The Pilver

Been tossing around ideas in my head for the past few days about what I am going to write about from my trip last week.  I had an amazing opportunity to spend four days on Lopez Island in the San Juans.  The San Juans are a group of about 450 islands and rocks in the Pugest Sound in Washington state.  Usually when blogging about trips I write up a little post and add a few pictures each night in my hotel room.  Lopez Island’s only hotel didn’t have wifi…or cell service…or very many television channels on their minuscule tv sets.  Instead I got to look at this outside the room’s large picture window.

I could write a book about the fantastic things I saw last week.  But this is a blog, so instead I will make this a two part picture blog.  Kinda like when you had to sit through the slide show from the missionaries who would visit your church, but I won’t ask you for money.  However, if you’re offering…

I was told the islands have a much more laid back way of life.  The first parking place we pulled into proved this.

Volunteering with biologists means you are always observing the poo you come across.  This particular poo was fuzzy from the rain forest type climate, I suppose.  I wonder how many little kids try and pet it.

A major tourist must see is the whales.  We sat and looked at the water for hours over a four day period, and never saw one.  Apparently they were there last night.

This made me laugh for no good reason.

When I saw this boat, I immediately wondered where its bottle went.

When you get off the ferry boat (the only way to access the island) you are greeted by soda machines that reflect the culture.  Yup.  Granola crunching hippie Coke machines.

We’ll call that day one.  Tomorrow I will show you actual nature filled beautiful photos.

Most of my adult life had been lived in places where pets are banned.  My recent move has allowed me to make up for a lack of fur and feathers in a major way.  Let me introduce you to all the critters I share a yard with.

Popcorn

I’ve written about her.  She’s a frisky little kitten who climbs trees she cannot get out of, taunts animals she cannot beat, and prefers sleeping exactly like a human; under the covers with her head popping out as she purrs a purr that would wake the dead.

Bailey

Bailey is an old sweet dog.  She’s twelve and cannot hear a thing.  I love dogs, but I woudn’t say I am a dog person, except for Bailey.  She’s quite literally the most perfect dog I have ever met.

Lil Cock

This is the only adult rooster.  He is a fine rooster and does his job well.  If you walk towards any of the hens, he’s right there ready to peck your face off.  I am scared of him.  In reality, if he were to attack me for going after a hen I could kick him just like I did in P.E. playing kickball.  But I don’t want to kick him, he’s useful.  Sometimes, I have dreams that Lil Cock is charging at me like a bull and he’ll peck my face off.  And yes, he wakes you up in the morning.  Though he does not cocka-doodle-do.  Instead he says cocka-doo-doo as if he is spinning his reacord the same as a DJ. He’s so techno.

White Laying Hens

These ladies all look the same, naming them would be pointless.  I love them because they make me eggs every day.  And let me tell you internet posse, the difference between fresh eggs and grocery store eggs is crazy.  They have way more flavor and the yolk’s color is almost orange-red.  Yum.

Cornish Cross Chickens

I hate these fat idiots.  I also pity them.  Bred to eat like freaks, they grow at a disgusting rate and cannot walk much because they are so fat.  Have you seen Food Inc.?  These are those chickens from the film.  I will never buy them again. The largest one Max named, Fat Boy.  The others are nameless gluttons.  Gross.

Red Broilers

The common name for these chicks is great, it leaves no illusion to where they are headed (my plate).  They grow slower than the Cornish Cross, but they also can actually walk and roam about the pen.  They are amazing dancers.  They’re really getting jumpy and play-fighting each other, but I like to think it’s a well choreographed dance they have been rehearsing for months.

Bronze Turkeys

These guys are still pretty young.  We have three and one will grace the table on the most wonderful holiday of the year, Thanksgiving.  The other two will gobble around the yard until I need lunch meat.

Red Laying Hens

Yes, we have a lot of birds.  These are the newest to the family.  Our white laying hens are going to dry up at some point, so we bought five new ones that will give me brown eggs at some point.  They are so shy and haven’t warmed up to the rest of the chickens in their coop.  I hope sometime soon they learn the chicken dance.

Lupe

Lupe is my favorite chicken.  While Lil Cock is the only of his kind, he is the king of the birds so his individuality is admired.  Lupe is his daughter.  Her mother and siblings died due to a coyote choosing them as a midnight snack. (The coyote was shot and his skull will someday hang on my wall, but that’s an entirely separate blog.)  Lupe drifts around the property in a daydream state like a misunderstood, shy teenager.  Think about it, Lupe’s an only child because her mother and siblings were murdered.  Her dad is the ruler of the land who doesn’t know how to raise a daughter and he is too busy for deep father/daughter talks because he is constantly alongside his harem.  I’ve written a Haiku dedicated to my favorite bird, Lupe.

Lupe

Mother murdered, gone

Will coyote’s be your fate?

Be safe small brown bird!

Those are my animal friends who live here in the mountains with me.  Also I have countess snakes, birds, spiders, deer etc.  I didn’t choose those wild things as pets, but I’d like to think of them as such, especially these cute little muppet looking baby birds that hatched recently on my front porch:

I’m not a huge fan of Snow Patrol.  They’re fine and all.  But play this song in my presence and I will bawl for an hour.  I need to take it out of my iPod. I just cannot, yet.

I want a drink, and there’s none here.

As I have mentioned, I now live in the boonies.  It ain’t the wilderness, but you can see the wilderness from here.  This means deer are plentiful, bears are common, as well as snakes, cougars, and bobcats.  Most of the residents in the area are familiar with the wildlife, but to me it’s still a novelty.

