POINTY SIDE DOWN

CHETICAMP RIVER

SICK TREES HUDDLING BY THE MOUNTAIN

In my last blog I wrote some nice things about hornets and bumble bees. Live and let live was my theme. I wrote this with the knowledge that nature has a way of testing us and not long after my supporting-hornets blog the animal kingdom sent me some messages.

​For example, we were at the North Sydney Mall when what did I spy with my little eyes? The check engine light was on and so was the anti-skidding light. Plus, my cruise control stopped working and the indicator light on the stick shift for Drive was off. 

CHETICAMP RIVER CREATURE

However, I had to take the truck in for its warranty servicing anyway. Plus, after two days the problem went away and hasn’t returned as of this present blog writing exercise.

In Port Hawkesbury I drove my truck into the area where you park your vehicle before it’s taken into the garage. When I jumped out of my truck, a woman who was eating her lunch inside her car shouted out the window, “There’s a little animal running around underneath your truck.” It was a mouse. Now homeless.

SALMON POOL'S TRAIL

They hooked my truck up to a computer and told me they couldn’t find any problem. They thought an animal might have chewed on a wire or two.

Now my truck is stuffed full of Bounce sheets. It smells glorious.

​Is it working? Not sure.

HIKING BUDDY AND ME AT SALMON POOLS TRAIL CABIN

A few days ago I saw a squirrel run under and then jump up into the underside of my truck. Later that day I walked to my truck and a chipmunk came out from under my truck. Not the squirrel. Where was he?

APPROACH TO CABIN

And guess what I was doing on Tuesday and Friday? I was covering the bottom of some hardwood trees with wire. Why? Because the beavers have moved in. They have built a dam almost all the way across the main Middle River’s channel and have also built a smaller dam behind our woodshed. No threat yet of a flood, but the beavers are chewing down our trees.

I phoned the Ministry of Resources. The woman who answered gave me a phone number to call and told me she had a squirrel under her floor and didn’t know how to get it out. What did she do, I wonder? Did she test nature in some way?

SALMON POOL'S TRAIL

Anyway, we had the Ministry of Natural Resources fella out our way. He gave us some tips. Told me to put sheet metal, about five feet high, around the tree. I can also use chicken wire, although it’s not as good.

NATURE'S PULPIT

Of course, I heard that five feet high doesn’t do it when the snow starts to fly. Five feet high becomes no feet high around here. Another person told me they hibernate so maybe that won’t be a problem.

EGYPT FALLS

I can also hire a trapper. He charges one hundred dollars per deceased beaver.

​Are you getting the point? Do you see how by giving the hornets great press I opened myself up to the universe’s testing. Because, only days after I posted the hornets’ blog I was being tempted to hire a trapper to kill the beavers? 

SUN REFLECTING FROM THE BRANCHES

So, guess what I’m doing? I’m daily checking our trees for gnawing marks. Chicken wire, staple gun and snippers near-by. 

​And by the way, getting my staple gun to work was another possible proof of how this universe works for me.
​

ENJOYING EGYPT FALLS WITH A CUP OF TEA

How did I get the staple gun working? Well, I kept frigging around with it until it worked. Put the wrong staples in. Put the right staples in, but in the wrong place. Put the correct staples in, but upside down and finally put the correct staples in what I considered to be the right side up-side. Click, clicked a few times for each procedure and finally at the end of the last insertion of staples and still with no staples shooting out, I attempted a true and tried method. I tested a universal law.

ALMOST AT EGYPT FALLS

TWO HIKING BUDDIES AND ME AT EGYPT FALLS

I took the staple gun and put it on top of some pages of a manuscript that I DID NOT WANT STAPLED TOGETHER! I placed the staple gun with pointy staples facing downwards, just like before and then pressed. Sure enough the gun worked and my manuscript was severely stapled together. 

​It seems to be the way my life works.

MAGIC IN EVERYTHING

“For the truth is a terrible thing. You dabble your foot in it and it is nothing. But you walk a little farther and you feel it pull you like an undertow or a whirlpool. First there is a slow pull so steady and gradual you scarcely notice it, then the acceleration, then the dizzy whirl and plunge into darkness. For there is a blackness of truth, too. They say it is a terrible thing to fall into the Grace of God. I am prepared to believe that.”
              Robert Penn Warren, All the King’s Men 

NORTHERN CLOUD LIGHTS