Close Encounter with a Porcupine

We've never seen a porcupine in the daytime. They spend most of their lives in trees and our sightings have been pretty much limited to late night wildlife camera clips and roadkill (they are slow, dumb and don't reflect headlights).

I previously mentioned the trees that came down on the power lines. In surveying our property, we found that we had some downed trees as well. Two previously identified widow makers (semi-fallen trees that are hung up on other trees) are now down on the ground. If there had been a safe way to drop them before, I would have done it. The storm left us with two new widow makers, both of which seemed addressable.

My attempts to dislodge one failed. It's caught on a limb that it too high to cut off and I was unable to pull it off with a rope. It will require some further thought.

The second was on top of a small tree. It seemed like I could cut the small tree and bring it down. When I cut it, I discovered that vines had both trees entwined with a third. I cut the third and brought all three crashing down. They've now been added to one of my burn piles.

Back to the porcupine … we think that it might have lost it's home when the trees came down. It's also possible that the recent storm left it without a home.

We came face to face on the driveway when I was going to the mailbox. It didn't seem to notice me until I'd gone back to the house to knock on the window and get Kristen's attention. It headed across the lawn while I started taking pictures. It seemed so slow and fearless that I decided to go closer and get these pictures.

It seemed to be in a slow speed charge at this point so I retreated and gave it some space.

-JC-

Bomb Cyclone

I'm not quite sure of what exactly a bomb cyclone is but it has something to do with a sudden extreme drop in barometric pressure bringing high winds and heavy rain. Boston had it's worst bomb cyclone ever last night. It wasn't quite as bad here but we still had 60-70 MPH winds and about 2 1/2 inches of rain,

We had a very brief power outage in the middle of the night. It wasn't enough to require the resetting of clocks but it was enough to turn the light on in our china cabinet (an idiosyncrasy of our china cabinet is that the light goes on during even the briefest of outages).

Our internet was out when I woke up this morning and, while I was attempting to reset it, The power failed. We reported the outage to National Grid and immediately switched over to our generator. We still had no internet.

During the first 1/4 mile of our morning walk, we spotted 3 trees that had broken off and were hanging on the lines. We reported the locations to National Grid and, when I subsequently went out to take pictures, I found 2 more.

Nice finger.

We took a look at National Grid's outage map and learned that they were expecting to restore service by 11pm Saturday (2 days from now). Then the power (and internet) came back on at about 5:30m. All of the trees were still on the lines so that was a bit worrisome. No sooner was it back on and we had National Grid and their tree trimming service in our driveway. We directed them to the downed trees.

Our power restoration lasted about an hour. We are now back on generator but at least the internet is working.

Update:

Our internet failed again right after the last save. Power and internet came back on at about 3am. When we went out for our morning walk, the trees were still hanging on the lines. The tree trimmers showed up while we were passing and we watched them do their job for a bit. As we continued our walk, we noticed that many of the houses in our area still seemed to be without power (everything seems to be back to normal now - Saturday @ 4:30pm).

Other than the power/internet loss, we came through relatively unscathed. The leaves dropped all at once and we had to clear them away to find the downed branches on the lawn (nothing too large). Everything is cleaned up now.

-JC-

Peak Foliage and Oaktoberfest Burnout

The leaf peepers have been blocking the roads for a couple weeks now trying to catch the foliage colors at their peak. We've been trying to stay home on the weekends so we don't have to deal with them. This weekend is supposed to be the peak so I took some pictures on our morning walk.

Yesterday was Oakham's Oaktoberfest. When we moved to Oakham, we were told that Oaktoberfests were held every other year and that, in the alternate years, there would be a Summerfest. So far, we've seen an Oaktoberfest in 2015, a Summerfest in 2016, nothing in 2017 and then Oaktoberfests in 2018 and 2019.

These events have all been unique. There doesn't seem to be any set format for the events. Past Octoberfests featured a ball roll (to benefit the library), carnival games and a bon fire. Those things didn't happen this year (the library had a different fundraiser this year). This Octoberfest featured 3 bands, a beer garden, food trucks and vendors.

The main event was a burnout (which used to be part of the Summerfest. The burnout is a crazy event. Entrants modify their high powered cars and trucks so that they can lock their front brakes and stay in place while they spin their back tires. The vehicles spin in place for 30 seconds and try to make as much smoke as possible. The stench and amount of rubber that they scrape up afterwards is amazing.

I didn't take pictures but I did manage to find some that were taken from a drone. We were all at the back of the group that is at the left of the utility pole.

I don't know who won but this was my personal favorite.

A video of my personal favorite:
Sorry, this link brings up all of the drone pictures. Still trying to link to just one. The black truck with all of the black diesel exhaust was my favorite.

Smoke over the athletic field (site of the Oaktoberfest).

One last video that Briar took.

-JC-