The Wildlife Camera at the Cat Station

I’m a lot of talk.  I’ve been talking about getting a wildlife camera for a long time. 

I’ve looked at cameras at Wal-Mart. 

I’ve looked at cameras online at Cabelas.

I’ve emailed the Old Curmudgeon, and asked his opinion.

I’ve talked to other people who’ve bought wildlife cameras.

I’ve mulled over all this information, and finally made a decision.  At Bass Pro Shop, Sugar and I looked at the seemingly dozens of choices, and weighed out all the options.  This one has 5 megapixels.  That one is cheap.  This other one can take an SD card.  Another one is infrared.  The one over there has accessories.  And another one, video capable.  Dear Lord, help me. 

I bought one of the most expensive.  Eight megapixels!  Daytime, nighttime, still-shot, video-capable, infrared!  And a “Bonus!”  (that’s the word that reeled me in.)  Universal battery charger and 6 volt rechargeable battery!  Love me some batteries.

So I’ve had this little beauty for a while, still sitting in its packaging, waiting for me to plunge ahead and commit to this next project.  And I knew when I opened the package I would be done for.  I wouldn’t do any homework, and I’d stay up all night experimenting with photographing cats, and I’d be late for work. 

Apparently, I can accurately predict the future.  Guess who was late for work today?

It’s a tricky set-up getting the camera positioned for crazy cat action.  One of the bungee cords broke almost immediately and I came within an ace on “putting my eye out”.  (“Don’t stretch that bungee cord so tight!  You’ll put your eye out!”  Thanks, Mom.)

I set the camera up and went back to the RV until sundown.  Then, about 9 PM, Sylvia and I waited in the woods under the cover of darkness about 15 feet from the cat station.  I could see two sets of eyes reflected in my flashlight’s beam.  One huge cat creeped around the cat station’s fence and stared at me, making me a mite nervous that he might spring out at me, even though I know that feral cats don’t do that.  Sylvia took a nap.  Finally, he went into the fenced enclosure and jumped up onto the feeding station.  And nothing.  The freakin’ camera didn’t flash or take a picture.  I began to wonder if a cat provided enough motion for the camera to work.  Mr. Cat ate, then ran off the feeding station in the direction of the camera, and nothing.  Stinkin’ camera still didn’t work.

This evening when I got home from work, I went into the woods to the camera, checked the display and could see something photographed in the tiny little display.  I pulled out the SD card, went back to the RV, inserted the SC card into the computer, and here’s what I have.  Make of it what you will.

Too much flash

Two! At one time!

I think this is 4 cat speuters ago, but I'm not sure that he's ear-tipped.

Upper right is the sleeve of my scrub top where I'm reaching to open the camera cover.

Can you just stand all this cat excitement?!

So What WAS I Thinking??

I started writing this little bloggety-blog in July of last year.  If anyone is traveling back in time to read this, that means July 2009.  I was taking a class in Information Technology, and one of the homework assignments was to develop a blog AND a website all at once, due in 7 days thankyouverymuch.  And I did it.

It’s been fun to post pictures and such, and believe me, I would like to be a full-time blogger, if I were independently wealthy or if someone would like to just throw money at me.  The last few weeks have been kicking my butt, so to speak.  I have one more week of classes of the Spring I Term, then I jump right into Spring II Term.  O the joy.  So within the next week, I have to accomplish these things:

1.  Term paper in Organizational Behavior (not started yet)

2.  Term paper in Production and Operations Management (not started yet)

3.  Study for final in Organizational Behavior (guess what)

4.  Study for final in Production and Operations Management (you guessed correctly)

5.  Homework in Organizational Behavior (don’t even go there)

6.  Homework in Production and Operations Management (ditto)

7.  Study for midterm in Spanish I (hola!)

8.  Work 45+ hours at full-time job (feet.  hurting.)

9.  Work 5 hours at part-time job (maybe they will fire me.  fat chance.)

10.  Feed dogs, cats, ferals, guinea pig, and gerbil (and self)

11.  Laundry (nuff said)

12.  Go to class on Saturday all day and Tues/Thurs nights (car drives itself now)

But here’s what I really want to do.  On Sunday, my day of rest, I want to go see Miz Florrie.  I have not seen her since before Christmas, and I missed her birthday on February 2nd.  I met her granddaughter Rose online thru ancestry.com just last week.  Rose’s father Bill was Miz Florrie’s son, but he’s deceased now, and Rose wants to know more about him, and maybe get some pictures.  So I really want to take my laptop and scanner and go to Miz Florrie’s and scan pictures.  Like soon.  I’m afraid she’s going to die on me, although she’s not ill.  She called me this morning to see HOW I WAS DOING.  When I saw the caller ID, I was afraid that someone was calling me to tell me that she was gone.  But she was checking on ME.

