*CHICKENS WITH CHOPPERS: This post is really about cows. No, there were no cows with guns! 3 days almost in -a -row groups of cattle came down the trail above us and went straight to the cabin above us. (The fence WAY up the trail had a hole in it or something.) They would eat the "lawn" (clover and weeds that they watered 24-7), and attack their salt lick, and leave big steaming piles of cow pie. Okay, not steaming, that's gross! So, because the people who owned the cabin that the cows enjoyed where not there, Ross, Mom, Aunt Brenda, and I would "herd" them out of the yard and down the trail. (They would not go back up the
trail.) Combining the days, there were about 40 or more cattle in all!
Too bad for those ranchers.
One of the times, Ross and I were herding 1/2 of a group because the other half tried to get away up a hill - dumb cows! Well one of our cows was a mama whose baby stupidly was with the other half of the group. She kept giving us the slip trying to get back to her baby and mooing forlornly. While this is all happening, there is a group of teen boys who had come back from backpacking I guess and most of them were standing around their cars parked to the side. (At this point I feel really stupid; I'm sure Ross and I look real professional especially him with his flip-flops.) But there was one SUV that was going down the road followed by 3 boys. These 3 boys were watching us and teasing the cow (or us! I don't know) by laughing and mooing like her. Well, Ross and I finally got her back on the trail and she was going toward them and they were like, "Oh shoot!!!!" And Ross and I said to ourselves, "Ha Ha!
That's what you deserve!" Unfortunately there was no massacre or any thing. JK! We ultimately let the mama give us the slip because we knew that we would get her in the 2nd half of the group!!! Wah ha ha ha!!!

*……………SNAKES! :
(You have to be a ReliantK fan to understand. Katie H!) Here is my rattle snake story:
It's a nice afternoon and the men are back from fishing all day. We are all sitting in chairs in a circle on the lawn. My Uncle Steve notices a harmless water snake (except to birds) on our bird feeder which is attached to a tree surrounded by 3 or less feet of bushes. So, my uncle gets up, grabs a hoe, and tries to pick up the snake off the feeder.
(This whole time I am filming this on our new cool little video camera.) Well, my uncle is proving a difficult time so my mom says, "Oh, just have Jamie go and pick it up with her hands" (I was wearing shoes, my uncle was not.)(I like and don't mind water snakes.) Therefore, I turn the camera off and walk over to pick up the snake, but before I get there the snake falls off the feeder into the bushes. My uncle starts beating at the water snake to kill it (You must understand that we are killing all water snakes because we are protecting the baby wren birds) and finds that there it a larger and darker snake at the base of the tree!
Yes, it was a rattlesnake! :-0 Consequently, my uncle starts hacking furiously at the rattler and kills it. Phew! I was disappointed that I did not get it on film, and than I realized that I was just about to walk into those bushes right onto that rattlesnake! I rejoiced that the water snake (which got away) dropped off the feeder and that I did NOT walk into those bushes. Thank God! Even though I regarded my situation seriously, the whole thing was really funny and my cousin Ross and I laughed the whole thing off.
After that there was a plethora of water snakes. We killed 2 or 3 water snakes 5 or 6 days in a row. The funny thing was that the Wren bird parents would chirp agitatedly and warn us where they were! Like, if there were a snake by a rock, the wren would be ON the rock chirping at it. J We had teams: The Lady Snake Slayers = my mom and aunt spotting the snake, myself grabbing and holding it and my Nana killing it with a hoe.
The Snakenators = Ross grabbing the snake and my Uncle Steve killing it (or my dad). And the Younglings = Ross grabbing the snake and myself killing it. And then my mom decided to do something drastic and put foil around the tree that the wren birdhouse was on so that the snakes couldn't get up. We don't actually know if it worked.

*Whizzing, Whirring:
There have always been a TON of hummingbirds when we go to our cabin so there is no surprise when there are 15 hummingbirds at their feeder at a time. There is just wonder and amazement. One day when Ross and I were board we put our index fingers on the red perchy things and waited. They whirred around like crazy and didn't care how close we were. (One of those little birds can give off a lot of air! They feel like big fans.) Then they actually perched on our fingers and drank their nectar! It was SO cool! They are so light and you can barley feel their little talents, it just lightly tickles. It was really awesome.