Munching Moose Tree and Hedge Maintenance Service – Four New Employees

Three new members of the ‘Munching Moose Tree and Hedge Maintenance Service’ arrived on our property in early October. Mavis Moose and her two calves, Morgan and Montana, worked primarily in the NE section of our woods. They also rested on (and fertilized) the grassy area that covers our septic field.

This calf is demonstrating extreme resting. Morgan (or maybe it was Montana) slumbered in the full side sleeping position for almost an hour. I’d never seen a moose stretch out like that before… for a while I was afraid it had died!

(More Moose Photos:  Mike Jackson’s Resting Moose Collection of Photos.)

I know that wild life researchers avoid getting so close to animals that they affect eating habits and natural behavior. We have the opposite situation here – the moose don’t hesitate to get close to our ‘habitat’, thus affecting our behavior. In the photo above, they crossed our driveway, then bedded down about 30 ft (9 m) away from our front door.

The fourth new member of the ‘Munching Moose’ crew was Malcolm. Though Malcolm did do some munching, he was here for only one day. Apparently he achieved his objective with the female moose, then moved on to sow his wild oats in another ‘part of town’.

A rare portrait of Malcolm, Morgan and Montana (I cropped Mavis out of the photo because she was in the deep shade – but she was staying very close to her calves.)

A few days later, there was a grand Munching Moose Picnic in our west woods. Mothers Martha and Mavis  spent a few hours munching and resting while the calves, Morley, Morgan and Montana  frolicked about – dare I say  Moose-capades!

I was watching all the activity from a location about 100 ft  (30 m) away. Suddenly, one of the calves ran directly towards me. It abruptly stopped when it was about 30 ft (9 m) away from me (and the large grey thing with round rubber feet). Then, just as quickly, it ran away.

In another blink of an eye, the mother moose had arrived to check on her calf. She too came to a full stop in the same spot as the calf had been, then turned and casually walked away. This isn’t the first time we’ve observed that these moose are comfortable being near human structures but actively avoid close contact with people.

That’s not to say all moose populations are like that (or that these moose would react the same way every time). However, these moose do live in a semi-rural area that has far more people than there are moose – an area where the trade off for having food and safe places to bed down is frequent encounters with human beings. So far, so good.

Canadian Thanksgiving – Tradition Ideas

It’s Canadian Thanksgiving! Happy Eat Until you are Stuffed Day!

Does your family have any interesting Thanksgiving Traditions? How about treasured recipes that your family always serves?

Here are a few non-traditional ideas that you might want to try next year!

We stuff our Thanksgiving bird with cereal—sometimes sugary, sometimes silly, not usually healthy but one year it was Grape Nuts.
– Author Unknown –

Speaking of stuffing – how about a Rice Krispies/Marshmallow turkey with smarties stuffing for dessert!?

When I was a kid, my aunt gave every one of the cousins a little chocolate turkey as we wrapped up the evening. We all assumed it would stop when we grew up, and yet there are still around 15 tiny chocolate turkeys circulating through the house every year. We’ve taken to hiding them in each other’s bags so she doesn’t know we aren’t eating them anymore. Pretty sure one of my cousins unknowingly went home with about 8 of them in 2016.
-Author Unknown –

This would be the ultimate way to ‘baste’ a turducken! (A turducken is a deboned chicken stuffed into a deboned duck which is then stuffed into a deboned turkey).

Here is a video for a Mini Turducken wrapped in Bacon.

Start the day off on a sweet note by serving your traditional Thanksgiving pies for breakfast with coffee instead of after the big meal. That way, you won’t be too full to indulge in dessert.
– Good Housekeeping Home –

Bowling with Turkeys – Forget bowling balls and bowl with a frozen turkey this Thanksgiving using soda or water bottles as makeshift pins. This hilarious tradition started in 1988 at Lucky’s grocery shop in Newport Beach, where the bowling took place in the alleys of the store.
– Culture Trip –

There are many ways to cook carrots, but at Thanksgiving they are best if they are in a carrot cake with cream cheese icing!

