Three hot kitty vids

So, as promised, here's the kitty jumping in a box supercut.



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I also managed to snag a clip off her visiting three boxes in quick succession.



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Then, last but not least, here's a quick clip of her cleaning herself with a lick-the-paw-and-then-rub-it-on-her-head manoeuvre.


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Had the angles worked out I would have had a time-lapse kitty getting a bath vid to share, though, sadly, as foreshadowed earlier in this sentence, the angles did not work out and most of the shot was my above butt-crack region.

As always, keep checking back for an unending stream of less-than-stellar kitty vids.

The Birds III

After a first round of nest removals a few weeks ago I thought I had vanquished our pigeons.

Of course, it only took me a few hours to figure out that I hadn't done a good enough job to really prevent our persistent pigeons from returning.

Now, several weeks later, I am again in the position of thinking that I have permanently eliminated the possibility pigeons infesting our eaves.  Though, as was the case last time, my hubris will surely lead to my defeat.

One eventuality that I was hoping to avoid by removing the nests so early after the melt was that I would be removing a nest filled with eggs.  Not surprisingly, when I did the first round of nest removals my wishes came true and there were no eggs in the nests.

Yesterday, almost immediately, I learned that I wouldn't be so luck the next time around.  The pigeons, in just a few days, had not only constructed a nest but also deposited an egg.

For some reason I was careful with the nest and egg as I removed them.  I managed to get the whole package down the ladder without much disturbance.  For no apparent reason, I then handed the egg-filled nest to Jeannette

The sad reality is that as soon as I removed the nest from the eaves the egg was doomed to never come to fruition.  Of course, as much as Jeannette knew this in her head she very much disliked the idea of throwing a more or less fully formed nest with egg in the trash (even though the handless pigeons could do nothing save the already doomed attempt at offspring).

Once I went back up the ladder to continue the twig removal I learned that I was not removing one nest, but two.  It seems that the pigeons had actually built their nest over the nest of much smaller birds. And had it not been for the pigeon nest I would likely not have been motivated to remove the second, smaller nest (this one with two eggs).

These too went in the trash.

Once these nests were removed I added the new chicken wire.  Hopefully my aggressive application of the stuff will be enough to keep future potential residents away.  In reality what it will likely do is move birds from this site to other sites in our eaves.  Maybe once we've finished this game of musical nesting sites I'll have wrapped all of my eaves in chicken wire and staple gun staples.

My ladder-loaning neighbour's sake I hope it doesn't come to that (though it is definitely the case that he and his wife are very much in favour of my attempts to rid our house of pigeons).

Though considering that as of last night the pigeons were on our other neighbours chimney across from their former nesting site surveying the situation does not really suggest that they have accepted defeat and are looking for new, distant nesting site.

The fact that they were there again this morning really doesn't bode well for the "they'll move far away once their nest has been removed" hypothesis.

Oh, and then later in the day when I was dealing with our newly established compost bin I found another dead bird.

As penance for the last post

Perhaps not surprisingly, my cute kitty posts seem to be a little more popular than my dead bird posts - so here's a cute kitty post.

After what seems like an eternity I've finally posted another video of 'Sweet' Marie playing.  This time she's checking out the inside of a box.

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I kind of think that she likes it in there.

If you're lucky I may even have a box related 'supercut' for you later today.

The Birds II

It seems that my pigeon deterrence installations of a few weeks ago weren't quite as successful as I'd hoped.  Over the past few days what had just been hanging out under our eaves has reverted to a major nest building operation.

Obviously I will have to initiate a nest removal operation later this morning or early this afternoon.

Another worrying trend is that the appearance of dead birds in our backyards, at least as of a few days ago, has continued.  On the same day I even found two just feet apart from each other.

Of course, it took me a little longer to spot the one hiding in the fence.

On a more positive note, aside from the bird nest removal project we're also hoping to finally get around to planting our garden (after we add another few bags of peat moss and topsoil to the clay base that is Regina soil).

If you put it in front of me I'm going to take a picture of it

For whatever reason, I am definitely inclined to take pictures of the dead fish I see on my walks to and from work.  As it happens I encountered such fish on both Thursday and Friday.

