Echo heard from Elgin IL?

Don't quote me here, but rumor has it Frannie thought about saying the 's' word again. Please say it ain't so.

Driving north through the forests Wednesday, a doe or two were foraging together off the sides of the highway, very small clutches of young turkey hens a bit further down. It's full rut for the bucks right now, so the deer are much more visible to the humans for now. Fortunately, the runners have seen the "GeWiZ" van before I have spotted them. They come out of the forest trees at quite a run sometimes, and then ... "oooops ... what is this hard strip crossing my path?" ..... It's different than their hopping like a bunny through the fields -- it's a full blown fight or flight dash for their life.

There was about 6 - 8" of snow on top of vehicles coming south leaving the Chequamegon, but no snow to be seen anywhere on the ground in any of the four forest's floors. But schools had a snow day up by the border already.

Torpor is all goofy this season. Torpor is the type of hibernation coonies utilize. It is not sleeping for several months and then waking up like a bear does. They sleep according to the weather pattern. When it gets cold, they curl up in a ball or snuggle together, and sleep. When it warms up, they come down and eat. In the winter they eat snow for moisture if necessary. But they still love their open water if any is available.

Snow does kick Torpor in for long periods of time. Nip & Tucker didn't come down for nearly a month the year we had blizzard after blizzard. They had no interest in food even if I went into the Coondo and offered it to them by hand up in the cubby. Just not interested and groggy. Perhaps one year we can get an infrared CoonCam set up for the cubby in the winter. I'd be quite curious to see what they do up there, or if all they do is sleep.

Here's more info about Torpor if you're curious.
http://library.thinkquest.org/TQ0312800/torpor.htm

Today we are bringing in one of the release site mini-coondos to make a more compatible Torpor setting for Hiway and Shazbot. Hiway is getting very big, but still can't climb too high without falling. Even with the CoonCam down, I can hopefully still post video clips here on the blog.

Benjamin & Lillian are up several times a day yet. They have done well and are ready for their Big Adventure now. But they are going to need to winter over for a while. They would not do well being in this state and attempting to find somewhere to safely sleep. I hope all the other orphans in the forests now have found a winter sleeping spot. They have hundreds of gnarly trees to find hollows in. i think of them all often.

Frannie thinking about saying the "s" word? Call me crazy, but that lets me know I better be ready for snow. :^)