Host a potluck dinner… asking everyone to bring a dish to pass can create a more diverse, exciting spread. It also lessens the load on the host.
– Good Housekeeping Home –

More about the Holiday and the Bird:

Thanksgiving and Turkey Quotations

Our Canadian Thanksgiving – 2018

Martha Moose Introduces Newest Staff Member

The ‘Munching Moose Tree and Hedge Maintenance Service’ is back on our property after taking the summer off.

Martha Moose has a new calf and she brought it (Morley) for a visit a few weeks ago.

Yesterday they were back again and ready to go to work. Morley chose a baby moose size willow bush.

When the willow had been reduced in size somewhat, Morley moved into ‘grass mower mode’.

Martha, who was following Morley’s progress, inspected the work done on the willow bush – and decided it would be best to prune it right to the ground.

Now thirsty, Morley executed a perfect ‘reverse direction and lunge procedure’ that seemed to catch Martha right off guard. Morley managed a few quick gulps before Martha let out a bellow and a sidestep that unlatched her baby. Though she is probably several months away from completely weaning Morley, it seemed like she was sending the baby a message.

To be honest, I don’t know if this adult moose is the same moose that frequented our yard last year – though the patterns of travel, bedding areas and foraging choices are identical to the moose and calf that visited our property last year.

For my other moose stories, click the ‘moose’ tag at the end of this post.

What do you call a moose with no name?
Anonymoose.

What do you call the leader of a group of moose?
Mooselini.

I tried getting on a plane with a dead moose once.
The attendant said I had to check it as luggage. I said, no it’s carrion.

Good Night, Sleep Tight…

This time last year I was counting the number of itchy bites I got each day, mostly on my legs. I was convinced I was the victim of grass mites, mosquitoes and/or ants. Then one morning  I found three bites under one arm and a cluster of ten bites on my chest. Uh oh…

Bedbugs? Did we bring bedbugs home with us when we drove from Arizona to Alberta at the end of April? Yikes!

A number of years ago a friend’s home got bedbugs and at that time the treatment was to heat the whole house to an even temperature of over 120 F for at least an hour. It was an expensive procedure.

(By now I had worked myself into a lather, as they say). I called the local bug assassin company. They sent one of their  exterminators out that afternoon. He looked carefully at everything in our bedroom. He could not find any sign of bedbugs. He explained that didn’t mean there were no bedbugs – just not enough to constitute an infestation.

If I wanted, he could spray selected surfaces in our bedroom with a product that his company was having a lot of success with. He explained how he would use it and how safe it was for humans once it had dried. We could use the room again in four hours. Oh, and the cost was a bit less than $200.

I said “Make it So!” He instructed me to strip the bed and wash the bedding in hot water. That would kill any bugs residing in our quilts, pillows etc. He told me not to bother washing anything else. Any bugs that weren’t killed in the first few hours would track us down at night and they would be killed too because the spray would keep working for many months.

The spray was a complete success – that was the end of the bites.

Good night, sleep tight
Don’t let the bedbugs bite.
But if they do, then take your shoe and
Hit them till they’re black and blue.
– Childhood Rhyme –

More About Bedbugs

Bedbugs were all but eradicated in the developed world by the 1950’s because of pest control products like DDT and chlordane – and the widespread use of vacuums and washing machines. Today, however, bedbugs are on the rise again because of increased travel and fewer chemical control products.

Adult Bed bugs are the size and color of a flat apple seed. They hide during the day in mattress crevices, box springs, baseboards, behind electrical switch plates, in picture frames, and even behind wallpaper. At night, the carbon dioxide we exhale lures them out of their hiding spots. Once a bed bug finds a host, it will usually feed for 5 to 10 minutes. Sometimes the feeding shows up as a pattern of three bites in a cluster or row. The host usually isn’t wakened by the feasting because bed bug saliva is an anaesthetic.

If you think you have bedbugs, call a professional. In my humble opinion, this isn’t a do it yourself job.

Bruce Did It

Our resident moose: Bruce

I’ve been re-reading some of my favourite books. For the past month I’ve been immersed in the wit and wisdom of Robert Fulghum.

In one of his stories he describes how his family settled on a way to discuss the normal daily shortcomings and idiosyncrasies of family members  – in a playful, respectful way.

