

Meet Tamiasciurus hudsonicus - the American Red Squirrel.

Last week my pal, Braumeister, reported that a red squirrel jumped on him while he was bow hunting.  In case you might be wondering why any self-respecting squirrel would jump on a person you should know that he was camouflaged in a ghille suit.  Consequently, the squirrel likely took him for another ordinary bush or large piece of foliage.  But I digress.

The bottom line is I didn't believe him.  My interrogation went something like this:

Tom:  Did the squirrel have a white belly?  

Brau:  Yes.

Tom:  Did it have white circles around the eyes?  

Brau:  Yes.

Tom:  Was it smaller than a gray squirrel?  

Brau:  Yes.

Tom:  Ruddy red pelt?  

Brau:  Yes.

Tom:  I've never seen one and I live here.  Must've been a fox squirrel.

Then the next day he took this picture.

Man, was I wrong.  That is most definitely a red squirrel.  A first around here.  And I'll be plucked!

Considerably smaller than gray or fox squirrels are easily identified by all the items I ticked-off in my interrogation (above).  Native throughout the United States and Canada they thrive in mixed hardwood and coniferous forests.  

Famously known as omnivorous hoarders their diet includes pine cones, pine nuts, seeds, berries, bird eggs and small insects.  They're quite territorial and will defend their feeding ground with sharp rattling chatter and scolding calls.

Unlike some mammals red squirrels do not over-winter in hibernation.  Instead they assemble large caches of pine cones underground or at the base of trees.  These middens sustain them over the winter. 

Breeding occurs February to March and while several males my chase a single female; the female is receptive to mating only once on a single day.  Gestation is 33-35 days yielding 2-5 offspring once during the months of March to May.  The young are weaned on on their own after 7-8 weeks.

On Saturday we fetched the memory cards from the trail camera trapline.  On the video cam where Brau was hunting there were two 15 second silent video shorts of a red squirrel.  No still photos yet; but this is a start.  Like I said; I'll be plucked.

 

Fun Fact:  This critter is a master mycologist.  They eat wild mushrooms including the Amanita.  Toxic to humans, red squirrels dine on this fungus with no ill-effects.  They hang their shrooms high in a tree to sun-dry before storing them in their midden for winter fare.

Another Door County Connection

When the bankrupt Seattle Pilots became the Milwaukee Brewers one week before Opening Day 1970, one pitcher on the roster was coming home to Wisconsin. Gene Brabender had led the Pilots with 13 wins in 1969, and when the move was announced, he told the Associated Press that playing in Milwaukee would be closer to home in Sturgeon Bay, and that his wife and family would like that.

Brabender was the first native-born Wisconsinite ever to play for the Brewers. Born in Madison and raised in Black Earth, he was Wisconsin through and through.

His teammates called him "Lurch" — 6-foot-6, 225 pounds. His Seattle teammates, per Jim Bouton's classic book Ball Four, heard the big guy could bend the metal spikes that anchor the bases in his bare hands and agreed: "We better call him 'Sir.'"

He was the clubhouse jokester who once nailed Bouton's shoes to the floor, and he liked to scare teammates half to death by firing darts from a homemade blowgun into the wall just above their heads.

He later auditioned for (but did not get) the TV sitcom version of Ball Four, based on the book about the Pilots. 

Before Milwaukee, he'd been part of the Orioles' 1966 World Series championship team, and the best game of his career was a four-hit, 12-strikeout shutout of Cleveland in 1967. 

As a member of the Brewers first roster, Brabender went 6-15 with a 6.02 earned-run average in 29 games (21 starts).  The Brewers traded him to the California Angels organization in January 1971 for outfielder Bill Voss.  Shoulder problems hampered his comeback and he never returned to the major leagues.

 
Steve Barber, his old teammate, summed him up best: "a hard-throwing right-handed country boy." He died in a Madison hospital in 1996 at age 55 after collapsing form a brain aneurysm.

The Door County thread never really left the franchise, either. The Brewers' 2026 City Connect uniforms feature an Accent Cream the team says represents "the beaches of Door County." And this year's signature ballpark cocktail,The Bobber, is made with Door County cherry syrup. Lurch would be proud. 

 

 

Brewers Baseball

After watching the first game of the World Series last evening I'm not sure I'm capable of surviving many more closing like that one.

It's game-on for the second game of the series and we're ready.

The brewers lights went out on the porch last evening just before the first pitch was thrown.

And even the bear is getting his game-on. 

 

October Night Skies

In our part of the northern hemisphere the full moon appearance following the Harvest Moon is  generally known as the Hunter’s Moon.  Its appearance is typically in October - although it can also reveal itself in early November.  Last year it appeared on October 6. 

Before European settlement Native Americans knew it as that time of year when people would hunt deer and other animals to lay-up stores of food for the winter. The Anishinaabe people knew it as the Falling Leaves Moon while the fall bird migration led the Cree to refer to it as the Migrating Moon  With the arrival of lower temperatures it has also been called the Ice Moon or Freezing Moon.  

The October full moon will be at its largest overnight on October 25.  Nevertheless, If you are blessed with cold,clear viewing conditions it should appear full both tonight and tomorrow evening.

From October 2022 - Full Hunter Moon on the left, Jupiter right of center. 

The Bee

If your a fan of satirical publications s such as the Onion or the Merrill Daily Harold you'll like the Babylon Bee.  Like the other two satirical publications most of my consumption of their material is on Face Book.  It lightens the load.  Om rare occasion I've reposted a piece from the Beer.

Inasmuch as the Brewers are in the World Series run I can't resist.

Go Brewers! 

 

Friday Music

As an all time fan favorite I was witness to a live performance of this group in July 1978 at Milwaukee's Summerfest.  To this day I have a couple of cassette mix tapes in the Case Logic of my old Silverado pickup truck to play on the stereo. 

The Toy Factory Project is a Southern rock supergroup formed by the original Marshall Tucker Band drummer and Grammy Award winner Paul T. Riddle to honor the music and memory of the late great founder and guitarist Toy Caldwell. 

Project members and collaborators include a rotating or touring ensemble showcasing renowned musicians such as Oteil Burbridge, Marcus King, Josh Shilling, Charlie Starr and Billy Contreras.   

Naturally, they've resurrected the best of the best of Toy Caldwell.

Can't You See...  

He's Back

I took doggo out last evening for a last call potty call before we went to bed and there he was, rising above the eastern horizon.  The constellation Orion has reappeared in the night sky over northeast Wisconsin.

As a winter constellation Orion spends the summer months hidden from view by the sun's glare, and just like clockwork, reappears by the time autumn rolls-around.

This is an easy constellation to ID; look for Orion's belt - a distinctive, straight line of three bright stars close together.  You can also spot the bright reddish super giant star Betelgeuse marking his shoulder and the icy-blue Rigel marking his foot.

As October transitions into November it will to rise earlier and earlier with each passing night. 

Click on the image for a closer look. 

Quote Of The Day

 "You are a humanitarian also, sir, and I salute that, I commend you, and I thank you again."

-  U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff praising Russian President Vladimir Putin

Coup de Grâce

In the unlikely event that you missed the news, last week President Trump canceled the planned livestream of the Fort Hood shooter's execution.  Previously, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced that Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan would be executed by a firing squad, at Fort Hood, broadcast for all the world to see and that "It would be awesome."

 

As easy as it is to speculate over what testosterone-fed and media-infused nonsense is rolling-around in the Secretary's head; sometimes the president requires further reflection.  And a wee bit of polling.

If anyone would have asked me, my response would be to tell Mr. Trump that live streaming the execution by firing squad of a paralyzed, wheelchair-bound murderer would simply grant him his last wish - namely martyrdom.  As a consequence, Secretary Hegseth would be handing jihadists across the world a novel recruiting tool on a silver platter.  

As per usual nobody called.

We'll never know if the president's main concern was if the Secretary's broadcasting of the execution would have a deterrent effect or make a better tool for attracting apprentice terrorists.  Personally, I vote for the latter, not the former.  

In case you might be thinking about all of what goes into the procedural details of an execution under the military's Uniform Code of Military Justice - including the rare firing squad - Ward Carroll does a very good job of explaining it.  If you can spare less than eight minutes and the bandwidth you can watch it here. 

The execution, if it goes through, is scheduled for the same week as the National Christmas Tree Lighting.  

Meanwhile, I have a pool going if Pete Hegseth is the first Cabinet Secretary to be fired immediately following the midterm elections.

Felize Navidad! 

Pre-Rut

Sunday afternoon, Braumeister and I had our first sit for the season.  It was a beautiful fall day, and until sunset pleasant enough to hunt in a double layer of long sleeve underwear and a t-shirt.  Not a mosquito to be seen. 

I took a roundabout walk to my chosen stand in order to scout for evidence of the whitetail rut.  And evidence there was.  I counted seven scrapes in the process of establishment and a couple of rubs.

What are these you ask?

If you encounter a whiff of deer pee redolent in the autumn air look carefully beneath any shoulder height tree branches that are close by.  You may locate a bare patch of dirt in the turf that is trampled with deer hoof prints.  This is called a scrape.  Bucks create scrapes by using their hoofs to dig at the ground.   Once the soil is stirred up they urinate on the scrape.

Bucks don’t pee the way those of us males of the human species do.  We try to keep it off of our legs and boots.  Whitetail bucks actually try to pee on their own legs.  The object is to hit their tarsal glands in an effort to leave their scent on the scrape.  Every deer has its own unique scent. The tarsal glands hold concentrated amounts of that scent.  

