River Wharfe, a river of death and blood!

Today I returned to field duty for the first time since my arrival back in the UK.
(pic not related, ha ha ha)
I was only doing my water chemistry sampling, the actual crayfish come later in the week, but the 'water run' is fun because I get to see my whole stretch of the river in one day. There was a very large flood event recently, so I was eager to see if there was anything interesting left by the high waters. I was not disappointed. At my second site, there was, up in a tree, about 5 feet above the current water level, a dead sheep.

an entire, adult, dead sheep. amusingly, there were live sheep in the field just behind it, so at first I thought it was just grazing at an odd angle.

otherwise it was an uneventful trip, except for the bloody handprint on the farm gate. and something else really cool I can't remember. too bad.

Fire in the Sky

Actually in next door's front yard.

The house next to us used to be a battered woman's shelter, but then one of the women was shot in the backyard, and they closed the shelter. that was over 4 years ago. It appears that everything was left as is. The backyard has random kids' shoes, a pet carrier, a kids chair, some other old junk. the house itself is boarded up. Anyway, recently someone bought the place and is now starting to...fix it up?

so far this has consisted of some non-English speaking, possibly-illegal workers hurling stuff from the top story window into the front yard, where there is constant fire during the day. Poor Carl was getting ash stuck to him, so tonight he got a nice wash. Plus he wanted to show off how cool he looks even if he is old, to the new car of the other rifle club driver. silly car. anyway, I hope they finish with clearing the place out soon, I'm eager to see the place look tidy. It already looks 51% better!

I'm thinking of getting some marshmallows to roast over the fire. i think its safe, mostly what they are burning is an old dead tree. yay fire!

Crow Bag

What the world needs now is not love, sweet love, apparently, but crow bags. Supply is extremely low. Demand, it would seem, is anything but. Almost a year ago, my mom made this awesome crow purse for me. Technically, crows have black bills, but nonetheless it is MY CROW BAG. Almost everytime I encounter someone new, and they see the crow bag, they make some comment. Its so cute. Its so amazing. Its so unique. Its so lovely. And it is, all of those things. It fits everything I need inside. It has nifty wing-shaped pockets. It has a zipper. It has handles. It has a friendly smile. It can even hold unusually-long things due to the triangle beak!

In short, everyone loves the crow bag. But would they actually like to have a crow bag? I'm not sure. Maybe they like it the same way they like my crayfish hat:which I do not, by the way, take out in public, unlike the crow bag. Still, I think there is a market for crow and perhaps other similarly shaped bird bags. Collect the whole set!

That was my december! those were my snow covered dreams!

Wow, where did December go? Well, the first half went into crayfish experiments. Forty replicates. yessirree. The second half went home, or rather I did. At home I had lots of fun visiting the relatives,

looking at excessive Christmas light displays,

hauling and decorating our weirdo tree (it looks like it wants to eat us),

and drinking 47 pound rooster.

you know, what everyone does at Christmastime.

I also played the new Zelda game, alot, because it was so grate. THE ONE WHERE YOU CAN SHAPESHIFT INTO A WOLF AND RIDE A HORSE. Unfortunately I didn't have time to finish it before I returned to England. That just means next time I come home I can play EVEN MORE.

But now I'm back in the UK, taking care of business, like renewing my flat contract, putting up window insulator sheet stuff, rearranging my furniture (desk -> heater), dogsitting, feeding the crows, and petting my crayfish.

How many cookies are too many? 3.9 billion are too many.

I wasn't about let poor november go with only one blog post, so lonely. And its kinda misleading because many interesting events transpired. I had thanksgiving dinner with an assortment of friends and dogs. including two genuine americans. but everyone is happy to eat delicious food, right? DogS because I dogsat for my friends 2 dogs, and it happened to fall on thanksgiving. Drool all around! We had all the usual stuff except we all forgot the cranberry sauce! Audrey came to stay for a week before heading off to far-flung reaches of Europe. We did lots of joyous activities like watching X-files, wandering around, craft!, putting up christmas decorations, watching more x-files, and making about 3.9 billion gingerbread cookies. I still have about 15.65 cookies left, I got sick of them mid-cookie so there's a good 2/3 of it still. There was alot going on in crayfish world too, I went and gathered lots of crays for my behavior experiments. Now the river is flooded, it is massive! I didn't take any picture tho, as it was dark. it gets dark at 4:30pm. It makes me SAD. well, not REALLY s.a.d. just sad. darkness can be beautiful though.

photo from backyard, that's the tree the squirrel uses.

Pie had a great month, because Audrey came and stayed for a whole week, then her dog friends Amber and Crocus came and spent the night, and people came over for thanksgiving and touched her. She also got a new 'nest' bed, which she is totally into (literally). If she had a bumper sticker it would say I Heart my Nest Bed.

Speaking of bumper stickers, no one here has any! or, they are extremely rare. extremely. so, I have decided to put lots of them on my car! please send me your ideas! So far I have one that says 'my other car is my feet' and I plan to get one that says 'horray for cyclists' which i will position in the cyclist-reading-friendly area of Carl, the rear left.

Big excitement in slug-world! All the eggs Takumi layed (after eating his partner) have hatched. There are at least 13 tiny baby slugs now. so cute. so gross.

one last note, on BBC radio 4 this morning they had a story about voice-recognition technology. They had a program that could pronounce whatever you asked it to, in someone else's voice. They used a phrase like: "I believe that humans and fish can live together in peace"and used George Bush's voice. It was amazing. It really sounded like GW felt that fish and humans could live in peace. the world loves an optimist.

fin

Happy Spider has all his legs!

I finally got a photo of my bathroom pet, the spider. He looks hungry for pill bugs! unlike the other spider I found when I moved in, this one has all his legs. I named him but have since forgotten the name.


Today I went for a nice stroll and found some horses! What a lovely horse. The pie enjoyed eating their dung. disgusting.


I ended up near the Meanwood Valley Urban Farm, so I went in and looked at the chickens. There are about 200 hens, and no roosters. They used to have roosters, but they would guard the door (top left in photo) so some chickens had to stay inside, and others couldn't get in. And they fought and any blood is bad blood since its open to the public.


Tasha's favorites were the rabbits.


One of the rabbits looked like David Bowie (from movie Labyrinth). I think Tasha is still dreaming of him. and his little, delicious friends.

Visiting a crime scene

Today I went for a walk on the canal path only to find it blocked by police! I thought - body in the canal - obviously, but couldn't see anything. Here's the article:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/west_yorkshire/7077995.stm

One point seems wrong, I doubt the body was found "on Cockshott Lane" (yes that's its real name folks!) because:
1. its a fairly busy road, the body probably would have been found before 10:30 assuming death occurred saturday night, and c'mon, who gets murdered on Sunday morning? all the troublemakers are still in bed...
and
2. I walked along the road, and found no police, the police were surrounding an area further down the canal.

so MAYBE he was pushed off the road bridge INTO the canal, where he slowly, slowly floated downstream overnight! Only to be found by some poor old man walking his dog no doubt! WAH!

In other canal path news, an elderly man was pushed into the canal by some boys, and later helped out by a "Canadian man" believed to be a Leeds Uni employee..........hmmmmm the canal savior identity remains unknown.