Giddy up horsie!

There has been so much going on lately I dunno where to start!

Lets start with the most recent and
then I will feel free to just jump around all over the place...

Let's start with today... Monday. You may remember the great unsuccessful Moose Hunt of 2008. Well, today the dogs and I went up to L'Anse. Halfway between the highway turn off and L'Anse is Alberta. Alberta was home to a Ford Motor Company sawmill /company village. You see back in the day Mr. Ford built several sawmills up here because he used the wood in his newfangled automobiles. To support those mills he built villages around these mills because he thought his workers should live in a certain way with certain rules and this way he could assist them in employment and in living a proper life... not to mention making himself a decent profit out of the whole scheme.

Anyhoo... I rounded a corner on the highway and I noticed a horse down by the road. I thought. to myself.... oh bummer, someone's horse got out.

But then I thought... wait a minute..

Dis here is da U.P.
Dere ain'no horses up here!
Dose Finn's use 'em in da pasty meat, dontcha know.
Ooooo ya.

Then the beast lifted its head and looked at us.
"That's no horse!" I told the dogs. "It's the MOOSE!"

I stopped the truck in the road and Cosmo the Magnificent immediatly transformed into Atomic Dog and very much like an atom he began bouncing off the walls, windows, and ceilings in every direction barking as went.

**BING BONG BANG BOOM YIP YIP YIP**

Morris heard the racket and looked calmly at us chewing the grass he had just pulled up. Delta leaned her head down quietly and snuck up on the window transfixed on young Morris. I am not sure what exactly either of them thought they were going to do. I was more worried about the truck! Morris would have punted Coz back to the Redwood Forest had he gone out there.

Well, I was stopped and the driver in the truck coming the opposite direction had stopped... and the three of us sat looking at each other. I was not sure what to do because I have heard of Moosies going after vehicles in a fit of rage and or lust... and even though Morris appeared to be a young fellow it IS technically spring time even though it snowed again two days ago... and I was driving a very attractive new Ford pickup.

So there we were, in a stand off. Just sitting there on the highway. Eventually other vehicles were going to show up... so... I inched forward and Morris decided to wander back into the trees.

I WIN! I WIN!

Well... not really... I am sure Morris just had better things to do
than to stand around and gawk at the humans all morning.

Since we are talking of vehicles... look at this. The Infinity had served it's purpose and served it very well... but here is the new ride.

You just might see a camper on that thing one day who knows?! We are so close to the east coast, and who knows what time may bring as far as travel and business opportunities so we have been eyeballing the New England states for some cool camping ideas just in case we are taken off in another direction.

Next:

David has been a busy beaver. I don't think he has really ever taken much of a break from house and or yard construction. Here is just one of the latest projects. I think this adds a wonderful addition to this property... it is a dock.

Now there has always been a boat launching area that is kind of a dirt path down into the lake. You can not really see it from this photo because it is further towards the right (west). However, getting boats down there requires a lot of atv traffic in the yard and that has been creating a bit of a wash down by the marshy shore. Also, technically that boat launch is on the lot next door.... that is our lot but still... we would like to try to keep the lots independent.... maybe. Anyway, we would like to get some grass growing back in that area around that dirt launch and for several reasons we decided a nice dock would be a great addition.

As you can see the area down by the shore is tufty marsh grass dirt clumps with water in between. Some of those tufts are solid all the way down and others are not. You see we found that back in the day... like in the 50's or even earlier... people used to take their GLASS and cans and garbage type stuff and ... well... just dump it in the water. Out of sight out of mind I guess. I suppose it is that whole peeing in the pool mind set. However, when the glass breaks and is then hidden by years of mud and grass it makes for unsafe situations. Frankly, it is also just kinda creepy.

So David pulled as much glass and garbage back out out as he could easily get to... found some interesting old bottles by the way... and then built "floating" platforms from solid ground clump to solid ground clump. We are adding stepping stones in between.

Those platforms follow a naturally formed "marsh tuft line" out to the dock section in the water. It looks great and makes that little center pond area a neat visual feature... you can see it better from this view taken off the deck of the house.

Delta loves to jump off the last dock end to swim after sticks.

We also finally finished the railing on the deck. We had left it open as the view from inside the house was so wonderful but new that eventually it had to be finished off. We looked into some railing types that did not block view and decided we liked the wire railing. So... David built one and we love it. You do not even notice it from inside and I feel a little better about Cosmo the Magnificent walking around out there.

Speaking of Cosmo the Magnificent.
Oh dear.

We had a bit of trauma the other day. We had just come home from somewhere and he and Delta were running all around the front yard all excited. He went into the house and the next thing I know I hear David calling me into the house. When I went inside there was Cosmo dripping blood out of his mouth down the front of his legs with one of his wild wildebeest teeth sticking straighter out of his mouth... hanging halfway in and out of his gum. Oh boy. He had smashed his mouth on something and one of his nasty teeth was going to have to come out.

Oh man I was getting a bit traumatized... poor little boy...
we needed to help him but dang I was fresh out of nitrous oxide. Er.. umm... I mean I did not have any kind of pain killer available for him and he was just staring at me,
smacking his lips over his bloody tooth. We knew what we had to do...

So David got some pliers and
I tried to control my crying as it was stressing Cosmo out...
and David got a hold of the offending bicuspid
and yanked.



Both David and I hollered... Cosmo was fine. He acted like nothing happened.
Stopped bleeding, ate his lunch and that was the end of it.

Here is his little tooth below.
The left part to that dark line was the part normally sticking out of his little gum.
The larger end was inside his gum.



No wonder he is grouchy.

Here is the after picture. His teeth look much better now... umm.. don't they?



Can you hear the jaws music?