there's an argument here for fencing the tomato patch

Any morning I have time, I get our ratties out in the sun room.  I drink my coffee, they run around and have fun, and we all do a bit of cuddling.  This morning, we had visitors.

 

During these mornings, Maya eats her breakfast in bed.  That is, she is put in the bedroom with a couple of frozen Kongs or equivalent long-lasting snacks.  She is usually quiet, though once the food is gone there is sometimes an outbreak of whining, or a few long-suffering sighs.  This morning, she indulged in some frustration barking, so I think she must have smelled the deer.  They were, after all, right outside the house.

If it had been Maya hanging out with me in the sun room, I would never have seen the deer (or not for long, and at much greater distance).  Maya has a big impact on how I experience wildlife and wild spaces, and I occasionally feel frustrated by her critter-chasing ways.

On the other hand, if Maya had been in the sun room, I would have more tomato plants left.

Really, the tomato plants were frozen in an early frost, and the deer are welcome to anything they can salvage.  The fire pretty much destroyed a lot of the usual food sources, so it will be a lean winter for most grazing animals here...not that you'd think it to look at this big guy.

I don't mind losing a few squash plants to the gopher (watching them vanish, inch by jerky inch, downwards into the ground is entertainment enough to pay for the loss) or a few tomatoes to the deer, and I know that the raccoons that eat the raspberries also sometimes eat the cute garter snakes.  I generally don't do much to try to micromanage the visitors to my yard.  I suppose it seems a little unfair to create a resource-rich environment and then punish animals for doing what comes naturally.

Maya has no such compunctions.  She has killed three deer mice in the yard, and tries her hardest to do the same to the chipmunks, ground squirrel, and occasional cat.  I scan the yard before letting her out, and in the case of slow-moving animals (torpid snakes, the occasional baby bird) I will go out and shoo them gently into safe places.  I leash her on hikes when wildlife is in the area, but otherwise figure that there are limits to my ability to prevent Maya from having a larger impact on the natural world than I might prefer.

It is nice to go places without her sometimes though, and re-experience the pleasure of being quiet around wild animals.  Even if I am just going to my sun room, to sip coffee, let the rats warm my toes, and watch a couple of deer eat the garden.

colder weather

September was a month of seasonal change.  A warm wet end-of-summer became a wet fall, and then quite abruptly a very cold autumn.  And October brought snow!

 

The seasonal change corresponded to a massive bout of depression for me.  Lots of factors contributed -- the rapid change in light, a very long-lasting cold/flu, several external triggering events, overall life stress.  Whatever the cause, I was very blue.  Which is why there have been no posts here since mid-August.  Because who can possibly blog when the very nature of existence is so fundamentally meaningless?

This happens to me rarely, and seldom for quite so long or so deeply.  It is not unendurable, but it does slow things down.  Poor Maya.  For reasons quite incomprehensible to her, September was a much less interesting month than she's become accustomed to.  Less training, more miscommunication.  More quiet time, less adventure.  I don't push either of us to grow, and I think we both find that frustrating.

It's not like she suffers terribly -- quiet walks, evenings in the park with the frisbee, chunks of raw meat for breakfast, ear rubs, games of tug, runs with her boy, spooning in bed, practicing old tricks, chasing chipmunks in the yard...Maya leads a relatively full life.  It's just that I am always aware of the progress Maya needs to make, and so standing still can feel almost as frustrating as regressing (oh, but not quite!).

Now, the sun seems to have come out, literally as well as figuratively.  The snow may have melted, but for a brief period we had a glimpse of winter.  And oh, I hope it is a snowy one.  First, because we need the moisture.  Second, because snow makes it so much easier to thoroughly exhaust Maya.  But most of all, because snow is FUN.