What’s New?

The answer around here, not much. We’re continuing work outside, landscaping, planting, and trying to get good grass in the pastures for the horses.

Speaking of horses, we haven’t had any Lodo pictures lately, so here’s the newest.

We call him the little Beach Boy because his mane, forelock, and tail are black, but he gets bleached blond tips from being out in the sun all the time. You might have to blow up this picture to see it.

We’re still watching him grow, although we’re a little distressed about Elphie, since she’s almost two years and he just turned five months, and there’s not a whole lot of difference in their sizes. Because of the perspective of this photo he’s not quite as big as he looks in comparison to her, but he’s still way closer to her size than he should be given her age. Plus, he’s a solid little fellow; when we pat him, we don’t feel any ribs or even fat, just a solid little guy.

The only thing that happened of any interest is that Tom broke his thumb, just in time for needing to get ready for guests we had over Thanksgiving. Tom is really embarrassed, because he didn’t even get a good story out of the happening. He was in San Ignacio and met two people he knows in front of the police station. They were walking in front of the station, right in the middle of town, talking, and he just slipped and fell into the two-foot-deep cement ditch that runs in front of the station. And it was on a Thursday morning, a week before Thanksgiving, so he couldn’t even pretend it happened when he was out partying in town!

He went behind the police station to hose himself off – he knew where the hose was from working there – and then rounded the corner and ran into our friend Escandar. He said Escandar took one look at him and asked what was wrong, and as soon as Tom showed him the thumb Escandar whipped out his cell phone and called his orthopedic doctor in Santa Elena, who took Tom immediately. He then sent Tom for x-rays, which showed that he’d completely broken the bone in the first joint of his thumb, which turned out to be a good thing because his thumb nail acted as a splint so a cast wasn’t necessary. He sent Tom home with some pain medication and instructions to keep the hand elevated. Tom, of course, had to finish his errands, so he came home with a very swollen, bruised, and sore-looking thumb, but he was then pretty willing to follow the doctor’s orders (except take the pain pills – they messed up his stomach). A week and a couple of days later and it looks a lot better, although it’s still bruised and swollen.

The only other “exciting” thing to happen is that we got a good long look at a male green honeycreeper in one of the tangerine trees. We hadn’t seen one before, and when we looked it up in the bird book it says it’s another uncommon sighting. It looks like what the Joker from Batman would look like if he were a bird. This website has some good pictures.

We also seem to have a hooded warbler nest right outside the kitchen window since we’ve had lots of baby hooded warblers fluttering around, and Dad seems to be in the habit of perching on the cage right outside the window and checking out what I’m doing in the kitchen. Aren’t they striking?