If anyone wants to write the term papers for me, they need to be 3000-4000 words long.

Something’s Happening in the Hood

Trees Begone!

I came home from work this evening to find that the land across the road from me is being cleared.  I can’t imagine why.  It’s the crappiest little piece of land.  It’s low, it floods, and there’s only a few hundred feet of depth from the road frontage to a drainage canal.  For whatever reason, the trees are being removed. 

Georgia contemplates the destruction

As you turn left onto Resurrection Road, my lot is on the right.  There’s an old fallen-in concrete block house on the left.  I call it the drug-drop house.  Last February, one balmy evening after work I was sitting in the yard under the trees.  The sun was going down and it was peaceful in the hood.  A truck stopped in front of the drug-drop house, a man got out of the passenger side and went to the drug-drop house, then returned to the passenger side of the truck, and the truck drove off.

There had been a shooting in my driveway last August, drug related of course, and I’m pretty cautious about my little hood.  I decided it was time to act.

Yes, I did.  I went to the drug-drop house, and I looked in through what used to be a door.

I looked in through this back door

This was somebody's home once

This is the window

Right under this window, there was a gym bag. 

Yes, I did.  I walked over to the gym bag, and I LOOKED INSIDE.  I saw a pair of shoes on top, and odd assorted tools under the shoes.  I went home.  And I thought about what to do about this. 

I changed clothes.  Black pants, turtleneck, and sweater.  I looked like frumpy spy granny.  By now, it was dark outside.  I got my trusty cellphone and my little flashlight in case I needed them, and I went back across the road.  To the drug-drop house. 

I knew that if I just reached in the window, the bag was directly under the opening, and I could just pick it up, put it in the trunk of my car, and drive to the sheriff’s department.  It was a plan.

I crept through the underbrush to the window, and reached in and down and closed my hand on… nothing.  I leaned in through the window and looked down.  Nothing was there.  In the time it had taken me to change my clothes, someone had come along and retrieved the bag.  I had never heard a vehicle, nor seen headlights, and the dogs hadn’t barked.

What kind of tough gang uses pink spray paint?

I’ve considered purchasing the property so that I could have the house demolished.  Lack of money prevents me from doing that. 

So here’s another odd piece of the puzzle.  The woods around the drug houses are not being cleared, but the woods in what I’m guessing would be the next lot are being removed.

Georgia and Sylvia are on the case.  Tune in next week for more happenins in the hood.

Lawton Place, Savannah, GA

Lawton Place in Savannah, GA

Sugar’s mother was a Lawton from Savannah, and since we began researching this family name, all sorts of Lawton relatives, known & unknown, have been found.  This is the city home of Robert T. Lawton; we attempted to find the remains of Blockade Place, his Screven County Plantation earlier this year.

Habersham & McDonough

We’re at the intersection of Habersham & McDonough.  Habersham is pronounced HABbershum.  This building was built about 1844.

Part of the facade

That’s an azalea blooming in the picture above.  I couldn’t believe it either.

Roses blooming, too.

At first I thought the rose bush was a camellia, which does bloom in the wintertime here.  Nope.  Roses.

For sale

It appears that the building has been converted into 6 condos.  This one shown in the picture above is for sale.  I checked the price online – it’s only $379K.  Condo only, not the entire building…

Lawton Place rear entries

We are bold with the camera.  We traipsed around to the back of the building where there’s a nice courtyard and rear entries.  Fortunately, Savannah has dozens of tourists with cameras on any given day.  We didn’t stand out too much, except…

Doing the poopyfoot dance

when Sugar stepped in it in a big way, and had to do the poopyfoot dance in the mulch.  I found a plastic bag in the car and he inserted his foot for the ride home.  While he was doing the two-step, I made more pictures.

The view across the street

More landscaping to the side of Lawton Place on McDonough

A trip to Savannah would not be complete without a picture of bricks.  In this case, it’s the old brick street with a layer of asphalt.  (Revised 12/16/09:  Sugar wanted to point out that the curb is made of granite.)

The curb in front of Lawton Place

So that’s about every angle of the Lawton Place that we could get without getting arrested.  As in most of our outings, we can sum it up and say “No one went to jail.”  Being eccentric here doesn’t mean that much.

The city place for Robert T. Lawton

The Princess

Behold your princess

What was I thinking?

