Wednesday, April 30, 2008

More on Cardinals

I did a little reading about Cardinals since we hope to witness the hatching of a cardinal egg!
The pair is monogomous, and they live in the area all year long i.e. not migratory. And, the male is very protective of his territory. Males have been known to fly into windows in attack-mode thinking its reflection was another male.


It takes a female cardinal to build her nest about 3 - 9 days in dense trees/bushes with twigs. It took this cardinal 7 days.

Cardinals will lay 1 - 5 eggs, typically 3 eggs, and won't start incubating them until the last egg is laid. So maybe we are in for more eggs! They have multiple broods a year between March and September, sometimes beginning the next brood before the last brood has left the nest.

Once she starts incubating the eggs, they should hatch between 11-13 days. Both parents will feed the chicks a diet of insects (ew!!) and will continue to feed them for 1 -2 months even though the chicks will begin to leave the nest between 9 or 10 days after hatching. Does that sound like college life, anyone?

Tuesday, April 29, 2008

An egg in the nest!!!


I checked yesterday afternoon if the female cardinal who's made a nest in our rhododendren has laid an egg yet or if we scared her off. It turns out we didn't scare her off because today, there's an egg!!!!! I hope we don't scare her off now!

Click on the image to enlarge it and you'll see the blue egg in the middle!

Monday, April 28, 2008

Autocross season has started

I've been meaning to post earlier about this, but I haven't been inspired. Apparently, I've needed a "creative" outlet lately, and blogging's been it, as you can tell from the number of posts I've entered the last few days.

Anyway, autocross season started on April 6th. This year, we're driving a Miata in a class called STS2 instead of the STi (in A-Stock) or any other car for that matter. Steve and his buddy, Mike, put in a fair number of hours at the end of last season and during this past off season modifying the suspension, flushing the radiator, replacing the clutch, etc. Impressively, not one screw was leftover, either. ;-) Steve really seems to enjoy wrenching on the car, and that's neat to see him get into a new hobby.

The next update to the car will be to replace the top since it's currently being held together by clear packing tape (which really does keep the water out!) and zip ties. That won't happen until we host a Chesapeake Roadsters wrench day at our house in early June. Then we'll start talking about power modifications to the engine - a header, an intake, an exhaust, etc.

But first, we have to fix the nuts behind the wheel. And we'd like to know how much the nuts need help vs how much the car is actually holding us back. That means we need to have an autocross where it doesn't rain!!!

Our April 6th practice event was spitting almost the entire time we were there. The April 20th Championship #1 event included everything from no rain (but wet pavement) to rain accompanied by tornado winds (a tornado apparently touched down in our zip code). We need a couple of dry events to learn how to drive a rear wheel no power (as compared to the STi) car.

The April 6th event had its own issues, mostly timing related, but Workers had a ridiculous inbalance that although managable, it was painful. The rain scared off people, too, which also compounded the worker imbalance problem. But most of the equipment was relatively dry by the time we packed the bus, and everyone got all their runs in.

The April 20th event, on the other hand, was unlike any event in which I've participated. I've helped with a Subaru Challenge in a hurricane, but this event didn't even compare. In the morning, we had lightening delay the event an hour and the rain made the course slower so we didn't finish the morning heats until 1pm. The afternoon heats started at 2, and I wasn't staying for the afternoon.

I got ready to leave and just when I was driving off the lot, I see that the Gate workers were holding on to the tent with their lives. Of course my rain gear is 3/4s of the way back to Baltimore in the STi, so I get insta-soaked when I get out to help take the tent down. In the severe wind, the tent snapped a couple parts, and I'm sure all of the forms were soaked. Once Gate was brought under control, I left for home, soaked all the way through. I needed to turn on the A/C for 10 minutes before my windows defogged. Ew.

It turns out the tornado was touching down right then in the zip code, little did we know at the time. Other tents were getting caught in the winds, and we luckily didn't lose any electronic equipment. Timing couldn't keep up with the false starts and then, lightening flashed again. Bring in the workers. Wait another half hour. The Safety Steward saw another flash and that restarted the 30 minute clock. Our chairman got a call from someone who lives in the area to let us know that nastier storms were coming our way that included hail. As if the event weren't safe with the lightening already, now we have hail coming. Fabulous. The Committee decided to cancel the afternoon run groups.

Cancelling the runs for the afternoon run groups created a lot of hate and discontent but it was the right decision. So now we're dealing with a change to how we're calculating the Season Standings and issuing refunds which is an administrative nightmare, but the right thing to do.

We have another event this coming weekend - and of course the forecast is calling for rain again. I'll be keeping my rain gear in MY car this time...

Sunday, April 27, 2008

A bird's nest!

Outside of our bay window in the front, a cardinal has decided to build her nest in our rhododendren. And lucky for us, the nest is nestled towards the back of the bush close to our bay window! The nest's location couldn't be any more ideal; the leaves of the branches above will protect her (and we hope, her young!) from the elements and apparently, from human eyes as we can't tell if there are eggs in the nest yet or not. We can't see the bottom of the nest!

