It’s mountain beaver time!

Yes, folks, it’s that time of year again! As reported last year and the year before, the return of spring in Seattle brings the return of my furry, football-shaped friend: the mountain beaver. Ain’t he sweet?

He’s out a little earlier than usual this year, and seems to have taken up residence farther up the hill behind our house. Unless that’s some other mountain beaver, of course. I didn’t catch his name.

21 degrees out there

Eek. Our traffic woes when the weather gets like this are awful – between the steep hills and slick layer of ice you can be sure is beneath any snow that falls, it gets dicey out there. Here’s a compilation of videoed traffic mayhem that displays how dicey, even with snow chains and salted roads:

*Stick with it until at least 3:00 – although it will  be tough to tear your eyes away from any of it!

Climactic Armageddon! Still snowing in Seattle…

This is a radio ad for a local insurance company, Pemco, that profiles local “types” found in the Pacific Northwest. The spot about First Snowflake Freakout Lady makes me grin each and every time I hear it.

Don’t you understand? I LIVE ON A HILL!!

Deer in my Seattle backyard!

Wow! I was working at the computer, minding my own business, and this guy (gal?) comes wandering up from next door! S/he poked around a minute or two, and then wandered away up the hill. Very neat to see!

Finally! 77 degrees yesterday!

At some point in the afternoon, I took a break from my work just to lie down in the patch of sun that was filtering in through the window. It was heavenly!

The weather guys tell us that the last time we had warm(ish) weather, it was September 23, at 81 degrees. Today we don’t expect temps higher than around 70 or 71, and it’s already clouded up, but pretending I was a lizard on a rock in the middle of the living room gave my whole week a boost!

It’s officially summer in Seattle…

…but the weather didn’t seem to get the memo! I don’t usually mind the gloom–what’s more, it’s one of the reasons we moved here in the first place! It’s getting kind of old, however, after 271 days and counting. Sunday’s high was 56 degrees. Monday’s high was 63. They are saying we may hit 70 today (and it’s sunny, yay!), so I have my fingers crossed. A start is a start, after all.

Here’s an excerpt from yesterday’s paper:

“Seattle is on a stretch of 271 days and counting without reaching 75 degrees, said Dennis D’Amico, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service. The previous record was 254 days.

“We have crushed that,” Mass said, adding it’s likely temperatures won’t reach 75 until July.

It’s not just that it’s not warm — it’s been far colder than June’s usual high of 70.

At 56 degrees, Sunday’s high was just 1 degree above the lowest high ever recorded at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport on a June 20. That’s a typical mid-April high.”

via Seattle Times

The Adventuress needs your help! Even YOU can vote! Last day!

Help out our buddy Michael! Check out Vote for the Boat now and vote – just two days left! We’re neck-and-neck with the Town Hall…Anyone, anywhere can vote–you don’t have to live in the area. And please tell your friends!

The 97-year old schooner, Adventuress, is one of twenty-five historic sites in the Puget Sound region competing for up to $100,000 in the Partners in Preservation grant program. It’s all about who gets the most votes, and we need YOU! For one month,  April 15 – May 12, we need you to cast your vote DAILY and help keep Adventuress sailing for generations to come. Additionally, each time you Vote you can enter to win a Free Sail aboard Adventuress.

Adventuress is a nearly 100 year old Schooner and National Historic Landmark “SAVING PUGET SOUND THROUGH ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION” through programs offered by Sound Experience, a 501-3c Nonprofit whose mission is to Educate, Inspire, and Empower youth of ALL ages. Our educational programs include not only the marine environment, but also how local land based development practices effect the greater ecology.

Mountain beaver reprise

A few fun items:
1. This mountain beaver (from 5/28/2009) has been the single-most viewed topic within this blog.
2. I have posted on this blog for a year already, without my noticing the anniversary on May 6th.
3. It must be springtime, because our resident mountain beaver is regularly visible again!

All month, we’ve had a few passing peeks at the little guy. Last night I watched gleefully as he made a dozen or more trips back and forth from his burrow, in one door and out the other, then back to the first door, then out a third door, jaws full of bunches of leaves as large as his little football-shaped body. I got within just a few meters of him, and he paid me no mind whatsoever. He did freeze momentarily a couple of times when camera flashed, though.

Enjoy the hardly-professional-but-still-fun-to-watch footage below! I even took a few videos!

I saw some movement through the window, a crazy, compact scurrying:

Through the window, I saw my old friend Aplodontia rufa, the mountain beaver. He evidently has new digs just north of our largest sword fern:

I went dashing for the camera and caught him trotting down the hill towards our huge western red cedar tree, which is ringed with a higher-than-normal growth of greenery down below thanks to our neighbors’ recent tree-massacre.

A close-up. Isn’t he cute?

He found some tasty green stuff and commenced to cutting. As he cuts, he accumulates the stems of the bunch in his mouth, for easy portability. The bunch ends up being larger than he is sometimes! Blurry circled area below is the part he’s already cut, and it is blurry since that  bunch moves around as he’s rooting around to cut the next stems.

Awww…

I’ve seen fewer tails cuter than that teeny nubbin – note the size of his dinner bouquet! Can anyone identify what kind of plants he’s cut?

Nubbin down the hole!

And now, some videos:

Hot…

Well, it’s a historic day for Seattle, as temperatures have broken records all week. Highest low temp every recorded, longest string of 90-degree+ days in a row, and now, hottest day EVER.

On the way home, I saw this:

I felt so sorry for myself and my non-air-conditioned plight that I passed by Wendy’s to buy a Frosty.

When I got home, I checked the thermostat:

And yes, that is inside the house. I unloaded my junk and the phone rang–Fernando, off work early. He shot this with his iPhone from inside the car, and somehow I didn’t feel quite so horrid:

All day I had been pretty lucky, after all…I escaped first thing this morning to Panera Bread for a coffee and shortbread cookie. I reasoned I had important work to do, it was 9am, and it would be a tranquil place to hang out. That worked well until lunchtime, when the place was overrun with hot, cranky, screaming children. The little girl to my right (~age 11) had arrived with her mom and grandma, and immediately jumped up and down on the booth’s seat for 6 full minutes without stopping while Grandma ordered food in the lineup. Mom never even raised her eyebrows, even when the little girl (her name was Ida, in whose name they ordered all the food, isn’t it so darned cute you can’t even stand it?) then threw herself into the floor to yell “let’s go let’s go let’s go LET’S GO LET’S GO LET’S GO…” for about 2 more minutes…And I haven’t even mentioned her shenanigans during the remaining 45 minutes or so during which I had the pleasure of being her Panera Neighbor.

The employees grimaced each time they had to step over her writhing, screaming little body, but there she stayed, blocking the entire aisle. Grandma lectured Mom about how she needed to eat well, that the trick was avoiding sugar and especially processed sugar. My own opinions about how a bit of rule-making and some boundaries would make a bigger difference were kept to myself.

So I retreated. Back to the house. “Retreat” is figurative here, since the heat was certainly still my present enemy. Yesterday it was still 89 degrees inside the house at 9:30pm, so we’ll see how we fare tonight.

Should be an interesting night’s sleep. <whimper>