On Friday afternoon I finally saw my first partially consumed fish.

I can't help but wonder why I keep seeing all of these dead fish.  Is this just part of a normal Spring die-off, or is there something else at work?  While most of the fish don't seem to be injured, I can't help but wonder if this last fish died of a different cause - maybe an animal attack?

As always, this blog is engaged in providing its readers with small-n cutting edge ecological monitoring.  And isn't this what such a blog should be doing (when I'm not posting vids of kitties or snow melting)?

It didn't take long

So after complaining about not seeing Marie fall asleep and then even going so far as posting a video with nothing but clips of her falling asleep I didn't have to wait long to see Marie fall asleep.  Basically just after I made the last post she fell asleep behind me.



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I'm starting to get the sense that Marie's inclination is to spend as much of her day as possible sleeping.

Of course, when I arrived home from work today nobody was taking a cat nap.  Instead my arrival was being eagerly awaited.  Jeannette, in particular, was quite keen to show off some of her handiwork.

I'm still not entirely sure what to think of this kind of thing, but as far as I could tell Marie didn't seem to mind the hat.  Jeannette suggests that she didn't mind the hat because it was made to measure.  My thought is that maybe she's just super laid back and not inclined to knit pick.

And as much as I am loathe to say it, I do think she looks kind of cute (but I don't want this to be taken as an suggestion that I think new outfits should be regularly procured/created).

Ok, I get the message...

...you don't want to see pics of dead birds.

What about live birds?

I saw this duck on my way home and I have no idea what kind of duck it is.  Any guesses?

Oh, and I also saw a dead fish on my way to work.

And then this one on the way home.

Do you think that they might actually be the same dead fish just in different locations?

Oh, and because I just uploaded it I might as well post Jeannette's Marie vid from today (and in you've noticed, I'm definitely having issues with the vid I thought I loaded last night).  This video was made because I claimed that I hadn't seen Marie fall asleep, despite that every time Jeannette turns around Marie seems to be asleep.



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One for the road

So after some dishes I threw together a little toy with some string and had some fun watching Marie go in circles.  Maybe with a little more practice she'll know just to chase her own tail if she wants to amuse us humans?

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Hands up if you're tired of these yet?

Some of you are probably so tired of these you want me to bring back the dead bird pics.

More animal updates

What does day two of a new kitty mean?

Supercuts of kitty vids of course!



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I'm assuming that once she's fully familiarized herself with the house tomorrow it will be non-stop imitation Maru.

Oh, and I also found another dead bird in our backyard.

Bummer.

Hopefully this is the last of these that I find for the time being.

Probably the worst news ever

I'm starting to think that that whole thing about kitten videos being internet gold (or at least copper) may have something of a basis in fact.

 

While it is certainly not the case that yesterday's cute kitty vid is getting nearly as many views as PSY's Gangnam Style, it is at least doing relatively well compared my last year's worth of YouTube offerings (meaning that it got more than 10 views in the first day/ever).

 

Guess this means that a non-stop stream of 'kitty jumping into a box' or 'kitty gets her little head stuck in a thing' vids are what the public demands.  And what are this blog and my YouTube channels if not attempts to meet the internet-based needs of the masses?

 

 

Obligatory cute kitten vid

So a few weeks ago Jeannette made it very clear that she wanted a kitten, and that she wanted this kitten sooner rather than later.  While I was very disinclined to acquire a kitten, I was eventually talked into the proposition.

Of course, even though I'd agreed to the idea of a kitty I hoped that I might be able to talk Jeannette into holding off on the whole thing for a few weeks/forever.

Not surprisingly, I was wrong about my powers of persuasion and about two weeks ago Jeannette found a pound kitty that she immediately liked.  The next day I was dragged kicking and screaming to visit the prospective kitty.

As Jeannette promised, the kitty (already named Marie) was incredibly cuddly and not the least bit scrobby.  We then made arrangements to acquire the cat as soon as the required medical procedures were completed.

