Cop Car's Beat

Failure to communicate?

This handsome Tom Turkey strutted his stuff around our patio for about 30 minutes, yesterday - obviously, intent upon wooing a female.

 

 So, what is the response of the object of Tom Turkey's ardor?

Cat yodeling redux

In Email from a Friend, I gave a plug to a friend's posting on YouTube. Several of you took the time to take a look, and some enjoyed Paul Klusman's wry sense of humor. Saturday, our local newspaper, The Wichita Eagle, carried a 3-column wide, 2-inch article concerning a posting of a shorter version of the YouTube video. From the paper:

    'Cat yodeling' topic of engineers' new video - by Deb Gruver, The Wichita Eagle

    Wichita's favorite cat-loving engineers are getting more play with a shortened version of one of their "cat yodeling" videos on the popular site www.icanhascheezburger.com. [For your convenience, I have converted the cited URL to a hyperlink. CC]

    Aerospace engineer Paul Klusman's video "An Engineer's Guide to Cats" went viral on YouTube last year.

    His video for Icanhascheezburger, "Advanced Cat Yodeling," is an edited version of "An Engineer's Guide to Cats (with Cat Polka)." It stars the same cats and fellow engineer T.J.Wingard.

The article goes on to say that the video had had 175,000 views since last Monday and that Paul says he is not finished with cat videos. It quotes Paul as saying, "I have all kinds of dorky, silly things in my brain right now...." going on to list a few.

Woo-hoo! And I knew Paul when he was just a "lowly" engineer! Keep on keeping on, Paul!

Two Piňons

The following two paragraphs are lifted from an email string between Janeywan and me; thus, please credit her (of Life in Westwood) with inspiring the posting.

"We have two piňon trees - yes, here in Kansas. Of course I had piňons when I lived in Albuquerque...and I missed them when I moved back to Kansas. My brother, who had homes in Santa Fe and Boulder at the time, brought me two small seedlings (about 12" tall - with lots of root and dirt...well, sand) from their Santa Fe property (they lived in the Pygmy Forest) in about 1991 or 1992. Not knowing where to put the pinons in the yard of the house where we lived, I encased the root ball of each tree in an old pillowcase and planted it, temporarily, in our tomato patch. They stayed there until the spring of 2000.

"The trees had grown to 3' or 4' high, and we had the people who were landscaping the yard of our new home bring them over and plant them for us - at the corner of the house. The trees are now (thanks to having had more water than a piňon has any right to expect) over my head and bushy - almost Christmas tree looking. They don't have the characteristic twists and gnarls of the piňons in the wilds of New Mexico, but the scent never fails to remind me of Albuquerque."

Here is a photo of the piňons.

   

Not a happy day around here

At my request, Dr Lassman sedated Cop Car, our companion of nearly 18 1/2 years; and, when CC fell asleep, gave her a lethal injection. We buried CC in the woods behind our house where, in her younger years, she enjoyed spending time. Cop Car is, and will be, missed.

                

 

Bird Quiz #1

Some people enjoy looking at birds and never-you-mind what some ornithologist has dubbed them. After all, it is the beauty of the birds that counts! For those of you who have followed my struggles to correctly identify the female little brown bird (LBB), you may wish to try your hand at coming up with the human-applied moniker for additional birds that have appeared at our feeder.

The feeder is located about 20 inches away from my kitchen bay window-on-the-world. It was moved there because we were getting interesting birds in its former location, about 40 inches away from our living room window and it was time to put out the hummingbird feeder. Hummingbirds can be intimidated by the presence of larger birds, so something had to give. The two feeders are now separated by about 25 feet, with a back porch (a mini-deck in form) between them that provides visual screening between them.

Immediately below, Mystery Bird #1: Adult female -      

Below and to the right, Mystery Bird #2: Adult Male/Female -

Below and to the left, Mystery Bird #3: Adult Female -

And, finally, below, Mystery Birds #4: Adult Males

   

Yes, I know the last photo defies the rules. These birds are definitely not on the feeder outside the kitchen window. They are, however, near the feeder where I put corn out for them (see the black blob at the right hand edge of the photo.) The 4x4s support other bird feeders - when the feeders are out.

5/17/2009 8:30 PM

And now a drum roll, please...here are my answers (I have to say that they are my answers rather than the answers in case someone can talk me out of the identifications that I'm making!)

A blue bird that is not a bluebird

Last evening we had tornado and severe thunderstorm warnings posted in our neck of the woods. As I observed the clouds roiling about overhead from the vantage point of our back porch, a baby bird flew/tumbled in and landed on the door threshold. As I feared that it had actually crashed into the door, I observed it until it flew off. It had blue tail and wing feathers, but didn't look like a baby bluebird.

This morning, much to my surprise, I observed (very briefly) a whole family of blue birds--a family of indigo buntings! They are gorgeous!

To see a photo of the male, by Terry Sohls, please follow this link. For a photo of the female feeding her young, by Stacy Oborn, follow this link.