In my Seattle household there are seven of us: five core family, a housekeeper, and a large stuffed moose …

One morning when I was raging around the kitchen over who drank the last of the milk again and didn’t go to the store for more again, in walked Myrna with the moose. “John (the moose) did it, ” she said, ‘and he’s so very sorry.’ The moose did look guilty. We laughed. John took his chastisement gracefully. Milk crisis forgotten.
– Robert Fulghum in the essay ‘My Fault’

Well, we just happen to have a resident stuffed  moose too (we named him ‘Bruce’). With only two humans in our household, shall we say we are experiencing a certain degree of ‘testiness’ caused by 13 months of a lot of two-some-ness. The idea that all of our fumblings, mumblings, faults and foibles were actually the work of Bruce the Moose  seemed like a brilliant idea.

Everybody knows they could do better, but nobody feels bad getting reminded in a secondary loony way.
– Robert Fulghum –

It has worked very well. ‘Bruce’ is silently stoic, but you can sense he is  building a database of good things to remember, such as: buy crunchy peanut butter – not smooth –  always, not almost always; if you add a lot of beans to the family diet don’t comment on the ‘noisy response’ a few hours later; don’t stack three slippery, loosely covered containers on the top shelf of the fridge.

Have you and your family developed some new coping mechanisms in the past year?

Spring at the Red House

First Robin March 21.

Canada Geese.

The yearling moose passes through our yard. Mother moose was nearby.

Found in our playground – a Toy Car has ‘resurfaced’ after many years of independent living…

All photos were modified with filters in the program Topaz Studio.

Moose – Nature at our Door

Most people never get to see a moose in the wild. In contrast, in our neighbourhood it seems like just about everyone is talking about ‘their moose’ – the sightings are that frequent!

I recently watched a video from the CBC’s series The Nature of Things called The Incredible Things I’ve Seen while Following a Moose and her Calf for a Year.

A field naturalist, Hugo Kitching, spent 13 months tracking two mother/calf moose pairs  in Jasper National Park (Alberta) so he could document the dangers to moose calves in their first year of life. These mountain moose are in decline – death rates for baby moose are high. A year tracking moose in Jasper National Park is a short story of Hugo’s experience. It gives a further glimpse into the challenges Hugo faced in finding and following these majestic mountain dwelling animals (and avoiding the animals that make a baby moose’s life so dangerous.)

As I watched the video, I kept thinking how much easier it would be to do a similar study of Alberta foothills/prairie dwelling moose. Tracking the moose in our neighbourhood, for example, would sometimes be nothing more than walking out the front door. Other days the search for the moose might take longer, but it would be on mostly flat terrain that is never more than a mile from a road… it is easy to see why The Nature of Things never did a video called “Watching Alberta Prairie Moose is like Watching Paint Dry”.

Moose (Alces alces) colonized the Parkland Region of Alberta during the 1980s and early 1990s, and later colonized the Grassland Region by the early 2000s. They are not a declining species here because there are few areas with the major predators – wolves (Canis lupus), black bears (Ursus americanus), and grizzly bears (U. arctos). Cougars (Felix con-color) are also at very low density, although the abundant coyotes are a small but possible threat. Between 2001 and 2014, the provincial moose population increased ~25% from 92,000 to 115,000. (Status and Management of Moose in the Parkland and Grasslands of Alberta .)

One thing that I learned from the video: our mama moose will drive her calf away later this spring in preparation for giving birth to her next calf! Hard to say how far the calf will go, though, since there are already two other moose loosely associated with the mother moose – possibly her calves from the previous few years… but I’m just guessing.

Mother of all moose and her almost year old calf.

Here are all the moose photos I’ve posted so far.

There are about 700,000 moose in Canada. That means there is one moose for every 54 Canadians ! Mostly moose choose to live where people don’t live, however…

To set the record straight, moose are rarely dangerous and they are vegetarians…

 

Treed – Man Vs Moose

Piecing together the story

What I saw: The neighbour up the road hired a Tree Trimmer/Remover for a job that was well beyond the capabilities of the crew at the ‘Munching Moose Tree and Hedge Maintenance Service’.  The work was such that a man, with a chain saw, climbed a tall tree and then methodically removed branches. When that was done, he would then be able to take down a ‘skinny’ tree that wouldn’t damage the surrounding shrubbery nearly as much.

