Busy Day in Livingston and Bozeman

Jean and I went to Livingston and Bozeman Wednesday, January 5.  We had several projects in mind.

Since my four-wheel drive has been undependable lately, I had better snow tires put on my car.  The other tires were supposed to be all-season tires, but their treads aren't very deep and I've almost gotten in trouble a few times.  I'm sure that when I did a couple donuts on the highway a couple months ago, the tires were part of the problem.  As well, when I have been in a little trouble, I've probably worn down those treads a bit.  No one can yet diagnose my four-wheel drive problem because I can never get anyone to look at my car when the problem occurs!  Hopefully we'll be able to get the problem diagnosed sooner rather than later.

I went to a chiropractor also.  It's been a couple years since I was last seen.  My neck's been bothering me a little bit, and hopefully we'll be able to get a course of action going.  Nothing serious--just annoying.

Jean and I ate lunch at the Homemade Kitchen.  They have some yummy meals there.  I've never been disappointed with anything I ate there.  I like how everything is so fresh tasting.  Their recipes are pretty darn good!

We attended a care conference for Betty at Evergreen.  They all agree that Betty continues to steadily decline in health.  Her falling has significantly diminished.  She needs to stay in a wheelchair when she wants to move around.  They have given her a wheelchair that is low to the ground so that she can scoot around with her feet because she is so short.  Over the past year she has lost about 1/10 of her body weight.  They were mostly concerned with occasional vomiting.  For two days she vomited once in the morning.  Hospice was able to administer some medicine to deal with the nausea and that seems to have relieved the problem.  She doesn't appear to be coming down with a cold or flu bug.  I don't know how long Betty will last, but she's continuing to hang on.  Occasionally she'll say one or two words.

For the rest of the afternoon Jean and I went to Bozeman and window shopped and looked for things we liked for home improvement.  We did buy a couple of pieces of furniture for our living room though.  The price was right!  It's time that those old pieces of furniture go away. :-)

That evening I was hungry for a burger.  I hadn't had a decent burger in long time, so we ate at Fuddrucker's.  Though a bit expensive, they do give a burger to order!

We went home completely wiped out.  Thu. Jan. 6 we didn't do a darn thing.  Unfortunately that night Jean became sick and was badly off.  She seemed to be doing alright Friday morning though.

This week we've had a lot of animals in the area.  The weather has driven the bison into the Gardiner area.  I've actually had to be careful of driving at night because there have been bison in the road!  Bison look like a shadow in your headlights.  They don't look at your car like elk or deer, and I hope I never hit one of those!  I've had bison in my yard.  They left their calling cards behind.  I could tell that a herd of elk had been in my yard too from the way that the yard was grazed.  Also a bit unusual is that we have had a whitetail doe and fawn in our yard.  This area typically only has mule deer, so when I see a whitetail, it's a bit odd.

The Varmint

As many of you have seen on Facebook, I've had a furry visitor at my house yesterday and today.

Yesterday I let my cat outside and left the garage door to the outside open so that she could go in and out as she pleased.  I hadn't heard from her in about half an hour, so I decided to look in the garage to see if she was there.  I saw her on top of her cat tree and noticed out of the corner of my eye that something was moving.  I saw a raccoon had invited itself inside the garage!  It climbed under the garage counter and decided it was going to stay there.

The raccoon gets underneath the garage counter.

I tried to use a shovel to push it out.  I still had the garage door open so it had a way to escape.  It didn't hiss at me until the shovel started messing with it.  I was pretty sure it was sick at that point because it didn't want to move and should have been more aggressive than it was for the circumstances.  It just moved into a corner harder for me to reach.

The raccoon wants to stay in this garage!  He won't leave!

Butterscotch was still watching from her cat tree. She didn't want to have anything to do with the raccoon, so she went back in the house and kept away from the wild animal.

Out here, 911 sends phone calls to the comm center just inside Yellowstone Park.  Not much happens there anyway and I considered this to be an immediate situation, so I called them.  (I probably would have gotten in trouble if I did that anywhere else in the United States!)  They forwarded me to Fish and Game, which couldn't come until later that evening, and then they had to postpone it until today.  I had to leave the raccoon in the garage while I was at work for the evening.

At work, I read a Facebook user's message to me which inspired me to make my own catch pole when I got the chance.

When I got home around 11:30 pm, the raccoon was still in the garage, but now it was behind the wood stove.  I got a plastic pipe we normally might use for our underground sprinkler system and fed a rope through it so there was a loop on one end, and two ends on the other that I could pull.  Using a long stick and this make-shift catch pole, I managed to get the raccoon's head in the loop.  I tightened it and nabbed the little guy!  I put it in a cat carrier for the night.  I shouldn't have been able to do that; it was sick and I don't think it was up to a lot of activity.