There’s a tree on my property under which cell phone reception is always perfect.  It’s a few hundred yards from the house.  When the weather is chilly I’ll drive but if the sun is shining and the air is warm I usually walk over and stand or sit under the tree while I communicate with the world via cell.  Yesterday was be-you-tee-full, and I had a couple calls to make so I threw on some shorts and flip-flops and hiked to The Phone Tree.

I was standing under the tree for roughly fifteen minutes, chatting away when something happened that could only be properly retold with the help of the highly sophisticated computer program, MS Paint.

You can see the phone tree there in the center.  I was sipping on a cup of coffee, chatting on the phone.  Our dog Bailey and cat Popcorn had accompanied me on my walk.  Bailey is getting old and is always tired, so she was napping on the hillside (the hillside begins with the fancy brown line and is pretty steep).  Popcorn was chasing bugs around under the tree.

Sometime during the phonecall a bobcat began to stalk Popcorn.  In general, bobcats won’t attack humans, which I why I assume it was the kitten and not myself it was after.  I saw it running, for a nanosecond I thought it was the dog as it was just about the same size and completely black in color.  After that mistaken moment I realized it was a cat, and it was moving so fast.  I am going to emphisize the moment I realized it was a wild cat at this time.

THERE WAS A DOG SIZED ALL BLACK CAT RUNNING SOOOOOO FAST HEADING RIGHT FOR MY KITTEN!

The most remarkable thing to me at that moment was the speed at which the cat was moving.  It was so close to the ground as it ran and clearly trying to catch breakfast.  Now, I found out later after talking with a wildlife biologist that if a cat is running towards you the worst thing to do is run.  Whoops.  You’re supposed to stand your ground and make yourself as tall as possible and scream and yell at it to scare it off.  I did scream and yell and thankfully there were no children around to hear the foul words I was hollering at the person I was still having a conversation with on the phone.  But as I was yelling I was running, swinging my arms and spilling my lovely morning coffee all over my bare legs.

After I reached the house I remembered the kitten was still by the tree and I drove my car back to get her.  She was on a low branch of the tree clearly spooked from the encounter. Popcorn hopped onto the car, I rolled my window down and she climbed inside.

After I drove home I googled “black wild cat”  I googled “black cougar”  I googled “black bobcat” and I found what I was looking for.

A bobcat sighting is just another day here.   But bobcats are tannish in color with dark spots. What I saw was a large wild cat that was 100% black.  I found a website on the topic where I learned that the technical term for the rare animal is melanistic bobcat.  Only about a dozen of the animals have ever been captured.

So, now I have a quest.  If I don’t find this animal again and take it’s picture, or better yet trap it, I cannot prove to anyone what I saw.  The biologist I spoke with told me that every description I had of the cat pointed to the fact it was indeed a black bobcat, but I am sure in their mind they believe there is a chance I was mistaken.  Together, we went back to the site looking for tracks and found one that was the size and shape of a wild cat’s, so that helped the credibility of my story some.

And while I am certainly frightful of another meeting with the large feline, if I see it again I am determined to prove to the world that I saw a black bobcat–or at least to a few science geeks in the area.

This week at Safeway I waltzed through the single soda bottle aisle and proved Bono wrong,  I did find what I was looking for:  All three flavors in Mountain Dews’ newest marketing ploy called Dewmacracy.  This morning I’m going to jack myself up on caffeine and review them for you. 

I first grabbed the Distortion bottle. I figure it to be the closest to the original flavor.  Distortion claims to be “lime blasted”.  Folks, it’s not Mt Dew with the addition of lime, it’s LIME BLASTED!  And, I approve.  Imagine drinking a Mt Dew and alternating sips with licks from a lime juice popsicle.  The thing I have against Distortion is color.  Distortion’s lime flavored, the natural choice for the design team is to make it green.  However, even if it did win the Dewlection I’d bet the bigwigs at Pepsi-Co. would push another flavor forward.   There’s sure to be confusion with hard core Dew fans grabbing the lime enhanced bottle.   I am sure it’s happened already.

Now I’ll give Typhoon a try.  As I am about to take a sip, I am pretty certain Typhoon will be reminiscent of Tahitian Treat, it’s defined as “Punch of Tropical.”  Fruit Punch is pretty unterrific in my book.  Here we go…yuck.  The first thing my taste buds noticed is the lack of Dew. It is a flavor all its own.  That fact, in and of itself, is not what ruins Typhoon. It’s the underwhelming fruit punch flavor.  The soda is far less carbonated than the lime flavored, Distortion, though I did just open the bottle.  It tastes like liquid pineapple dum-dum lollipops. NEXT!

White Out is defined as “smooth citrus flavored.”  I’ve saved it for last, thinking it  will win me over.  Part of me wants to know how they colored the soda white, the other part of me is scared about how they colored the soda white.  The previous two have artificial colors listen on the ingredients, but White Out does not.  All three list brominated vegitable oil in their ingredient lists.  So, before I taste this, let’s go wiki “brominated vegatable oil” and see if it will grow me another ear.

OK, don’t click here if you want to not think about the detrimental effects of brominated vegetable oil.  It is listed by the FDA alongside saccharin.    My Mt Dew habit may have just been ceased in one quick search.  But, the blog must go on, and I need to take a sip of White Out before my skin turns green.

Eh, it’s not bad.  It does have a Dew taste to it.  I think they used half regular Mountain Dew flavors and half 7-up to create this beverage.  It’s a gentler Dew.  I just don’t believe that the extreme attitude associated with Mt Dew is going to carry on with the wimpy version.  It’s Nursery School Dew.

Now, having all the knowledge I need to make a decision, I feel similar reservations as I did in the previous presidential election.  My favorite was clearly Distortion.  I hoped for a new color Dew.  Color is an important factor in sodas that will not last longer than a year on the shelves.  Remember Pitch Black Dew?  Can I vote dohopoki one more time?