Ponderings While Waiting

  Hello family and friends!! I got the pine straw down a week and half ago with no mishaps or run-ins with any flora or fauna in the process. However, there was a baby copperhead on my brother's front walk yesterday evening that neither of us was brave enough to kill. We are such cowards. I have no idea how we will cope with the discovery of our intruder, regardless of what it turns out to be, if we can't even handle a snake the size of a spaghetti noodle, albeit a poison one.
    I've checked into the weather on the days that I've been tracking the cigarette theft. The following dates are what I have so far: July 13th, blustery and light rain, a full moon; August 27th, overcast and windy because of Hurricane Irene, 1 day before the new moon; a big "maybe" on September 21st as the wind was strong, also raining, so I didn't really count the container being turned over and the cigarette missing on that occasion, also a waning moon; and then sometime between Oct. 20th-Oct.26th, it was raining when we left for vacation that week, it was overcast until Saturday, also a waning moon. The only common denominator I see here is cloud cover that would make it extremely dark.
     I need to track this more before I can definitely say that the weather has anything to do with the circumstances. I am starting to anticipate another visit so that I can see if the intruder will be put off by the pine straw. I figure if a manicured lawn doesn't bother them, certainly pine straw won't be a hindrance. I will keep the weather in mind because the view for where I am planning to put the camera may be obscured by a wet window. I may need to think of some alternative positions and/or possibly a back up camera of some sort in the hollow tree across from the deck.
     The taping is going miserably, in my opinion, but I tend to get bored easily. I am still having a hard time adjusting from the old fashioned tape recorders to the new digital ones that go all the way back to zero when you rewind, I hate that. So far, I hear owls, and crunching leaves, my cat pitching a fit to come inside, and trains, lots and lots of trains going by on the track across the river. I believe I liked the Sony brand better than the Olympus I exchanged it for but the Sony had no way to transfer audio to my PC without me actually taping on the computer. The quest for a good digital recorder for under $100.00 continues and the wait continues.