Saturday's Critters

We had a warm spell, and now we're back to 'normal' November temperatures. Our leaves are down. 

Coyote

 

The deermice are powering up for winter! They are happy the feeder is out.

   

 I moved frogs, again. I have to take a video in order to remember my counts! 

🐸 2024 total =  88

Oct. 30 – warm day, moved 19 + 6 + 7 = 32

Oct. 31 – warm day, moved 5, nearly caught Jeremiah! Tried again, caught him.

Nov. 1 – last warm day; 10 + 8 + 9 = 29.

It's only 1 ℃ this morning. 

 

It's been 3 days of temperatures between 15 and 24 and Jeremiah finally woke up. I snagged him and took him down to the frog pond.

Jeremiah is actually the third bullfrog I've had in the pond. We had Jeremiah 1, who was a female, renamed Geraldine, and she had a smaller male move in. Geraldine and Jeremiah both succumbed to the freeze/thaw from climate change in the goldfish pond. It was gruesome. 

Geraldine – Sept. 1, 2013

 

It was an epic few days.

 

Barred owl was in the owl tree on my last trip to the wetland to dump another pail of frogs.

 

For more critters visit  Saturday's Critters # 568, where Eileen hosts.

Critter reports and spring - sort of...

Mother Nature, fickle she be. Only a few days ago the sun was shining. The frog pond is half thawed.

Annabelle and I did some work on the goldfish pond before the Monday snow.  Can you see her? She's quite camouflaged! The goldfish pond is also about half melted, but it doesn't look good.

Rest easy, Geraldine.

 About 6 goldfish and several frogs are frozen in the ice.  Geraldine floated up dead, as well. I'm so sad. I've removed 3 goldfish, and three frogs, more are frozen in the large chunk of ice. It stinks to high heaven, I tell ya! It's not a deep pond, 2 - 3', 6' long.

Our bullfrog turned up in 2012, when we thought 'she' was a 'he', and Jesse named her Jeremiah! I weighed her, and she was 469 grams! They reproduced in the frog pond down below.







Daisy is happy with the grass appearing from beneath the snow.


Annabelle likes the flower box, with the fake poinsettias, but she was thrilled with the tree house.

I uncovered the fountain.
Buster wanted to be king of the castle!
Can you see him on the top?

Daisy found a mouse. Annabelle kept getting closer and closer to the action. She's still not a full-fledged member of the tribe. No mice were harmed in the activities. It got away. Typical!

Daisy (middle) found a mouse, but earned the interest of her sisters.

 

Isabelle, Sady, Geraldine

Another full day. Hubby went off to dispatch Meals on Wheels on Tuesday. I hunkered down with cats. After MoW, he went off to buy some more of his supplements, pick up a couple of books for me, and killed a pizza for my dinner. (He can't eat them anymore!) What a man!

Isabelle, Jesse

My antibiotics are gone, and I hope the sinusitis doesn't come back. I had a lovely little Skype session with Isabelle, who has the runny nose and was home, for the second day, with her cold. She, like me, rubbed her eye with a hand she'd blown her nose with and needed some eye meds. (Even Buster seems to have a sore eye.)
She was wearing her gold polka dot wedding skirt (right), with an orange Darth Vader t-shirt. Seriously! She's the fashionista and trend-setter.

<= Here she is with her Uncle Jesse at his wedding last May.
She is a trooper. We had a fine visit at Thanksgiving. She was asking me to come downstairs and colour with her in her large colouring book. Of course, I did. She has a pen mark on her cheek.

Isabelle at Thanksgiving

Poor Sadie has a terrible cold, too. She is wheezing and sneezing. Poor thing. She doesn't seem to have affected the other cats, as she pretty much only likes hubby. Full stop.


Sadie's flowers from Jennifer Jilks on Vimeo.
My daughter brought me a lovely Thanksgiving bouquet to our dinner. They seem to have become Sadie's flowers! Normally, you'd expect the older cats would be role models. Sadie's picked up all the bad habits of her younger siblings.

These photos were taken with the videocam, at the same time I was filming. It needs a bit more light than I had. Hubby cannot get enough photos of cats, he always read by blog posts, so here we are.


Outside, it was a beautiful afternoon. Dorah and I fed the Blue jays. I refilled the goldfish pond and cleaned out the bird bath. (No helpers for that!).

Geraldine resurfaced. Jerry hasn't been around. He might have gone down to the frog pond. Notice the leopard frog on the edge of the pot! I hope she is too full to eat it. She looks quite content to veg.

Come play with me, says Daisy cat!

Daisy Geraldine from Jennifer Jilks on Vimeo.
Daisy wanted to play with Geraldine. Gerry didn't want any part of this plan.

Fall chores: bringing in goldfish

Geraldine in her flower pot

Every year I bring in some of our goldfish. This was a good day for homework as we both have a touch of flu!

I bring in the biggest fishies, as well as a few of the younger, to ensure that I have a nice population in subsequent years. When I put the indoor fish outdoors in the spring, I counted a total of 36 fish. They seemed to make whoopee over the winter, under the ice on the pond.

