Sep 11, 2021 -- Chore Day with Wild Turkeys

Today I vacuumed the house and did the laundry. Before that I went on a 6:30 am walk with the dogs. At the top of the ridge, a flock of wild turkeys didn’t like our looks and fled down the hillside. While that drama was taking place, a tall black-tailed buck with a many-pointed rack grazed by the side road, disdainful of our petty concerns. In our town, the deer do not respect small, yappy dogs. To prevent an incident, I tucked my vociferous Pomeranian under my shirt before he could catch sight of the noble buck.

After lunch we sat in the back yard for the first time in two weeks. The air was actually breathable and we didn’t need our M-95 masks. It was a luxury to lounge in our plastic Adirondack chairs and drink our tea. In the distant East, we could see the smoke from the Bootleg fire peering over the tops of the Siskiyou mountains.