|
|
|
woodchuck tunnel
Thursday, July 6 2023
location: 800 feet west of Woodworth Lake, Fulton County, NY
It was mostly sunny today with temperatures in the low 80s, which is hotter than it's been at the cabin. Late in the afternoon, another thunderstorm blew through, but it was of shorter duration than what had happened yesterday.
[REDACTED]
Then I went under the east deck from the south and continued digging out a wide, shallow trench along the east foundation wall. This time, I'd remembered to put on gloves first so as not to form new blisters on my hand. As I was digging, I found a large tunnel some creature had excavated. It was at about four inches in diameter and reached further into the ground than I could reach with my arm, suggesting a largish mammal like a woodchuck had made it. All of the sand through which that tunnel passes will have to be dug away, so whoever made that tunnel should find some other place to dig his or her tunnels. One further thought: if that tunnel was made by a woodchuck, that is uncomfortably close to our cabin's small garden patch.
After digging for less than a half hour, I was drenched in sweat. So I grabbed a Guinness and walked down to the lake and then climbed aboard the big inner tube (the one with cup holders) and launched out into the water. Today there was a very gentle current (or breeze) carrying me southeastward, the opposite direction from the currents or winds that have carried me in the recent past. Pyotr and his family were visible across the lake at the boat house, though it wasn't clear what they were up to. For nearly everyone else at the lake, riding around in fancy four-wheel-drive ATVs is an important part of what they come to the lake to do, and that is definitely the case with Pyotr and family as well. (My only use case for such a vehicle would be to rapidly get down to the lake and back and to gather resources like firewood or stone. But I wouldn't want to do it in a vehicle that made any noise.)
I didn't stay out on the water even long enough to drink a third of my beer, and the only wildlife of note was a single duck who flew overhead from east to west. After I got out of the water, I thought I needed to wash off more of my sweaty body than had touched water while I as in the tube. So I descended the swimming ladder until water was up to my neck. This was easy to do, as the water didn't seem cold at all.
In other news, Gretchen sent me a message today saying she had just spoken to my brother Don down in Virginia, and his news was that Maple the dog had just died. She hadn't been eating and would no longer go for walks, so Don had said she looked to be "dying" earlier in the week. Evidently he was correct in this assessment.
A bluegill guarding his nest on the lake bottom just north of the dock today.
A bolete mushroom near the dock abutment. Click to enlarge.
Mystery mushroom in the woods near the dock. Click to enlarge.
Some sort of small toad.
For linking purposes this article's URL is:
http://asecular.com/blog.php?230706 feedback
previous | next |