The raccoon stays in a corner behind our wood stove, wanting to be left alone.

I captured the raccoon!

I also realized that the animal didn't eat any of the cat food in the garage or the bird seed that was stored while I was at work.  It drank a little water from the cat dish, and that was it.  Usually raccoons make big messes when they're in a building.

The next morning I talked with Fish and Game.  They told me that since no saliva had gotten in contact with me or my pets that I could release the raccoon since they didn't want to do any tests on it.  I took the raccoon in the cat carrier to the river on the edge of the property and tried to get it out.  It wanted to stay in though!  After disassembling the device, I finally forced the raccoon to leave.

Honestly I doubt I did the raccoon any favors by releasing it.  The animal was sick and may not survive.  On the other hand, I'd rather have it outside the garage than in!  I think I'll be careful in making sure I leave the garage door shut so I don't have any more unwelcome visitors.

One of my guests at the hotel suggested I contact our local newspaper about this interesting story.  Soit made the Enterprise today too.  It isn't available online, so I'll type the text of the article and include the picture they showed.

North of Gardiner

Ingenuity gets raccoon out of garage

By Enterprise Staff

A man who lives north of Gardiner succeeded Monday night in capturing a lethargic raccoon he found in his garage.

Wayne Dore discovered the furry invader Monday afternoon after he had left the garage door open.  He called 911, judging the situation to be an "immediate problem."  Dore notified a dispatcher at the 911 call center that the raccoon appeared to be sick, behaving in a docile manner uncharacteristic of a raccoon.

Dore fashioned an implement to catch the raccoon Monday night.  He said he followed the recommendation of a Facebook user, who advised him to feed a piece of rope through a long plastic pole to form a loop at the end of the pole.  He held two ends of the rope at his end of the pole and brought a loop at the other end over the raccoon's head.  He then put the animal in a pet carrier.

"I shouldn't have been able to do that," he said of the rope capture.  "I think because the animal was sick I could do it."

The animal ate nothing in the garage and drank only a little water from a dish, Dore said.

Dispatchers at the 911 call center directed him to Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks.  Dore said and FWP official advised him the Park County Health Department normally handles situations such as his.

Because he had not been in contact with any of the animal's saliva, Dore was cleared to release the animal.

"I'm just going to let it go at the river near my house," he wrote in an e-mail Tuesday.

Photo by Wayne Dore.  Pictured is the raccoon in Wayne Dore's garage, Monday.  Dore, who lives north of Gardiner, caught the animal Monday night and released it Tuesday.

Hustle and Bustle for the Holidays

December is always a busy month for everyone--me included.  After Betty's house sold, we still had things to do.

Jean and I went to a care conference for Grandma on Wednesday, December 22.  Afterward we visited with her and talked a bit.  It's kind of funny how she remembers things.  Her memory for things in the past is pretty good, and she remembers all of her family.  There are just some things that she can't wrap her mind around still.  She believes that her husband Lyford is still alive, though he died about 10 years ago.  She doesn't really know where she is.  Her surroundings don't remind her of anything terribly familiar.

Betty's doing alright too.  We saw her for awhile.  She grimaced at me when I wrote her name on a stuffed animal we got her for Christmas.  In a nursing home it's a good idea to put the resident's name on everything.  Hospice is still taking care of her, and there hasn't been any significant change I can see lately.

That evening Jean and I ate dinner at Applebee's, and then we went to the mall to do a little shopping for Christmas.  We had pie and ice cream at Perkins and then watched Prince Caspian and the Voyage of the Dawn Treader at the movie theater.  I like to hang out with my aunt.  I never really considered that I'd be living in the same house with her and we'd be spending as much time as we do.

That night on the way home from Bozeman, we saw a mega-herd of elk between the Yellowstone River bridge and Yankee Jim Canyon.  I turned off the car and rolled down the window, and we could hear the calves whistling to their mamas.  Occasionally we could hear the cows whistling back, but they weren't as vocal.  It was very pleasant to see and hear.  The bright moon and the snow on the ground allowed us to see how big the herd was.

We celebrated Christmas on Christmas Eve because Jean had to work on Christmas Day (she works on all holidays).  We spent it at Chris' house in Livingston.  We had dinner--steaks, potatoes, vegetables, rolls, the works.  Afterward, we exchanged gifts in a secret Santa exchange.  That was lots of fun.

Christmas Day I spent by myself at home.  I had a good but modest Christmas--mostly movies, and some software.  I spent the day reading and watching TV.

Work was incredibly busy between Christmas and New Year's.  I'm sure that the holiday breaks that schools give was the main reason for the burst in activity.

New Year's Eve I had to work through midnight, and Jean had to be at work in Bozeman the next day, so I spent it by myself.  New Year's Day I decided it was a good time to clean the garage, and that's what I did.