The woman stood before me in the lobby of the vet’s office.  She held a crate with an unhappy cat inside.  The woman’s hair was sloppily pulled back into a ponytail, and she had the desperate air of someone who had slept in her clothes.

“I don’t know what to do with her.  We’ve moved because our rent went up, way up, and the cat has no where to hide from the other cat who just wants to play with her.  But Princess is eight years old and she doesn’t want to play and there’s nowhere to hide and we are in such financial trouble and I just can’t keep her any more!”

I escorted her into an examining room so we could talk.  I knew this woman.  She had adopted two other cats from me, before the trouble started. 

Behold your Princess's behind

Back in 2006, Sugar and I were trapping cats at Miz Florrie’s in Garnett.  Miz Florrie didn’t know how many cats she had, and we eventually trapped ALL of them, speutered and vaccinated them, and rehomed them.  It took about two years.  One of the cats we trapped we named Annie Jean.  Annie was adopted as a companion for Princess by the woman now standing before me at the vet’s office, and later a long-haired kitten named Captain Bangs was also adopted, making a kitty trio.  Annie eventually returned to me  because the woman’s husband had asthma that was triggered by the dander of short-haired cats.  I found another home for Annie, but now here was the same woman with more cat troubles.

The woman produced a sheaf of legal papers, documenting her financial woes.  She had lost her job because of documented bi-polar illness, and she was slipping further and further into financial doom.  She had decided that she needed to rehome the Princess, as if in an effort to ease her own mental troubles, because Princess seemed to be miserable.  Captain Bangs had grown into an enormous young cat who wanted to play, and Princess did not.  This was the equivalent of a preschooler wanting to tackle his grandmother who was only half his size, if that.

I said, “Sure, I’ll take her.”  Never mind that I live in an RV, with dogs, to boot, and now I was going to have to resurrect the litter box.  In an RV.  Not pretty.

I didn’t see Princess for about two weeks, unless you count the flash of fur as she dashed for cover whenever I entered the RV.  During that time, I examined her medical records.  She had been taken to a vet because she had developed odd litter box habits (the owner neglected to tell the vet that she had just adopted Captain Bangs).  The vet prescribed multiple medications, including prozac.  PROZAC, people!  I had no meds for the cat, only peace, quiet, her own litter box, and science diet prescription c/d food. 

Guess what happened?  That’s right, nothing.  The cat slowly began to come out of hiding, and learned to tolerate the dogs.  I ran an adoption ad for her on www.petfinder.com, and after a couple nibbles, she found a home with a Methodist minister from NC.  He loved Persian cats, and his estranged wife had taken their two cats when she left.  He drove hours to pick up the Princess. 

Bow to your Princess

The last I heard, the Princess and the minister and his dog were adjusting to their new life that fate had dealt them.  And me?  I am still finding fur from the Persian Princess in my RV palace at the Swamped! plantation.

Another stolen election

The best turtle ever

Last week Kyle the Turtle was in a local newspaper popularity contest called the “Top Dog”.  Yes, it is apparent to me that Kyle is not a canine, but he was still eligible to run.  Don’t ask me to explain – this is the South – some things are so bizarre that they are unexplainable.

Long story short – Kyle lost.  But the contest administrator cut off the contest at 11:13 AM, more than TWELVE hours before the usual deadline.  What could this mean?

I’ll tell you what it means, turtle lovers.  Kyle had crept from behind, from last place, into second place, dogging his opponents until he had 42 votes with the first place dog having 44 votes.  Votes were coming in all over the globe for Kyle, from as far away as London and New Zealand.  (New Zealand, people!  That’s as far away as the moon.)  The turtle was unstoppable, until they stopped the contest.  What were they afraid of? 

We were robbed.

Robbed!

Unstoppable!

We'll be back in 2012!

This just in…

New accomplice is spotted in background. Don't let the disguise fool you.

People!  He’s still on the loose and must be stopped!  None of our potato chips are safe!

Out of the woodwork

More familial lunatics have kidnapped a semi-normal-looking woman (she’s the one on the left, or your other right).  On second thought, she’s wearing cat-themed clothing so she can’t be that normal…

What's a mother to do?

Escapee Update

The deranged lunatic is still at large.  Two accomplices have been spotted, no doubt related to the escapee.

Have you seen these birds?

News Flash!

An all-points-bulletin has just released by the local insane asylum!  There’s been an escape by a professional lunatic, and he’s been sighted at a local residence.  Don’t approach him – he’s extremely deranged and might start spouting exclamations like “I’m gonna knock you into the middle of next week!” or “If you had a brain it would rattle!”

Film footage at eleven!

Have you spotted this lunatic?