I made meat on a stick for dinner ( well chicken) . DH has minutes to get home.

HC was on my TV - I like her because she sounds like a rational being. Still a tad to careful for my taste - but rational. Wouldn't that be nice

Alibelle, you could stay with us and goats for a bit.

Let's hope it works out.

I'm going to become an expert at papering shelves.

HA! Or I won't paper these. We'll just wipe 'em down but good. There's a big dining room for family type meals!

Yeah, it's all open range out here. So there's plenty of grazers, sometimes more than there ought to be. But in New Mexico when that happened, we just bought half of the beef, and so we got our trees back, ha! That'll show you, cattle.

Yesterday I saw an elk. A really big one. Well, I dunno, it was my first encounter that close, so I dunno if it was big compared to other elk. But it was big compared to me.

I live way way out in the country, but I am not allowed to have goats. I traded my ability to have goats for my ability to have piped water and a septic system. I think it was probably the right call.

Liese, when I live up at the observatory near Cloudcroft, there was much hilarity when our wee black cat, Thimble, was loping through the tall grass and came nose-to-nose with a...COW. She moved so damned fast back to the house! We'd thought she'd never move faster until she met an elk on the lawn. Ever see a cat lose her tiny feline mind in utter panic? Yeah, it was awesome.

All elk look hy-uge to me, having had to brake for them on the road. I quail at the thought of meeting a moose.

Get used to the 'coons. Lock up your trash. I think your new place is at a slightly lower elevation zone but those guys are persistent and clever!

Yeah, we were just talking about that. We have coons here and we were speculating we still would. The difference is significant in elevation and terrain, but there's still plenty for them to thrive. It's about a thousand feet difference - 7000 to 6010, and ponderosa pines to juniper/pinon.

Also, hee, about the cat. The Biscuit believes he can herd the cattle to where they should be. The cattle believe otherwise. I dunno how it'll be at the new place as far as that goes, but we had quite a regular herd in NM.

I live way way out in the country, but I am not allowed to have goats. I traded my ability to have goats for my ability to have piped water and a septic system. I think it was probably the right call.

It was a good call. But in LA, you can have goats & piped water and a septic system. Who knew?

I'm not sure if we'll have raccoons, but we will have coyotes and rattle snakes.

Cage match!

Liese, I don't know what your trash pickup is like, but what they did at the observatory (9000 ft) was weighted lids on metal cans (which ultimately was kinda pointless cause the damned critters figured out the lever) with extra heavy chains that latched to the lids with a catch that required more strength than raccoons have with their wee fingers.

And even then, they got lucky sometimes. But not sure how much was drunk astronomers&co not securing the latches (um, the parties were legendary) and how much was 'coon cleverness.

I wish I could make the drunken spaghetti carbonera that they used to have at those parties. It was AWESOME.