Paradise ponders, cont'd...

Paradise ponders, cont'd...  So just a little while ago I was walking from our shed to our house, talking with my mom on the phone, when I spotted this little thing at right.  It's either a duckling or a gosling; from the size alone I'm going to say gosling (he stands about 8" high).  I searched around but couldn't find any more babies, nor could I see (or hear) any parental units that might be missing a baby.  Next thing I know this little guy heads for our back yard – where Race and Miki waited for him, slavering with anticipation.  That did it for me: I scooped the little feller up and called Debbie for some help.  We got him in a box with a towel and some water, and contemplated what we should do next.

Debbie had the brilliant idea of calling Michelle H., who we knew had a bunch of animal-loving kids, and who had a lot of bird care experience (she and her family have raised chickens, ducks, geese, and emus).  She eagerly accepted our offer of a duckling, and headed over to our place to pick it up.  When she arrived, we were standing at our doorway talking when Michelle drew in her breath and said “Look!  Two more!”  I ran out and captured them, and then we all undertook a thorough search.  I found a fourth one in our canal, just north of our property line.  That one took some doing to capture, and he was squawking like mad when I finally got him.  If there were any parental units around, that racket would have brought them running.  These four (and hopefully no more) were orphaned somehow.  Michelle took them all, and told us she was going to put them in with the emu eggs they're currently incubating – and then tell her kids these are baby emus.  She wants to see how long it will take them to figure it out :)

I neglected to mention earlier that we had gone to Jack's yesterday afternoon.  As usual, we had wonderful meal – fire-roasted tomato soup (wonderful stuff, that is!) and I had a “Cache” pizza (at right; roasted chicken, mushrooms, lots of mozzarella, spinach, onions, and a lovely white sauce.  Afterwards we went up to Aggie's creamery and had a decadent ice cream cone.  Stuffed, we went for a drive up Logan Canyon, taking the first right to explore something new for us.  We saw no wildlife other than a brief glimpse of an American Dipper, but I did see bazillions of plants that look like they're going to be wildflowers.  Several hillsides we drove by were quite densely covered.  I'll be out there again in a couple of weeks to check that out!

Before I got on the phone with my mom, I completed the next step in the heating system: installing the wooden tube and it's yoke on the second floor.  In the first photo you can see it in the hole, where it nestled perfectly in the mounting plate installed below it.  In the second photo you can see the yoke I built around it, so that I could nail it to the floor while covering that 1/2" gap I'd cut.  I used the nail gun (the yellow-and-black tool in the second photo) to do all the nailing.  This is the first non-trivial nailing that I've done with it.  The 2" nails I used to hold the yoke to the floor were effortless to drive, and wonderfully accurate.  There was the additional benefit of not hitting my thumb with a hammer :)  I used 1" nails driven at an angle to attach the tube to the yoke, and that also went very easily.  I think I'm gonna get attached to my nail gun!

Early this morning I went to Lowe's to pick up a few supplies for this part of the heating system construction.  While I was loading my truck with the stuff I'd bought, I noticed a big, healthy-looking black Labrador Retriever running around the parking lot, whining as if in distress.  He looked like he was searching for something; his owner, I imagined.  I called to him and he came right over to me, let me hold him by the collar.  He had a tag with his name (“Buddy”) and a telephone number, so I called it – but it was disconnected.  Dang!  So I walked inside the store (I was the only customer at that hour) and hailed the first employee I saw, a young woman.  I told her what had happened, and she went into action immediately – grabbed a rope to tie him up with and told me all the steps she was going to take.  First call would be to the shelter, where they'd have him checked for a microchip.  If that didn't work, the shelter would put him up while they searched for the owner.  Lowe's would put up a sign.  All of this was part of their new employee training, the woman told me.  Kudos to Lowe's – that's a really wonderful way to handle this sort of problem, and even better to train all their employees to do so.  I left feeling pretty good about Buddy's prospects...