Goodbye to the Animal We've Had the Longest

Phil headed out to work on the building when he noticed a pile of feathers. Guinea feathers.

The guinea nested in a tree about 15' off the ground, with no lower branches. Apparently the raccoon was willing to climb. We bought that little guy as a keet back in October '09, and he has survived long after the other six keets died. He was the last animal left from '09. I didn't necessarily love feeding him, but he was loud and funny looking, ate ticks, and had a magnificent wingspan when he flew overhead.

It's a bit odd to think that a bird has out-survived cats, a dog, goats, and sheep.

Phil had a frustrating day. After so much smooth sailing with framing, he finally had a day where everything went wrong. The brothers were playing among the joists that were waiting to go into place, and knocked them over, pinching fingers. In a Keystone Kop moment, Phil described it to me later: "Abraham's fingers were pinched, so Joe came over to help. Abraham got his fingers out, but then Joe's were stuck. I was up on the scaffolding and couldn't get down quickly, so I yelled to pull the fingers out. He couldn't or wouldn't, so then Abraham helped and got his fingers stuck again. And Joe's got stuck again, too."

No real harm done, the brothers left for other activities. Then the first board of the center beam that Phil had just put up fell off to the south. It didn't fall all the way to the floor, but it did warp the tube metal of the scaffolding.

He put it back up into place. Unbelievably, it then fell off to the north, and took the center column down with it!

I came down a bit later to check on progress. I didn't notice anything broken or really out of place, and that rascal board was up in place. But that was the only progress after several hours of work.

In the afternoon, Phil managed to get the entire west wall of bituthene started and finished. That was excellent progress, but the overall feeling of the day was simply a bit discouraging for him.

I spent several hours cleaning out the kitchen drawers. I was walking Belle back downslope yesterday and a little mouse went hopping down the driveway ahead of me. Neither dogs nor cat was anywhere around, and it hopped towards the propane tanks outside the motor home. I can guess it was going to join its family inside, as I opened several drawers today to find mouse droppings all over. So disgusting!