He had removed most of the branches when I walked by on the road. I stopped to watch, partly because it is quite interesting to see a man confidently using a chainsaw when he is about 25 feet up in the air… and partly because one of the Munching Moose was calmly eating the branches that the man had dropped to the ground.

In turn, the man was taking pictures of the Moose on his cell phone. (This is when I wished I carried a cell phone). I headed for home as fast as my little legs could carry me. Fifteen minutes later I was back at the scene with my camera, but by then the moose was gone and the man was back at work. I took a photo of the man in the tree.

What I was told: The next day I returned to the scene. The owner of the property was out front surveying some of the other work the tree trimmer had done. I told him that I had seen the ‘Treed’ man. The owner said the moose delayed the man’s descent for a while. The man kept throwing branches down towards the moose, hoping to scare it away. The moose just kept on eating. Eventually the man got low enough down the tree and the chain saw got noisy/menacing enough that the moose moved on.

From the perspective of a moose: As I was walking home, I spotted the moose in the aspen forest across the road from our place (about 150 meters (500 feet) from me.) There were at least four of them, possibly five.

I can just imagine the story that one of them told about the adventure the day before: “I tell you, it was raining branches yesterday! They just kept falling from the sky. I ate until I could hardly move!”

Photos of this group of Munching Moose. I’m making an assumption that the four moose we usually see (either in pairs or as a group of four) are always the same moose. One is a female with last springs calf. The other two are perhaps her calves from the previous year/years.

The newcomer to this group is a bull moose with antlers. It might be a younger male, since older males usually lose their antlers by now.

Bull moose on the left

Bull moose with antlers

A moose has poor eyesight but their hearing and sense of smell are excellent.

Moose are not normally aggressive unless they are harassed or it is mating season or mothers with young calves are protecting their young.

That’s it from the land of Munching Moose for this week!

 

More Munching Moose

Two representatives of the ‘Munching Moose Tree and Hedge Maintenance Service’ were here again last week. When I pointed out to them that I really didn’t want any more pruning done, this is what they said:

“Well, we chose your yard for a free complimentary call! I’ve got a young trainee with me. Junior hasn’t got the skills of our more experienced crew, so really needs the practice.

Junior can’t reach the taller branches, so I’ve assigned him to hedge duty. He should have your willow cut down to about 3 feet before the morning is over.

While he is doing that, I’m going to work on this aspen tree over here. What’s that you say? It was pruned just a few weeks ago by our other crew? Well, they missed a few branches. Look at how lopsided it is!

See how we eat everything and never leave a twig behind for you to clean up! Well, yes ma’am, we do leave these round brown lumps on the ground, but we don’t charge you a thing for our Munching Moose Tree and Hedge fertilization program.

Doors, Ghosts Cats in Boxes

Does the cat in the middle box, top row, remind you of anyone you know?

Do you have a cat that is always looking for trouble?

For more quotes/jokes with a twist at the end, see my post called Ambused by the Best Paraprosdokians

Do you have a duvet on your bed, or do you use blankets? We have duvets here at the Red House. We use two single duvets on our bed, instead of one big one. No more waking up cold because a shared duvet has migrated to the other person’s side of the bed!

A ‘better’ duvet cover is the kind that has a set of stringy things sewn onto the inside of each corner. The easiest way to insert the duvet in this type of cover, then, is to turn the duvet cover inside out and lay it on the bed. Lay the duvet on top of the cover. Tie the duvet corner strings to the duvet. Then turn the cover right side out.

I don’t have duvet covers with those strings. I have a sewing machine, I have strings, yet it is a sewing task I’ve never got around to doing. Instead, I use the ‘almost crawl inside the cover to try to match the corners’. How does the laundry/bed maker domestic engineer in your house do this task?

I just started a new band called ‘Blankets and Duvets’
We’ve already been called the best cover band of all time.
Author Unknown