The Last Straw/Corpse

Alright, that does it.  Enough “surprises”.  After several mice in various states of disrepair, a bunch of live but tail-less lizards, a not-quite-dead gopher this morning and a most definitely dead and disemboweled mouse, gopher or rodent of some sort tonight… that’s it.  I’ve had enough.  No more pet door, guys — no more free in-and-out access.  Perhaps you’ll eventually deplete whatever remains in the fenced-in area but you’ll have to do it with controlled access from me.

Oh, you want back in?  Not with that lizard you’re carrying, Pan.

Hera, what’s that under your paw?  No, the other paw.  No, your *other* other paw!

Perhaps after many months like this (not being able to bring prey inside) they’ll lose this habit – or at least drive off all the prey.

They seem to enjoy the access to the roof though – I installed a pet door in the upstairs bathroom window instead. And there’s an upstairs patio area off of the master bedroom where I’ve put in some potted plants and grasses for them.

DSC_1969 DSC_1975

The One That Got Away (Almost)

Waking up early this morning, prepping to go ride Wilder with MBOSC, I wonder “where’s Pan?” as it’s odd for him not to be curled up with me in bed.  So I go downstairs and find him easily enough:

It appears he’s been terrorizing another tiny little field mouse all morning (or night).  From his body language, purr and greeting to me, it’s clear in his mind he’s “playing” with a toy.  “Look what I got!”  I doubt the mouse sees it that way.

Do you really have to bring them inside though, Pan?!  Some days he brings in one lizard after another and I keep tossing them out back, scolding him while I do it.  The amusing thing is that Pan gets all pissy with me and talks back – clearly upset that I don’t appreciate all his effort spent to bring them home.

Well, it turned out to be easy enough to lure this little guy into a shoebox and toss him to safety — after showing Pan what I was doing.  Get the idea, Pan?  NOT in the house!

 

Follow-up: The very next morning I awoke to the sound of kitty excitement in my bedroom. It would seem that *somebody* recaptured that little guy and brought him/her to my bedroom (argh!) and which point Hera took over to make a meal of him. Lovely. Leaving entrails when they were both done. Wonderful.

Unless the mice and lizards learn not to venture into the fenced area, I don’t think my current “open pet door policy” is going to last. Although I will say Pan seemed at least a little concerned over what my reaction was going to be when I first realized what was going on. Or, more likely, he was just expecting praise.

Ew, gross.

Came home today to find the remains of a mouse in the living room.  (Just head and entrails, how nice.) Yesterday I had to chase Pan out several times once again with the live lizards he’d brought in to play with.

I may have to rethink their free access to the pet door if I can’t break them of this.  Or maybe move it to the upstairs for the roof/balcony where they can’t catch anything.

Update: Just a day later, I hear Pan come in with something through the pet door in the evening. Yep, a little mouse, still alive of course.  This got Hera’s attention quick and as they proceeded to chase it along the wall I went to get a box or towel or *something* to retrieve it and toss it back outside.

Only… by the time I came round with something, it was gone.  No sign.  And Hera sitting there licking her chops. Swallowed whole, apparently.  (Thankfully.)

Actually, that’s not entirely true.  I did find a tiny bit of something on the floor to clean up.  A millimeter or two in size but I wasn’t going to examine it too closely to identify it.

Blech.

It’s the power of the sun, baby!

Saturday was my first day of making over 60 kWh of sunny power in a single day!  Yay!

With my average daily consumption down in the 20’s of kWhs (at least before the heat pump went in), PG&E is clearly going to be paying me!  And that’s using all this free electricity to heat the house (heat pump = no propane!) and to charge my Nissan LEAF (electric car = no gas!)  Sweet.

It’s tough to know what my consumption is any more because a) PG&E doesn’t provide daily usage data once you switch to a time-of-use meter (lame) and b) it would only read net usage (after solar production) so I still wouldn’t know.  Yeah, SunPower does offer a consumption monitoring hookup but I’m still trying to find out through my installer how much they would charge and I guess there’s some question about whether it can handle both my main and sub-panel.

All I do know is that I’m making more than I use.  Double-sweet.

Spoiler Fence

While trying to set up this shot with my cats framing the coyote, I failed to also catch the deer behind the coyote.  It just walked out of the frame to the left by the time I got this shot.  It’s a wildlife party!
Next time I’ll try to catch the deer behind the coyote in front of a gopher as a hawk dives for it — all framed by Pan and Hera, of course.

Hera Panic Attack

*&%!#@!  I’ve just been freakin’ mauled!  By Hera.  She just sliced up my face, around my eye, down my nose.

She was laying next to me on the next chair and watching an episode of Castle with me on the big screen. I had been streaming it from my iPad and it had just ended and I started fiddling around with it in AirPlay mode (everything on the iPad is mirrored up on the big screen).  So I happened to call up some old photos and videos and started playing one of Pan from a year or more ago.  It’s sort of a first person, low angle video where I was getting him to hunt towards the camera.  So Hera apparently looked up to see a FIVE FOOT TALL image of Pan looking down with wide, hunting-mode eyes looking into the camera and then he lunges for the camera…

Well, this causes Hera to leap up next to me in a mad panic and climb directly up and over me to escape and run away, cutting open my face in the process and leaving me shocked and bloody.  Luckily she missed my eyes. I’ve got cuts across my eyelid and under my eye, a small cut near my ear and a long gash down my nose. So now I’m propped up in bed waiting for my wounds to clot up a bit after rinsing them out.  I guess I’m going to have to bandage it up to avoid getting blood on my pillow in the night.  These wounds are going to look great for days….

Geez Louise,  Hera!!!

Here’s the offending ten seconds of video that I think freaked Hera out.  I don’t suggest projecting it up on a wall, larger than life, if your own kitties are nearby: