Fire aftermath

I see the predictable mudslides have begun:

http://www.cnn.com/2003/WEATHER/12/2...des/index.html

After several days of drizzle, we finally got some real hard rain last
night. My newly-cleared ditch in the back yard ran the deepest yet this
season. I plan to hike up to the burned-over hills nearby later today to
see how the local trails held up.

Big Bear resorts report 3-4 inches of fresh and natural, but they still
don't have their best terrain open.

Richard Henry wrote:

I see the predictable mudslides have begun:

http://www.cnn.com/2003/WEATHER/12/2...des/index.html

After several days of drizzle, we finally got some real hard rain last
night. My newly-cleared ditch in the back yard ran the deepest yet this
season. I plan to hike up to the burned-over hills nearby later today to
see how the local trails held up.

Big Bear resorts report 3-4 inches of fresh and natural, but they still
don't have their best terrain open.

They are, however, charging holiday prices. 3-4 inches, making new
snow, and they still have the same old 12-24 inches they had last week.
Maybe they ought to quantify actual coverage -- some number of cubic
feet, or square feet of trail covered by at least a foot and a half of
snow...

--
Cheers, Bev
================================================== =====================
"Windows Freedom Day: a holiday that moves each year, the date of which
is calculated by adding up the total amount of time a typical person
must spend restarting windows and then determining how many work weeks
that would correspond to." -- Trygve Lode

"The Real Bev" wrote in message
...
Richard Henry wrote:

I see the predictable mudslides have begun:

http://www.cnn.com/2003/WEATHER/12/2...des/index.html

After several days of drizzle, we finally got some real hard rain last
night. My newly-cleared ditch in the back yard ran the deepest yet this
season. I plan to hike up to the burned-over hills nearby later today
to
see how the local trails held up.

Big Bear resorts report 3-4 inches of fresh and natural, but they still
don't have their best terrain open.

They are, however, charging holiday prices. 3-4 inches, making new
snow, and they still have the same old 12-24 inches they had last week.
Maybe they ought to quantify actual coverage -- some number of cubic
feet, or square feet of trail covered by at least a foot and a half of
snow...

I'm surprised they didn't get more. The clouds cleared enough here today to
get sight of snow on Mt. Cuyamaca in SD county (about 6000').

I drove through some of the burned-out areas today. Many of the
sandbag/strawlog/haybale waterbars were just carried away. Thos that held
seemed to be filled up with black ash runoff.

One other side-effect of the fi last night I trapped the 10th rat in my
house since the fire. Five in the garage, three upstairs next to hole
gnawed in the wall, one in the laundry (looked like he crawled into a
storage bag and couldn't find his way out - we found him by the smell), and
last night's in the kitchen (put a snap trap in a drawer of chewed-open
spice envelopes).

"The Real Bev" wrote in message
...
Richard Henry wrote:

I think there is one more (hopefully only one) left in the garage. I
have
two rat-size sticky traps stapled to two-by-fours and three snap traps
baited with peanut butter scattered around. At first I thought we had
mice
(some got in last year and raided the bag of bird seed) and put out some
mouse-size sticky traps. I got one mouse, and the other traps
disappeared
until I found them stuck behind boxes on the garage shelves.

The big problem with the sticky traps is dealing humanely with the
occupants. I don't suppose you'd recommend cutting off their little
heads with a pair of scissors...

I haven't caught any that way yet, just the mouse that was dead when I first
found him. I suppose I could just throw the glue/rat combo over the fence.

When I was first arming up to confront this problem, I bought, among other
things, a box of poison bait cubes. Then I read the instructions. 1. "Yuo
need about 8 boxes." 2. "Don't use in the house." (They crawl off into
their wall hideouts and die with much stinkiness.) So I put the unopened
box up on a shelf in the garage. Two days later, I found the empty,
chewed-open box on the garage floor. That may be the one that died in the
laundry room (hope, hope, hope).

Richard Henry wrote:

I haven't caught any that way yet, just the mouse that was dead when I first
found him. I suppose I could just throw the glue/rat combo over the fence.

No wonder the neighbors don't invite you to their backyard barbecues!

When I was first arming up to confront this problem, I bought, among other
things, a box of poison bait cubes. Then I read the instructions. 1. "Yuo
need about 8 boxes." 2. "Don't use in the house." (They crawl off into
their wall hideouts and die with much stinkiness.)

Theory has it that D-Con makes them run outside for water (assuming they
don't know about the toilet, of course), obviating that problem. OTOH,
a dead rat in a hedge is only marginally better than a dead rat in a
wall.

So I put the unopened
box up on a shelf in the garage. Two days later, I found the empty,
chewed-open box on the garage floor. That may be the one that died in the
laundry room (hope, hope, hope).

Don't count on it. What does not kill us/them makes us/them stronger.

Long ago we stored a big box of soybeans in the old truck and forgot
about it. When we found it again it had been replaced by mouse turds
and the little beasts had made a nest in the glove compartment using the
registration docs for nesting material.

--
Cheers,
Bev
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooo
If it weren't for pain, we wouldn't have any fun at all.

"The Real Bev" wrote in message
...

Long ago we stored a big box of soybeans in the old truck and forgot
about it. When we found it again it had been replaced by mouse turds
and the little beasts had made a nest in the glove compartment using the
registration docs for nesting material.

I found out about the former mouse problem when I opened a drawer in one of
those little plastic small-parts bins looking for a bolt and found it
stuffed with birdseed.

Richard Henry wrote:

"The Real Bev" wrote in message
...

Long ago we stored a big box of soybeans in the old truck and forgot
about it. When we found it again it had been replaced by mouse turds
and the little beasts had made a nest in the glove compartment using the
registration docs for nesting material.

I found out about the former mouse problem when I opened a drawer in one of
those little plastic small-parts bins looking for a bolt and found it
stuffed with birdseed.

There are those who might consider that a miracle of sorts. Most of
them are probably birds.

--
Cheers,
Bev
----------------------------------------------
"Tough? We drink our urine and eat our dead!"
-- N. Heilweil