It took her about a week to build it, and we're hoping that our normal activity doesn't scare her away. She dropped by today while we were in the living room, so we know she hasn't abandoned it yet....

Saturday, April 26, 2008

Update to the "doggies-adventure" post

I left the house to go pick up dinner when our neighbor, Mary, flagged me down.

It turns out - to my horror and immense amusement - the doggies, yes, our two little screwballs called Italian Greyhounds, actually CAUGHT that squirrel this morning.

My neighbor didn't witness it; her daughter did, so I'll have to get the gory details from her. But from what Mary knows, they cornered the squirrel and once it was dead, they paraded around the yard with it in their mouths. Their carrying it around explains why the squirrel's fur was matted. Earlier today I'd thought that maybe the squirrel had been dead since last night, and the dew matted its fur. Yeah, no, not the case. The matted fur was due to the doggies' slobber. Apparently, they were SUPER proud of themselves.

They did this between 9 and 10 this morning so by the time I got to it, rigor mortis had set in. It also explains why they were SO quiet and not bugging us to let them in for so long this morning as well.... they were busy patroling and, apparently, succeeding and then having a victory parade, too.

We've known that it would just be a matter of time before they caught something. What we didn't know is A) what they would do if they did catch something and B) if they killed it, what would they do then?

To answer A: apparently, they will kill it. We think that in this case, because the squirrel looked pretty intact, they caught it and shook it really hard.

To answer B: apparently, they will parade around the yard with it, victory lap style, and then bring it to us as a present! Look Mommy and Daddy! Look at what we did!!

Well, at least the questions are now answered...

A doggies-squirrel adventure

This hasn't been the best week for our cars. The STi got rear ended and the Miata got hit while parked. I took the STi for an estimate yesterday afternoon, and I took the Miata to the same place for another estimate this morning while DJ was napping.

DJ woke up before I got home, so Daddy was on duty. When I got home, I found a VERY thankful Steve that I was home. Usually Steve is calm cool and collected when it comes to babysitting DJ, so then I took a look around at the situation.

DJ was on one side of the gate (in the living room) happily playing with his toys. Steve and the doggies, on the other hand, were on the other side of the gate, with paper towels on the floor. And then Steve said, "The big dog threw up. And go look at what's outside on the deck!"

Uh-oh.

"What I don't know is if they killed it or if it was already dead and they just brought it back."

Oh fabulous.

Sure enough, a dead squirrel was JUST outside our deck storm door. FABULOUS. Guaranteed our little "retriever" dog, Napoleon, brought that home, whether he killed it or not. The assumption here is that IO threw up on the kitchen floor (thankfully it's tile for easy clean up!) because he "ate" squirrel. However, he's also been fond of eating baby grass which is also known for making dogs vomit. And he's done that at least once a week for the last 3 weeks.

"So which do you want, Baby Duty or Squirrel Cleanup?" asks Steve.

I look at both dogs, who are looking at me expectantly to let them into the living room. That's when I look at Napoleon a little more carefully and realize that he's been rolling in something, too.

"I got Squirrel Cleanup," I concede.

Step 1. Clean up floor in kitchen. After I get the major mess off the floor, I pull out the disinfectant wipes and wipe the areas, too.

Step 2. Clean up the squirrel. Steve asks, "What do we do with it? Put it out back on the other side of the fence?" "Or it would go in the trash...." I said. Good thing we're car nuts because we keep latex gloves around a lot for working on the cars. I got myself a pair of gloves, 3 plastic grocery bags, and out to the deck I go. I'm not even going to describe the squirrel except to say that it looked "intact" i.e. no dog actually ate any of it, thankfully.

I steel myself.... and reach down to pick it up. For as many birds that would hit my parents' big picture front windows and break their necks, I never actually disposed of any of them. So here is my first incident, and..... yeah, it was stiff. That tells us the dogs didn't kill it, at least.

We wouldn't have been surprised if the dogs had killed it because they were mere INCHES from catching a very stupid squirrel on Thursday afternoon. The squirrel didn't think that the dogs were a threat. It ran, but not for a tree, and then realized it was in trouble. It was lucky that it had the fence to jump up on and that the dogs didn't expect it to do that because that was the only reason it got away.

So the squirrel went into the plastic bags, tied very tightly, in multiple layers, and then tossed into our trash bag which immediately went out to the trash cans that go to the curb.

Step 3. (thought I was done? ha!) Give both dogs a bath. Thank goodness for treats because those dogs will follow me anywhere with treats in hand. Napoleon got a bath first, then IO. Both dogs are very put off by this, despite the treats dolled at the end of the baths! Currently, they are still corralled in the kitchen, but I think the outcasts will be reunited with the family momentarily. ;-)