Another thing scrapes have is a licking branch - a tree branch will hang above the cleared out soil. Bucks will rub their forehead glands on the stick and will also lick it with their tongue.  

 

 

Scrapes serve much the same function in the whitetail world as a mailbox post or a fire hydrant does for dogs.  Scrapes are meant to show dominance over a territory but are normally used by more than one buck.   

 

These early scrapes are a bit different.  Few and far between they are mainly used to communicate as bucks begin to leave their bachelor groups and stake out their territory.  It is akin to posting a no trespassing sign on a property line.  Later in the season an active scrape will be used to communicate breeding readiness.

 

Finally, there are these beginning to appear on the landscape – buck rubs.   

 

 

Around these parts it is typically a tamarack sapling sacrificed to the cause.   

 

It is a common misconception that deer rubs on trees are caused by male whitetails attempting to rub the velvet from their antlers.  While it would not be unusual for a velvet-antlered deer to rub against a tree the rubbing seen at this time of year is a consequence of deer that have long-ago shed the velvet from their antlers.  The rub in the photo was made by a dominant buck.  Consider it both a visual and a sensory calling card brought on by an increase in testosterone levels.   

It isn't unusual for other bucks to add their contribution to the rub but it's more to do with establishing the pecking order.   

 

The term dominant buck is apropos given that one of the reasons for this behavior is to mark their territory and curb the lesser bucks both psychologically and hormonally.  This suppresses testosterone levels in the smaller bucks allowing the Big Guy to exert his influence and create the circumstances for successfully spreading his seed during the breeding season.  

 

The glands located in the forehead of the dominant male send a signal that this is my turf.  It also signals to the ladies of the male's readiness to mate.  Consider it the whitetail equivalent of passing-along your name and phone number to someone you might wish to meet again. 

 

Stay-tuned for additional updates from whitetail romance land.

October Night Skies

The Orionid meteor shower featured in this post originates in the debris left behind by Halley's Comet.  Halley completes a circumnavigation of our sun every 76 years or thereabouts.  It last visited us in 1986 and will return in 2061.  Nevertheless, the dust trail left behind in its path does not disappear and is intercepted every year in late October.

As particulate matter from the debris trail enters our atmosphere it burns-up producing the Orionid meteor shower.  The orbit of the earth is opposite that of the debris (Retrograde is the Word Of The Day) resulting in fast-moving shooting stars.  We also collide with the debris once-again in May which results in the Eta Aquariids meteor show.  Halley is responsible for two meteor shows a year.

The overall duration of this shower is from September 26 to November 22 and is scheduled to peak on the evenings of October 20 and 21 with the best opportunities after midnight and before dawn.

The radiant for the Orionids originates from the constellation Orion the Hunter so fix yourself a cuppa hot cocoa or a glass of Merlot and keep your fingers-crossed for good viewing conditions.

Orion September 15 - click on image to enlarge

The Bee

If your a fan of satirical publications s such as the Onion or the Merrill Daily Harold you'll like the Babylon Bee.  Like the other two satirical publications most of my consumption of their material is on Face Book.  It lightens the load.  I've reposted a piece from the Bee only once prior.  But this is pretty close to home, so I can't resist.

Go Brewers! 

 

Even More Fall Colors

A couple of weeks ago I finally got around to replacing my device and have been waiting for an opportunity to test the camera on an iPhone 17 Pro.

 

On my drive to Sturgeon Bay earlier last week it was gloomy and overcast. And I thought to myself,  “Geeze, it's too bad it's dark, cloudy and dank. The trees are putting on a real fall show and there's no sunshine to show it off."

 

Driving home after class things had certainly changed. The rains abated, the skies cleared and the sun came out; a bright late afternoon sun lower on the horizon.  So I hopped-off the four lane and did a brief detour to checkout the fall colors at some of my favorite locations in Southern Door.

 

Thursday there was rain all day and awaking Friday there was more of the same.  Nevertheless, I left for Group with fingers-crossed for clear skies and sunshine; hopeful the wind and the rain wouldn’t spoil it.  

 

Sure as shooting by late afternoon the skies cleared, the sun came out; a bright, low on the horizon sun.

 

I left the house around 3:30 to fetch Ruby from the boarding kennel where she had been enjoying a spa visit while we were on a road trip to Minneapolis to see Sting in concert.  After picking her up, natural light conditions were becoming pretty much optimal for some fall color photography.  And more experimentation with my new iPhone 17 Pro.  So as we crossed over the border into Door County we navigated the back roads home and collected these images between 4 and 4:30 PM.

 

Click on any image for a closer look. 

 

 

 

  

 

This weekend might just be peak fall colors here.  Enjoy it while you can wherever you live.

And how about them Brewers.