Raccoon Relocation Program & Pumpkin Artist

After Fridays nights blog we found a slight flaw in our new bird feeder.

I awoke to the sound of my poor cat Itchy frantically pounding on the inside of the living room window and evidently giving something a piece of his mind.

You see, we leave the porch light on so the cats can watch for any visiting animals and there's been many.

I walked over to Itchy's window and peered into the night, but couldn't see anything so I went back to bed. Not 10 minutes later he started back up with the ruckus and back to the window I went where, to my surprise, there was a jumbo raccoon in our new bird feeder,

so now Saturdays to do list suddenly included running to the hardware and renting a large live trap.

When picking up the trap I did receive some great information on what I should use to bait trap as well as a rash of crap about not just pulling out my 22 and shooting him.

Paper bowl with 1 broken egg, chocolate chips, peanut butter, black sunflower seeds, 1 unbroken egg and we had him in the trap by 10:30 Saturday night.

All loaded up for his road trip. He's lucky a karma conscious gun owning Buddhist spent the 8 bucks for the trap rental and gave him a nice home still in the Murmur Creek river valley.

Today Pat had all day meetings in town and before leaving she asked if I would carve the pumpkin.

and here's what she got.

There's a lot to be said for adult supervision.

Getting Ready for Winter and Knee Repair

Wow this month went by fast.

With my knee surgery looming October 10th, we wanted to get as much done as possible before it and winter, and at the top of the list was the cabin roof.

Here is the finished product.

We stripped the old shingles and pitched them into our trailer, a road trip to the Tofte dump followed.

The steel roof went up very well, we completed it on the 8th, traveled to the cities on the 9th and I had knee surgery the next day.

Before the surgery my doctor had told me to expect a 2 to 3 week heal up time but being the finely tuned athlete that I am I knew in my heart I'd be good in a week,

Wrong!

Hell it took 2 weeks just to get off the pain killers. I'm not sure when I'll be able to kick a 50 yard field goal but it's getting better.

During the 1st week as I healed, I mounted the electric motor on the auto focuser

Photo of the focuser.

Other projects on light duty included building a jumbo bird feeder.

It mounted nicely to the corner of our deck.

Also completed the computer order with our IT guy Barry, who did us an outstanding job getting our main desk top configured. We did have a small communication barrier, but the Georgia accent doesn't show up on the emails and that helped a lot.

Barry, I can't thank you enough for the help, you are a stud and there is a little something being shipped to your house that I know you"ll like.

Last but not least we also started mounting the electronics keeping the center open for the new dual monitor coming with the new computer.

Punch List, New Equipment and Georgia IT Support

We are starting to compile our punch list and can see the end of the building phase,

along with this Jim has been researching and ordering some of the remaining hardware and computer gear.

Our guide camera showed up a few days ago and Jim went with the

Starlight Xpress

Lodestar Autoguider

It's a perfect fit with our camera in both attachment and quality. I will assemble the entire camera package on the next rainy day and document it completely.

Next week will be computer decision and ordering, helping us with this we have a computer specialist in Georgia that I will call Monday.

(We call him a specialist because he's sensitive about being called a geek or nerd and we don't want to upset the big sensitive guy)

Site clean up is going well and most of the tools and saws are packed up.

Here is a few new photos taken today.

View from the road.

Front view

Pulling into the parking lot.

End wall facing the parking lot,

still looking for windows to put in that upper roof line.

We will build a board walk around the buildings.

,Back, including power box, extra conduit runs and the grounding cables for the lightning protection.

Runs between the buildings

2 for power and 1 for computer communication cables.