I’m just about ready to say, "screw you, blog, I’m tired of feeling obligated to record the ho humness of my life," but I just can’t. This journal has seen many an emotion-packed post, and well, it’s kind of like..useful. And stuff. Fudge stripe cookays!!

So I totally have like a whole freaking month off now, and am feeling pretty decent about last term, so yay for that. During finals week I was too distracted by illness for any major stressing over tests, and I probably would’ve studied way more, which probably wouldn’t have done any good. Illness can lead to major revelations. Mine was "dude, you don’t have to study/worry 24/7 to do well on tests. You can feel annoyed for another reason instead!" Thank you, virus.
So far I haven’t done a whole lot while I’ve been home. I did muck the chicken coop though. And by muck, I mean clean. We have a whole mini flock of strata now, consisting of three barred rock layers and a tough looking rooster. Except since we’ve let the rooster in with the hens, we’ve received no eggs. SKETCH! They eat a lot, and now are pretty much like our other animals..absolutely useless! But, I think the cats pack the most bang for the buck, because they were free and are totally like the chicken soup of them all. Basically the Tdub is a warm, moveable creampuff and Sass is the aesthetically-pleasing commercial-type longhair.

So yesterday, I was preparing to be bored accompanying Bosun on a perimeter patrol and I happened to look between the sidewalk and our porch and there’s this too-cute-for-words chipmunk huddled there, shivering. I was like, "Noel all over again!" except this one had a fully intact tail (I used to have a chipmunk I named Noel with half a tail). Being in the FW department and always hearing the "don’t mess with the wild animals" speech, I was hesitant. But the "that’s way too precious to leave to the fates" part of me decided to act. So I picked up the possibly infectious striped rodent and carried it inside, where I promptly deposited it in some fleecy pajama bottoms to warm up. Its eyes were looking a little..tired..and it certainly wasn’t acting like a wild chipmunk (rabies..!?) so logically I allowed it to lap up some water in an artificial waterfall down the front of my wrist. If only I’d had another arm to document this, I would have. I fed it some sporting trail mix from the natural section of Fred Meyer, which it padded its pouches with.

This early afternoon, I hauled the cage outside and opened the door. The chipmunk seemed fully recovered (it actually tried to avoid me and its eyes were bright) so I decided it’d be the best thing to do before it got too used to free trail mix. It took a while for the ‘munk to realize that the door was open, but once out, it trilled/squeaked, in a gesture I can only postulate was a triumphant and thankful goodbye. It quickly scaled the rock wall, and was gone.
Then I went on a hike. I found tons of elk and deer tracks, and fresh bobcat tracks. I found where an elk had lost some of its fur and there were four dead ticks in the snow (yeah, eww!). A pileated woodpecker was the only notable sighting, probably due to the fact that there’s a lot of crunchy snow that announces my presence.

In Varmint Control news, Tim trapped a bobcat on the first night his traps were out at a nuisance call. This bobcat, and possibly another collaborater, killed six chickens in one night. Crazy. The owner of the deceased has a large fluffy german shepherd dog named Chewbacca.

Tomorrow it’s time to head to P-town and pick up Becky. Then we shall go to Buffalo Exchange and Trader Joe’s for frivolous clothes and organic food shopping.