This year, I brought in about a dozen, with about 16 remaining in the pond. All of those outdoors are about 3" or so, or less. The challenge is to catch them. The kids caught 3 for their tank in the city.

Once I'd caught two, a large and a small, the other fish caught on to getting caught up, and hid in the deep, under the cement bricks which are meant for protection! This means I must drain the pond, and remove the bricks, in order to capture them. It's not so bad. I have refilled the pond all summer, despite the mouse holes, using the rain barrel.

Shirley 2

Anticipating rain all day today (Saturday), as well as last night, and enjoying a lovely sunny day Friday, it was a perfect day to do the chore. A cold front is moving in today!

The cats popped in, checking out my progress. The first step is to drain the pond, using the black hose. You can see how Daisy was holding the hose for me! Both girls came by to examine the receding water!

SC #44

Geraldine and Jerry weren't really happy with the project. It takes much work for Geraldine to get up into the pot (see the video below) when the water is low! She gave up and went into my flowers. I captured Jerry and popped him into the flowers, too. He was just too agitated. Geraldine doesn't worry about me too much. I weighed them in the summer and she wasn't too upset. Jerry was and is still quite skittish. (Out of curiosity, I weighed them both!)

The fish will take some time to get used to the indoor 60 gallon tank. Some of the big ones are 5 or 6" long. Shirley 2 has had babies, as I can see some with the white and orange colours she used to have! Shirley 1 I bought from Big Al's, for $10 and it was a good buy. She was an older fish, and quite healthy. Not all are, as they are often used for food for other fish.

Goldfish are indoors, Geraldine jumps

Goldfish from Jennifer Jilks on Vimeo.
Every year I bring in some goldfish as the pond freezes over, on the top.

Geraldine, however, is on her own!

Geraldine's challenge from Jennifer Jilks on Vimeo.
Geraldine's challenge is to get up into her flower pot. She gave up, as I was draining the pond to reach the goldfish. It's filling up, again, with the rain barrel! Reduce, reuse, recycle!

Jeremiah was a bullfrog

Geraldine and Jeremiah bullfrogs from Jennifer Jilks on Vimeo.
Geraldine and Jeremiah bullfrog in my goldfish pond. With 3 dozen goldfish, they seem to eat the leopard frogs. He is a new addition. She's been hanging out in our pond for 2 years, leaving only in spring to go down to the frog pond, a vernal pool, to mate.

Geraldine has a boyfriend

Gerry and Jerry!

We were in the house, with the screen door open, and I distinctly heard a bullfrog croak. Twice.  Now, the females don't, and we know Geraldine (formerly known as Jeremiah) is a female. You can tell by the size of the ear drum, which is a lot larger in males. Outside I went. Sure enough, we now have a Jeremiah.

This morning they are sitting side by each.

The honeymoon is over, though, as Geraldine sits in one end of the pond and Jeremiah the other!

I caught him, wanting to see him up close. 

As I watched the day before, he went after a leopard frog, the little cannibal. The leopard frog made it onto a log. (Surely, I can write a poem or a song with all this?!) It's a frog eat frog world out there!


Geraldine spends her days in the garden, waiting for bugs and leopard frogs, who haunt the dewy grasses. With our cooler nights (15C. last night) she spends the night in the pond, the days in the garden.

Geraldine

The goldfish pond

It is August, and lots of critters!

July 23rd I spotted it

July 29th - same Milkweed plant

The good news: Monarch caterpillar in the vegetable garden is still there and has tripled in size.
Now, most people grow veggies in a veggie garden. I do have rhubarb and 3rd year asparagus, but mostly daisies and twitch grass, as well as several carefully watched Milkweed plants.

The next good news: Geraldine has appeared again. I guess her nights of getting lucky are over. There

are three males in the frog pond, down beside the meadow, but she gets fed up with them and comes back up here to the goldfish pond mid-summer. There is still water down below, but the males tend to be aggressive, so they say.

Big and little leopards!

I'll have to grab her and measure her again. She sits in the middle of the plant pot. Last year she was huge, and doesn't seem to have gone on any sort of a nutritional plan! At this size they eat anything that moves. Last year, I spotted her gobble up a wee leopard frog.

Goldfish pond is hopping!

Geraldine - Queen of the goldfish pond

Things are growing everywhere.
Daisy and Dorah came with me to check on the status of the Monarch caterpillar down in the meadow, but we saw no sign of it. We did see lots of other critters. Including tree frogs on the milkweed! There were two tiny ones.

Echinacea

Back up in the front and back gardens: bugs and blooms...

Despite the lily beetles!

 

another beetle

Monster caterpillar
on the Bine 

Then, up on the back deck, I lifted the chair pad to sit down. You really have to watch them. The gray tree frogs (yes they turn colour to green, too) get into the BBQ, as well. This was a tree frog who showed no interest in eating my wasps.

All day it sat on this chair. I moved it twice!