And after a nine day wait this afternoon we learned that as of this afternoon the wait was up - Marie was ready to be picked up.  And unbeknowst to me Marie was already at home by the time I returned from work.

Anyway, one aspect of kitty ownership that I was promised if we got a kitty was that I could make all kinds of hit internet vids.  So here goes nothing - here's my first attempt at kitty based internet superstardom (or at least kitty based hit internet vids that do well enough to pay for a new bathroom/baby needs new shoes/$3).


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I presume that kitty vid was every bit as cute and as good as you expected?

The Birds

Just after we moved in to our new house we noticed that several varieties of birds have, at one time or another, nested in our eaves (because they are particularly suited to nesting).  Based on some bird dropping patterns I was relatively certain that at least one or two of the nesting sites were still at least partially active.  Even worse than the presence of some kind of generic nesting bird is that there was a fair bit to indicate that the droppings leavers were in fact a pair of pigeons.

Unfortunately, because of the snow and ice that we've had until quite recently (and still have in a few areas of our backyard) we were unable to do much about rendering our eaves less inhabitable until quite recently.

Yesterday, just as we were thinking of tackling the problem, we noticed that what we hoped was a dormant nesting site was actually active and growing quite quickly.  Somehow in the hours since we'd last been through our back door the pigeons had carried all kinds of sticks and twigs to the nest (and quite a number ended up on the ground below the nest).

Clearly this was something that did merit our attention immediately.

Of course, once we had our extension ladder in place it became clear that it was hilariously short and was clearly not going to be of much use when it came to removing the nests and affixing chicken wire to prevent the return of any future nests.  Fortunately, our neighbours, who were just about as anxious as we were to not have pigeons roosting in the neighbourhood, loaned us their taller extension ladder.

First I had to remove the previously installed pigeon deterrent mesh (that was obviously no longer serving its original purpose).  Once the old mesh and nests were cleared away I had to add new chicken wire.

Fortunately, I soon discovered that we were removing the nests before any eggs had been laid or all that much work had gone into nest preparation.

Anyway, in total we shut down about four of these nesting sites around our house.  We had to leave one that we could not reach with either of the ladders and decided not to tackle another that had non-pigeons.

While the project generally went quite smoothly, it was less than pleasant to have to deal with ancient bird excrement while on a ladder trying to juggle chicken wire, a staple gun, and a utility knife.  Fortunately I had work gloves, a mask, and safety goggles to make the process a little less unpleasant.

Ideally we might have cleaned the beams before we affixed the mesh, but unfortunately that just wasn't in the cards yesterday (though by the end of the day we did have a hose).

Of course, the real bummer of the day was that as we were preparing dinner on our barbecue we noticed that while the pigeons were no longer able to access their old roost, because of the way I'd installed the mesh on one of the alternative roost sites they were able to kind of hangout, even though it seemed to be less than idea.  Crap.

I did some more chicken wire installation today but it definitely wasn't enough - and I couldn't reach the really high parts.  Maybe when our neighbour has his ladder out I'll be able to borrow it again and fix up this beam.  The only good news is that I now have a much better sense of how I need to install the chicken wire so that the birds won't be able to make use of the site.

Of course, removing nest sites wasn't nearly the end of the bird related activity we've had this weekend.

While doing a backyard inspection and attempting to guess what be growing in our previously snow-covered yard I found a small dead bird under an evergreen.

Then, a few minutes later, while continuing my yard inspection I came across a bird skeleton that had more-or-less been picked clean by something.  I was definitely much more curious about skinned and de-fleshed bird than Jeannette.

It just seems obvious to me that one would want to know how it came to pass that this bird was left without wings, skin, feathers, or flesh, but was left with feet and tufts of down around its feet.  And does the redness suggest that the gorefest was recent?

Of course, while I may be curious to know the cause of this avian destruction, I hope that bird skeletons picked clean are not a common occurrence in our backyard.

Oh, and we've been almost overrun with all kinds of other birds, particularly robins.  At one point this evening there were about five types of birds in our backyard at the same time - and throughout the day we saw quite a few other varieties in addition to these four.  Definitely a birdy time of year.