Women's Day - Corrected 5/14/2009 - Score 1 for Bogie

Having just downloaded the photos that were on my digital camera, I noted that I got a relatively good shot of a female purple finch [rose-breasted grosbeak] (the camera focused on the feeder instead of the bird, of course!) In our yard we are occasionally visited by two pairs of purple finches--sometimes in the company of house finches, but usually not. Unlike me, Hunky Husband seems to have no trouble differentiating between male house finches and male purple finches; thus, he reports seeing them more often than do I. However, when it comes to the female of the species, I find differentiation to be exceedingly easy. Here's [almost] what a female purple finch looks like! [Thanks to Bogie, I have corrected the identification. The bird is a female rose-breasted grosbeak!]

         

While I'm at it, why not show a female red-bellied woodpecker--on the same feeder?! We'll make it "Women's Day" for these two beauties.

         

[P.S. Having looked at several books, I was leaning toward believing that Bogie was correct about the little brown bird's being a female grosbeak rather than a finch. What cinched it was that I went back to take a good look at all of the photos that I had caught of the bird (I had been operating off of un-cropped thumbnails--not a good idea).

I'm adding the photo that convinced me, below. The bird definitely has a striped head. Good catch, Bogie. Thanks! This is the first rose-breasted grosbeak that I've seen in years. Not sure that I had ever seen a female one, before. To see how similar a female purple finch looks (particularly to the top photo), please click on the link to Mike Hodgson's photo or to a photo by Terry Sohl.]

         

Please welcome Frankie

Many of my readers, and all of my family who read this blog, are familiar with Buffy at Arrrgh!!!  Heck!  Daughter Bogie, of Bogieblog, introduced us and Bogie, Dudette, Wichi Dude, and I voted Buffy into our own family. What we didn't consider at the time was the baggage that Buffy would bring with her.

Much to our enrichment, Buffy brought: Elegant Mother, My-Sister-The-Nurse, Dear Husband, Frankie, to name a few of Buffy's relatives who are now our relatives by association. Frankie, Buffy's younger sister, started blogging a few years ago...then got busy with other things and let her blog twist on the vine for a bit.

I would like to reinforce Buffy's announcement of Frankie's return to blogging (A Recommendation) and her invitation to go read Frankie's postings. Please note that Frankie's blog, Just My Opinion: If I jump in, I gotta swim, has been reinstated in the listing, "Blogs that I Enjoy", in the left hand side-bar. Special commendation should be extended to Frankie for her willingness to totally re-design her blog presentation in a way that allows those of us with visual problems to easily read her postings. Way to go, Frankie!

Too much is never enough! Except, when....

Do you ever get such a good deal that you go hog wild? True Confession: I have done so a few times in my life. Such as...a few years ago when I bought some upholstery material from the Little Airplane Company's periodic "stuff" sale. I bought two complete rolls of upholstery material--in the same style, but one in blue tones, the other in pink and beige tones--for $10 per roll. Now, this is good "stuff". It is used in upholstering expensive, small airplanes...and by FAA regulations, it is fire resistant. The two rolls were added to my previous purchases of a few years before when I had bought small partial rolls of silk and excellent-quality fake leather. The photo shows what's left of the whole bunch.

         

In the back of my mind, I had thought of using the full rolls to re-upholster a sofa and love seat; but, I ended up just washing what was already on them. Later, when we moved, our new living room was too small to accommodate the sofa and love seat (we have chairs and benches, now); so, they are in the basement room that was intended for a pool table (HH decided not to move it and hasn't replaced it) and are now used by the cats as sleeping venues.

OK. A few months after we moved into this house, I saw a long, upholstered bench at a thrift shop. The bench was an exact match for a smaller bench that I had purchased in 1963 for $20 (it had been a remainder sale), except for the awful-colored, badly frayed upholstery on the larger bench. I purchased the longer bench (for $20), and re-upholstered both benches with the pink fabric (see photo). I used a small amount of the fabric, this week, to make an antimacassar set for my recliner in the living room.

                     

Elder Brother's wife, Expert Seamstress, tried to be of some help to me. She took some of the blue material (see photo) to a close friend (they all live in Loveland CO) to re-upholster her dining chairs. Unfortunately, that accounted for only about 5% of the roll!

                     

Originally, I had intended to use the blue leather (oh, my goodness--I failed to get the two hides of blue leather into the photo!) to re-upholster our own dining room chairs. As the chairs need some structural reinforcement, due to sagging seats (the chairs' seats, that is), I've put that off.

The fake leather (eggshell white) had no real intended purpose; but, I used a portion of it to make a covering for the ledge of the kitchen bay window (a small one). The covering makes it more comfortable for me to rest my elbows upon the ledge while using binoculars to observe wildlife through the window--my "window on the world". The silk has seen no use at all to this point. Suggestions? Suggestions for the silk or for any of the upholstery material?

By the way--it was Agatha Crumm (a business tycoon created by Bill Hoest) who said, "Too much is never enough!" and, "Seventy-seven isn't old for a multi-millionaire!"

                        

Email from a Friend

Hello Friends!

"An Engineer's Guide to Cat Yodeling (with Cat Polka)" is now live on

YouTube for your viewing pleasure:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEjKk5Kt3rs

Since initial release last night it is well received with a full 5-star

rating and many positive comments. Those of you with skills on Myspace,

Facebook, Twitter, Digg.com, etc. feel free to post the video link to

spread the word!

Thanks!

Paul Klusman

[I'm having difficulty embedding. Please follow the above link to view the video. Cop Car]