Smoke and Critters

The Ontario wildfires are doing a number on the northeastern section of the North American continent.

In the province itself, homes are engulfed and destroyed in minutes. Evacuations continue, but the province is running out of places to put people who have lost everything. Fire fighters are doing their damnedest, but many of the fires are raging out of control.

On Tuesday, Alter Ego's cover artist Jo-Anna posted a picture from her house. A sulfur-yellow cloud engulfed her neighborhood. You could barely see the house across the street in the weird haze. She lives in a small town roughly halfway between Detroit and Toronto, well out of the path of the actual fires.

Unfortunately, the jet stream is dragging the smoke from Western Ontario to the Atlantic.

Yesterday, gray smoke enveloped my current residence. We live about an hour south of  Toledo, Ohio. The air quality index ("AQI") was 276. The dogs want to dally, but if the smoke badly affects my eyes and sinuses, I can only imagine what it's doing to my precious puppies.

Today isn't better. The AQI was 287 when I checked my phone. The dogs still want to dwaddle outside, but there's a chemical scent to the smoke that concerns me.

Hell, even our solar panels are only generating half of what they should be on a July day. 

The sad part is there was a time when the U.S. would have sent crews up to Ontario to assist our Canadian siblings, just like they and Mexico would send additional fire fighters to assist with our own blazing countrysides.

Now, the rule in D.C. is every person for himself. Now, everyone suffers.

But we got a little lesson and some hope last night.

As I reported, Jane Doe Jr. had a baby. And the new fawn on the block thinks my flower beds are an all-you-eat buffet. But the queen doe of our yard's fluffle also likes munching on the flower bed. The deer and the rabbit ate side-by-side for a few minutes while Jane Doe Jr. watched from the other side of the wire fence running along the back of our lot.

Then the pair decided to play tag. DH tried to get shots of them, but this was the clearest. The gray mass near the fawn's butt in the queen rabbit's butt. The pair played in our yard for a quite while before the fawn trotted off with her mother.

For the first time ever, DH has named the backyard wildlife. The new fawn is now Bambi. The queen bunny is now Thumper.

And if Bambi and Thumper can eat a meal and play together, they rest of us can, too.

Ke Kaumaha

My heart aches.

DH and I had to postpone our honeymoon because he was going through chemotherapy the year we were married. So, in 1996, we decided to have a spectacular trip to Hawaii to celebrate not just our wedding, but his survival.

We spent the first week on O'ahu and the second on Maui.

We fell in love with Maui. We stayed at a hotel just outside of the historic town of Lahaina. The town, the people, and the food were all so amazing.

And I can't say anymore without crying.

Because the town is literally gone.

A wildfire spurred by drought and the winds of Hurricane Dora swept through Lahaina late Tuesday and Wednesday. By Thursday morning, the town was a pile of ash and debris.

If you wish to help, I suggest the Maui Strong Fund.

This is a situation where thoughts and prayers aren't enough.

One Last Critter Pic

The night after the visit from the raccoons, this lady showed up on our patio. With all the smoke this spring and summer, we haven't been able to keep up on weeding the flower beds or the patio. Like DH said, we couldn't get mad at her for nibbling on the weeds we hadn't pulled.

Thankfully, we started getting rain the night after Nibbles took care of some weeds.

Critter Twilight

Two adolescent raccoons appeared outside of our kitchen window while I was making dinner during last week's smoke-a-thon. They are the age when their mother would be teaching them to forage, but we didn't see any hint of Mom.

One of the pair dug in our yard for worms, grubs, and seeds. His sibling huddled beneath the neighbor's tree just a few feet from the property line.

You normally don't see raccoons this early in the evening. But like I said on Monday, the smoke created an extended twilight which is bringing out critters far earlier than their normal wont.

More Smoke

Last week, more smoke from the Canadian wildfires drifted into Ohio. It caused an odd twilight for the first couple of hours after dawn and the last couple of hours before sunset. As a result, critters that are normally dusk or nocturnal foragers were coming out far earlier than normal.

Jane Doe was eating clover back by the fire pit several evenings in a row. Even odder, she was by herself when she came to nibble on the blooming white flowers. I don't know if her fawn was hidden back in the brush by the property line. I hope they are somewhere safe.

Smoke

Even though I packed up the last of the Kickstarter backer boxes yesterday afternoon, I didn't make it to the post office today. We've been inundated with smoke and haze from the wildfires in Ontario and Michigan's Upper Peninsula. It's been bad enough the State of Ohio downgraded its air quality alert to "Unhealthy" for everyone, which remains in affect until midnight on Friday.

My eyes have been itching and my nose stuffed up since GK and I took the Grandpuppy to his follow-up vet appointment yesterday morning. Nor did it get better when I made my post office run, got gas before the price jump, and bought a frame for a print I selected for Youngest Niece's birthday. Even though the last two days were supposed to be clear and sunny, the picture of haze during the Australian wildfires above gives you an idea of what's going on in Northwest Ohio right now. I may have to pull my pandemic masks back out if this continues.

The effects actually started with Saturday night's Strawberry Moon. When I took Princess Bella out for her last constitutional, the full moon actually had the hue of it's namesake.

So, I'm staying inside inside to work today. And keeping my fingers crossed that we get the rain we're supposed to on Sunday.

The Thursday Blues

Yes, I know it's Friday. I'm venting about all the shit that happened yesterday. I was doing pretty good. I managed to haul my ass out of bed by ten a.m. to write the last five chapters of the Alter Ego novel that must be uploaded today. Not a problem, right?

 

I managed to get one sprint done before the waste started hitting the spinning turbine.

 

- DH needed to vent to me about one of his employees.
 

- My eye doctor's office called and rescheduled my appointment for the 5th time in 2020.

- My pharmacy has a new computer system. Instead of calling me when all my refills are ready. Instead, the automated system was calling me as each prescription was ready. I have 10 effing maintenance drugs I'm on.
 

- Our meal delivery service had a software glitch and sent us meals we did not order instead of the ones we did order.
 

- A publishing service provider sent a series of e-mails in need of validation of their choices, which is totally weird  because they can usually read my mind.
 

- The army decided NOT to stream GK's graduation online.
 

- GK first called because he was stressed about getting his dress blues ready for graduation.
 

- GK then called exhausted and angry because he had been up half the night getting his dress blues shaved and steamed for graduation, and he was then told they would be wearing their standard uniforms.

- Blogger has a new upgrade that I'm struggling to figure out how to do things. It's so confusing I had to resort to the old version in order to write this freakin' post. (And I can see why my friend Angie gave up on using this f***ing thing!)

 

-  And to finish the day, DH was going to stop at Steak N Shake to pick up dinner after he was done at the high school (he runs the clock for all the soccer teams) since I was having a rough day. Steak N Shake closed earl.y

To top everything off, I feel guilty bitching about my minor problems when friends and acquaintances in the Pacific Northwest are evacuating from the massive wildfires or are on standby to evacuate if the wind shifts. They don't need my hopes and prayers. They need a miracle snow storm to douse the flames like some friends in Colorado.

Now? For me?

Now, I'm going to read a friend's vampire novel I promised to read back in April. And then I'm going to have some fun with Harri and Aisha by seeing what kind of hot water I can dump them into this weekend.

I'm so ready for some football...