A few general updates...and the greatly anticipated Wildlife Update!

 First of all, general updates:

Dishwasher and disposal are installed and operational!  All plumbing and electrical working smoothly.  I have run the dishwasher twice, and all seems to be working just great!  

Now Bryan has to rebuild the cupboard and drawer.  Then I can do more unpacking!

Speaking of unpacking, another load of spent cardboard went to the recycle place this week.  

Parts are here to fix the John Deere.  But SOMEBODY has been at work the past couple days, so he won't get it fixed until HIS weekends (Monday/Tuesday for now).  It's so nice that he's working!  Takes the edge off our worries!

No rototilling yet.  Too wet.  On Tuesday night 5/21, there was the crazy continuous thunderstorm, and it rained buckets...and buckets.....and buckets.  It didn't let up for maybe 3 hours or so.  

I went to the first Farmer's Market of the season on Wednesday 5/22.  It's like 3 blocks from our house.  (I of course didn't know that and I drove there with my GPS, because I still get lost frequently).  It was fun.  There were Mennonites there, and their stuff was amazing and beautiful.  Baked goods and hanging flower baskets.  There were only 5-6 booths there, but everyone told me that the whole lot would be filled as summer came.  It was fun.  I introduced myself and asked a lot of questions.  Looks like a booth is free to have.  You bring your own tables, tents, etc.  They expect you to provide 60% produce, and the rest can be crafts and such.  They also ask that you donate any leftovers not sold to the food bank.  Easy enough!  Hope I can raise something to sell there!

And now for the Wildlife Update!

We have seen a wide variety of animals here in the Northwoods so far.  

While we were signing on the house, the former owner was telling us about the wolf problem.  It's basically the same situation as in Colorado.  The city folk voted to introduce wolves, and the rural folk said there were already too many!  Apparently you are not allowed to kill the wolves here or you can go to jail and pay a hefty fine.  However, if you do end up killing one (like when one is getting your livestock/chickens/etc.) you can have it DNA tested.  If the test comes out with any domestic dog in it (and most of them do!) then you are let off the hook.  What happened here too, is that the wolves got so prolific, that they were causing alarming drops in the deer population.  So they had a wolf hunting season, but they didn't expect to record too many wolves killed.  But! Apparently every license issued produced a dead wolf.  I guess they didn't believe the people living out here that there was a problem.  Anyway, I didn't look any of this up.  It's just the land owner guy that told us about the whole situation.  Later when I have time, I will see how much of that is true.    

Anyway to make a long story even longer....on the day we went after the rototiller, a wolf crossed the road in front of us.  It was semi dark, so I didn't get a picture, but he wasn't all that impressive.  Looked like an oversized black coyote.  Pretty skinny and mangy.  

We have seen plenty of deer here and there.  Always some on the road where ever we go.  They are smaller than Colorado's mule deer.  We think they are white tail, but we have not seen the retreating end of any to discern that for sure.   

On the first night we were here, when we dropped the truck and trailer at the hotel, we thought we would hurry and get a bite to eat at the A&W quickly before it closed (as you recall, we got here at like 9:30pm).  We hopped into the car and headed out for the restaurant a few blocks way.  And right when we got to the edge of the old town, a deer ran out in front of me.  Downtown Phillips.  Great!  But that's not anything new for us.  We had the "town deer" in Kremmling that came to our house all the time.       

Had a couple cross the road and pass through our property.  

This is pretty early in the morning, looking from our bay window to the south and east of our place, just barely onto the neighbor's yard.  We just hope the deer don't decide to dine on our vegetables when our garden gets going.    

I had a silver fox run out in front of me when I was coming home from my interview at Barry Weymiller.  

We have plenty of gray squirrels.  They like our pine trees.  

Robins of course, redwing black birds for sure.  Turkeys everywhere, hanging out in groups of twos and threes, always by the road.  Spreading their tail feathers and gobbling (which means "Lookit Me! Lookit Me!") 

Couple of stork-looking birds I have yet to identify.  

Lots of Canada geese.  

But the best sighting of all.....Bryan was messing with the blasted John Deere.  He was laying in the grass looking under the mower deck.  He needed a tool, so he rolled over to get up, and came face to face with a giant FROG!  Scared the living Be-Jesus out of Bryan, but he had the where-with-all to snap a picture of our amphibian friend.  That frog was about the size of a Burger King Whopper.  

The picture is a little blurry, but considering the near heart attack Bry had, it's a pretty good one.  I believe we are viewing the back of the animal, though I can't be sure!  I would hate to see Bryan hit one of those with the mower.  Yuck. 

Other than that, not much else is showing up yet.  Can't wait to go fishing!  

Please share and comment!  And thanks for reading!