Happy Birthday Shawn!

Feelin' Groovy!!

These two found Shawn's mom's stash of yarn and embroidery floss and decided it was time to add some bling to their normal 1972 attire. Pompom earrings, pompom rings, macrame belt, a leather fringe tassel bag, a yarn boa, and Peace.

They were HOT!

Clearly they missed their calling on the runways of NY and Paris as only the population of Northeast Thailand was subjected to these twelve year old trend setters. And today you'll find these two wearing....pretty much the same stuff they were wearing in 1972, minus the pompom earrings. They'd probably wear the pompom earrings if they could figure out a way to stop them from bouncing off their faces as they walked....

Happy Birthday Shawn, You Trendsetter!

So what became of the fox?

Inquiring minds...

No, the handlers didn't eat the fox, and nor did they serve it to us. The point of collecting a road kill fox was to gain more experience skinning prior to the next winter's slaughtering.

Huge time sink though because Male Handler doesn't like to rush things. Given that he had a couple of cold weekends, he started on the fleshing. He kept the mask, suggesting that when it's all done and cured, Female Handler can wear it into town on her head. "This sort of head wear will become all the rage," he said.

Uh huh.

Anyway, here is a picture of what it looked like just before it was rolled up and put in the freezer for storage until April/May when he can finish it up and smoke it. There's quite a lot of interesting things in their freezer.

There is currently a white plastic bag stuck in the mask, hence...the white eyes

Spring

Keika still has dubs on the sunspots.

"What did you think of the storm?"

The big question around these parts is "what did you think of the storm?"

It was a doozy. I did venture out a couple of times over the 4 day period (Thursday to Tuesday), but the horizontal driving rain coming from the south (Antarctica) was BRUTAL. Most of the time I just crossed my paws and held it. I hate holding it...

A summary of the events:
- an extratropical cyclone hit Uruguay last weekend.
- preliminary estimates indicate that at least 30,000 sheep (mostly ewes and lambs) perished in the floods. Given that there are 8 million sheep in Uruguay (3.4 million people, by the way), that's not a big dent, but what a way to die. They had been shorn just a week or two earlier so no protection from the cold and the little lambs couldn't deal with the rising fast moving water.
- the Uruguayan National Directorate of Meteorology, the "leading institution in climatological matters," has been on strike for 6 months now (demanding better pay and improved working conditions. Uruguayans typically HATE to go out in the rain...). But no biggie that Uruguay wasn't reporting, as the farmers use MetSul out of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil anyway (as do surfers and tourism operators). MetSul was reporting that this was going to be a doozy. For reasons not yet clear, the farmers didn't heed the warnings. Apparently after the skies cleared this week and the damage assessed, President "Pepe" gave the farmers a dressing down for failing to learn from climate trends and past experiences of weather vagaries, and not making adequate contingency plans. We had heeded. The goats were on higher pastures but unfortunately no way to stop the blinding cold rain. Adequate food for milkings had been collected in advance thanks to Male Handler. Nights were tough on goats but they seemed to understand that it was a temporary situation outside of the Handlers control.
- we got 150mm of rain in the rain gauge (thank you mini-male handler),  not counting for the horizontal flow.
- the iron hardware holding up the gate to the orchard gave way, and the heavy gate fell down.
- the power went out several times but never for more than a couple of hours.
- the farm is fortunate to be situated at the top of a hill (yes, it does have a whole house surge protector) so no flooding.

According to the calendar, it is spring. I'm thinking someone forgot to inform Old Man Winter as we had frost on the ground on the first day of Spring.

Tomorrow is another day.