Thinks she was tired?

This was Riah at the end of the day of caching. She was like this during the last hunt and totally missed it. When asked which cache she liked the best, she said she liked the puzzle cache. (the one she was asleep for) Does she get to count the find if she is asleep? Do you think she was tired?

New Snack

The 3 girls and I went caching yesterday while mom went learnin. We hid a new one up in the high country then stopped for lunch at McD's in Sweet Home. I usually do not like to eat there anymore, but it was cheap and I figured the toy the girls would get would be good trade items for geocaching. The girls got chicken nuggets. One with fries and one with apples. They were sharing the fries and the apples. We were all done except Riah, and I started cleaning up the garbage. I asked her, jokingly, if she still needed the ranch dip as all she had left was apples. To my surprise, she said she did still need it. So I left it for her. As she was dipping the apples in the ranch and eating it I asked her if it was good. To that she just said yes and took a bite. Then she said, and I quote, "It starts out sweet, and then turns yucky." But she ate every apple that way! So if you are into sweet yucky snacks try dipping apple slices into ranch dressing.

Only 21 days to go!

Don't forget, the beavers first football game of the season is only 21 days away.GO BEAVERS
GO BEAVERS
GO BEAVERS

Gawkers of Runners?

Gawkers or runners, that is the question. I was out in
a unit checking wind for a helicopter spray job when I looked down the hill and saw an entire herd of true Gawkers. (If you do not know what a gawker is, look at my blog archive for a definition) This herd of elk gawkers(the largest variety of gawkers in the area) was grazing on all the brush we were coming out here to spray. They were doing a good job of it too! We actually don't mind having them keep the brush and weeds down for us. But when we plant the trees, they like to use them as toys. They will grab them with their mouth, pull them out of the ground, and throw them at each other.(I have actually seen this happen!) Then once they get bored with that they start just eating the trees. Since we are in the business of growing trees, letting these gawkers run loose like this is kinda bad for business. We have tried to appeal to the gawker union, but have only gotten freshly planted trees thrown at us. So we resort to throwing small pieces of lead at them at certain times of the year to try to keep the tree throwing and tree eating to a minimum. I know this herd is definately gawkers because if they were runners pretending to be gawkers, I would not have been able to get this close for as long as I did. After I saw them, I hiked back to the truck to get the camera. Thinking that they would probably be gone, I went back with the camera and they were still there munching away. So I took a couple pics. Then I decided to test their Gawkerness and hiked closer. I was able to get to a good hiding spot about 150 feet away from them. I continued to take pics for about 20 minutes. (about 99 pictures in all.) There was 3 smaller bulls.Here in this picture.
This one bull was the biggest. I think it is about a 6 point. The picture at the top is the same bull.

You can see what a Gawker is like as he is stretching out his neck to give you a bigger target. Its so nice of them to do that.
Then the big bull had his harem with him. There was about 8 cows and about 4-5 calves. If they were runners this cow would have kicked this calf in the head and said "Not now we got to run!" But as they are Gawkers, they could take the time for Junior to get a quick bite to eat before getting back to shelter. By this time, I had got a phone call and they were all startled. It seems that their Gawker genes have been contaminated with some of the runner variety in their past because when my phone rang they all jumped and ran at least 25 - 30 feet and stopped to look around and find the noise. Uncontaminated Gawkers will just look up and go back to eating in about 10 seconds. Runners, if you could ever even get this close, would, at the sound of a strange noise, start running in the opposite direction of the noise as fast as they can and would not stop until they get to the next county or state line.(where ever the hunt boundry is. Remember that they have a copy of the hunting regs!) These Gawkers, sometime in their past, let a stray Runner mingle with their group. So now when they hear a strange noise, they have a unknown urge to run, but then they get hungry again and stop. We can only hope that this gene slowly goes away and doesn't get worse. So there are a few Gawkers that get big horns. Just remember, those big horns don't taste very good!

If you want to win a raffle, sit next to me.

If you want to win a raffle, take me with you and sit next to me!
Today was our church golf tournament. One of the prizes was a chainsaw. To be in the raffle for the saw you had to pay $5 and hit the green with your drive on a certain par 3. I did not pay or hit the green, but one member of my team did. So I told him, if you want to win the chainsaw, sit next to me at the drawing. I told him this due to experience. I never win raffles, but 9 times out of 10 the person sitting or standing next to me does win. For example, I go to a seminar for work a couple times a year. One of these seminars always has door prizes that they raffle off. Everybody gets 1 ticket and they draw for prizes throughout the day. For the last 4 seminars I can remember, the person sitting next to me has one a prize. On 2 of these occasions, the person sitting on either side of me won prizes. I, as yet, have never won a prize at one of these seminars. One other example was about 5 years ago, at a wildfire conference in Reno. There was a lot of prizes, and you bought tickets and put your tickets in the bucket for only the prizes you wanted. There was one prize I really wanted so I put 45 tickets in the bucket for that prize. There were about 3 other tickets in already. Then my boss at the time, put 1 ticket in every bucket.(About 50 items.) Time for the drawing came and my boss won 2 prizes, including the one I put all my tickets in! Guess where he was standing! Yes, next to me! Now this brings me back to today. All my team laughed when I told Ryan he would win if he sat next to me and we went on playing. Once we finished,, we went back to the clubhouse and ate lunch while we waited for the prizes. Ryan just happened to sit next to me. Remember, he is the only one on our team to qualify for the drawing for the saw. There was 16 people in the drawing. The suspense built as we waited for the person to pick the name out of the hat. I looked at Ryan and reminded him of what I told him. Guess who's name was called. Yep, Ryan took home a nice brand new chainsaw! So if you ever need to win a raffle, I might be persuaded to come along and stand next to you. For a small fee of course.