For a few days I was seeing new animals on our street every day! Turns out there are two cats that frequent the yard and I only realized this since I saw them both at the same time the other day. They are both tabby. But one makes it very clear it wants to be IN THE HOUSE whereas the other is real scarce.
I also stepped out of the house once and looked down to see a VERY large TOAD peeking out of a drainpipe! I think a Texas toad. I took picture of the pipe and I could hear it splashing around inside but I guess it hid so far back you can’t see it in my picture.
We’ve also encountered several snack-size toads around the yard.
On the grassy side next to the road I saw a good-sized turtle which looked like it had recently been in water as it had a bunch of that little green stuff you see in marshes. Not sure what kind. It was hiding inside itself but I could see yellow accents do I’d say a friendly kind. Also spotted a black vulture eating a dead animal.
Rob has seen our neighbor riding his horses a few times, and somehow I have NEVER seen him! I am annoyed I keep missing them.
Also normally see the lone guinea hen. We learned there used to be a bunch of them but apparently down to one, which seems like a metaphor for this little road in general- could be the road’s last gasp before it gets built up like everywhere else. Other interesting observations about this hen is that she NEVER roams past like 50 yards from the sign that says “Guinea Hen” — as if she is tethered to it! And just today, Rob heard her screeching an alarm call, which spurred many questions including but not limited to: What was causing the alarm call- Rob’s intimidating jogging stride or something else? And who is the hen trying to protect? We listened to guineafowl calls on-line and interestingly Rob identified this as a female because the male’s alarm call is distinctly different (I infer that Rob is very good at bird-call-identification).
We had an evening out to Wimberly, about an hour’s drive from here, to attend our landlord’s birthday party which was quite nice and we met some of her friends. It’s kind of in “hill country” with what seemed to be ranch-like estates in the area. Not sure what the draw is out there as the hills are fine but not necessarily unique from what I could see. Some scrub and stuff although in less wet years I gather it would not be so lush.
I stole the image of Austin Craft Beers from the facebook group of fans so now we are keeping track of how many breweries’ beers we’ve tasted. We’re off to a good start.
Meanwhile, did I mention that the internet service provider, Spectrum, is having serious problems getting the service setup properly here? Confusion about who’s house is A or B or Main House or whatever. So basically about every 2 weeks either our internet is shut off or our landlord’s, then we have to get on the phone with Spectrum for 1.5 hours to resolve it but they just ping pong it back and forth. So frustrating.
We had to share some other unfortunate news with our landlord when we were attempting to maintain the hot tub yesterday by pouring in chemicals and turning on the jets, and we stepped away to let it gurgle for awhile and when we stepped back we found most of the water had leaked out of the side! Coming out of a place water shouldn’t be able to (it seems to have a leak) so looks like no hot tub for awhile. We won’t miss it as we hadn’t intended to use it anyhow.
I’m putting all the pics at the end as getting them into this blogging platform (squarespace) is a huge pain so chunking them like this is easiest for me. I have more pics of the pigs but I think you’ve gotten the idea by now. Leftover corn cobs are a new favorite I’ve discovered. We also see a lot of Freckles and I sometimes play wiffle ball with her. However, she does jump up constantly which causes large scratches and she also seems to be suffering from some kind of bug infestation so she is scratching herself a lot and it seems irritating for her.
