The Headleys House: February 2017

Caught!

Kaleb has caught the bandit!

There have been clues as to who is getting into our chicken feed.

At first we thought it was Kaleb in his forgetful way leaving the lid off of the chicken feed every morning. But then when he knew for sure that he had put the lid on and found it off the next morning he decided to put a fairly large rock.

Where he managed to find a rock under three feet of snow I have no idea.

Anyway, the next morning, the rock was rolled off and the lid was sitting beside the chicken feed.

Hmmm, wouldn't be a cat. They wouldn't be able to get the lid off and the ground was too frozen outside to find tracks.

We think it's a raccoon!

Kaleb, in his scientific thinking sprinkled flour all around the bucket of chicken feed to catch some tracks. He jokingly said that he would go in the next morning and the raccoon would have licked up all the flour.

Nope....the guy walked right through it leaving tracks but didn't pull the lid off this time.

The pictures are a little hard to see but Kaleb's tracking worked!

Notice the long fingers and long back foot.

We are thinking that we need to call for someone to trap the guy.

We really don't want him to get into our chicken coop.

Blue Ribbon Icicle

One of our neighbors texted Kirk the other night saying that we could enter our icicles in the fair and win a blue ribbon.

They are massive.

And something that we are trying to get a handle on by our garage. We haven't quite figured out how to reroute an ice flow that causes an ice slick right by our door. Not very fun to walk on.

Quinzee Snow Shelter

Kaleb is insane!

Sometimes I can't believe that he is my son.

All week I have been feeling cold no matter how high the heater is on or how many layers of clothing I have on and Kaleb couldn't stop talking about sleeping outside.

We got an easy three feet of snow on top of the two that we already have on the ground.

With the below freezing temps, Kaleb went on and on how great the weather conditions were to building a quinzee for him to sleep in.

He was thinking about building it big enough for both he and Jared to sleep in but we decided that Jared would hit the roof with the question considering that he spends most of his time out doors as a carpenter. We were right, except the look on his face was priceless. I couldn't ever duplicate that look myself.

Kirk and I followed him outside like we were following the astronauts to the space shuttle before lift off. I must have asked him three times if he thought he was going to be warm enough.

He said....yep!

I then double checked that this structure was going to be adequate for him to sleep in

He said...Oh, I've slept in shelters.....you know Mom, you don't need to know. This is the best snow shelter that I will have slept in. Really!

I think my boys know what worries their mother.

I guess things I don't know won't hurt me!

It got down to minus 8 inside his shelter.

Whoa! That's cold!

He said he wasn't really that cold.

When I came down stairs at 6am to check on him and see how his night went I found his stuff in a heap by the back door. I started looking all over the house for him, he was on the couch fully clothed.

He said....I survived!

Better him than me!

Buddies

Sammy, being the part herding dog that he is, always has to be touching those that he loves.

It is usually me, getting dog hairs all over my legs or herding me down the stairs because he thinks I'm going to possibly give him something tasty to eat...

.his other breed is basset hound and boy can he eat!

In this case, the one he loves is Henry. Though I have no idea how Henry can breathe with his neck up against the bar like that. Either way they were both quite comfortable snoozing in the sun.