Mr. Nivose says:

In September we went out to Utah to visit Mrs. Nivose's parents. The drive from Fort Collins takes most of the day. We headed north out of Colorado and across Wyoming. Wyoming is empty, but it is fairly pretty. We stopped at Little America along the way which seems to be a usual thing for her family. We had some soft serve ice cream and looked at the stuff they sell to tourists. There's not a lot else along the road, though we did also stop at the Lincoln Highway monument. Which claims to be the only monument to him along his namesake highway. It's a giant Lincoln head on a tall stone tower. Plus info center and bathrooms (in a separate building, not in the head).




























Click here to see a few more pictures from the trip.

We stopped for lunch in one of the Highway towns and ate at a fairly unusual place. The sign said "eat at the Historic Blake House". I don't know who the Blakes were, but this was clearly a converted mansion. And mostly it served food you'd expect. Burgers, steak, chicken parm, etc. But all of the appetizers were asian standards. Spring rolls, wontons, potstickers, etc.

Mostly the drive was uneventful. We were listening to an audiobook of Wyoming stories, but it wasn't great.

Utah itself was sunny. Warm, but cool for the season. The grass hoppers were huge and Mrs. Nivose's parents have praying mantises in their yards. The bug zoo did not have a mantis this year, but we decided to not take any from the yard as there didn't seem to be so many.

The highlight of the trip might be the cowboy shooting. Mrs. Nivose's parents have a hobby of dressing up and going to shoot meets with replica fire arms. Here's a video of Mrs. Nivose firing the Cowboy rifle. In it you can also see her Dad dressed up a little.



There are more on our Youtube page.

Also, I got to shoot some skeet, which I really enjoy, though I am not very good at it.
While we were in Utah we also went to see The Voodoo Organist as he/they were playing a few towns over. It was a good set, but being in a Utah bar was a little weird. We chatted a bit after the show and picked up some CDs we didn't have yet.

On the way home we stopped again in Wyoming for lunch. Bypassing the fastfood Hawaian BBQ for a place that looked promising, but didn't pan out all that great. It was called Tetakawi which they claim means goat nipples or something.

In all it was a good trip, but my butt hurt from the car ride. And this time I took an extra day off so I didn't have to work the day after getting back. I do suggest that to any of you planning trips.

-Mr. Nivose


Mrs. Nivose says: We took a trip to Utah in August, right before school started up again, to see my mom and dad and their two cats. Somehow, we didn't manage to take any pictures of the cats, or of all the nothing we saw across Wyoming.

One of the days there, we went to the shooting range to try cowboy shooting. I was surprised by how close we stood to the targets. That made it really easy to hit them. We all took turns shooting pistols and a rifle, and we can all hit what we're aiming for (most of the time)! One of the ideas of cowboy shooting is to see how fast you can hit the targets in the right order. Dad and Mr. Nivose also shot at some clay birds. I think they had a good time doing that, but I hope I never have to depend on eating wild duck. Mr. Nivose looks right with a shotgun and should probably get one someday for all those clay birds (and zombies) he wants to shoot.


We also took a drive out to the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge, which is exactly what it sounds like it is. We saw these baby birds, but I don't remember what they are. (Mom, do you?)


There were pelicans, egrets, herons, ducks and other birds that I can't remember now. The water was a little low in some parts, so there weren't as many birds as there could have been. It wasn't migration season either. We did get to see some cool birds, though. I think I like the swallows the best.

Mr. Nivose and I took a side trip down to Ogden one night to see the Voodoo Organist play a show. He was surprised to see us there, instead of in Denver. He played a good show and it was nice to catch up with him a little.

Other than that, we poked around the mountain in mom and dad's backyard a bit. We were looking for cool desert bugs, but we really only found big grasshoppers and a spider or two. We tried to lure a big spider out of its web with a grasshopper, but had no success. We all played some lawn darts and board games and watched movies- just your general hanging out. It was a good visit, all in all.

For anyone driving across Wyoming on I-80: The Blake House in Rawlins was a decent place to eat. The menu items were a little unexpected- a mix of American and Asian food. The place we ate in Rock Springs was not awesome at all, but I don't quite remember the name. Tetikawa or something like that.


-Mrs. Nivose

Snow Day!

Mr. Nivose says:
It snowed last night!


To see more pictures of the snow, mostly from the cemetery, CLICK HERE.

It's not the most snow ever, but after last winter of there mostly being no snow on the ground, and how early in the year it is, and frankly me being very very ready for snow it turned out very exciting.
At the beginning of the week the weather reports were for chance of snow late in the week. But for the most part, unless the weather report says "too damn much sun" it's usually wrong. Predictions of rain and snow are more common than the actual rain or snow.
It snowed Thursday during the day. Pretty slow falling flakes, but nothing very heavy, and nothing with any chance to stick. Last night Mrs. Nivose was down in Loveland at another student's house making crafts for the BugZoo sale and when she was coming home it had started snowing and collecting some. And by this morning it was fairly clearly snow.
Like, for serious snow.
At this late point in the day a lot of it has melted already. There's still too much on my car to drive it with out clearing it, but chances are at this rate I won't need to clear it in the morning. On the other hand, it may snow more tonight.
Because it's so early a number of trees have dumped leaves on top of the snow, as you can see in the pictures. Many of the pictures being stones or other cemetery items I enjoy with or without the snow. One of the pictures shows the main car entrance to the cemetery and actually shows a mile long road lined with trees, though it's hard to make out.

I am certainly ready for snow. And I've certainly been happier today than I have been in some time. On the other hand, it's October and I would hate to miss the leaves changing and falling or have snow botch my Halloween. Our plan had been to go to the farm today to see the pumpkins that Mrs. Nivose's lab is growing. And while I would like to see them lightly covered in snow we were concerned about getting the car stuck in the mud at the farm. That's a common concern in the dry months, but the snow adds both water and cover to the mud holes.
We had a handful of other minor plans as well, but have instead elected to take it as a snow day. We have played some board games, and we sat on the couch for a while with blankets, hot cocoa, and a Magus (kitty) laying between my legs while we read. Mrs. Nivose read a book by Patrick McManus which is a collection of his humor articles from various outdoors magazines (beyond the 10 other books she is currently in the middle of) and I greatly recommend his writing (on Snowy days or otherwise), while I read Manchild in the Promised Land (which most of you wouldn't enjoy).
The roads are still a little snow packed. There was no plowing, just sanding. We may still venture out for the pumpkins, but likely as not we won't. It has been an excellent day of relaxing and walking in the snow. When we got back to the building we looked over the neighbor's fence for the pigs (previously unmentioned here I believe) but I did not see them. If this means they've gone away, were inside from the snow, or are currently ham and bacon (which I guess would incorporate the first 2 options really) I don't know.
Some of the pictures include the creek, which is really an irrigation ditch. In fact, most of the pictures I took were of the creek, but they looked the same. And some are of the small foot bridge that goes over it. As the ditch passes along the cemetery there are about 6 bridges over it of various sizes. But this little wooden one is the one we stop to kiss on.

-Mr. Nivose


Mrs. Nivose says: It started snowing last night while I was in Loveland crafting away with some of the other members of the entomology club. By the time I headed home, the roads had collected a coating of snow, but it wasn't very slippery. It was a slow drive home though, because there aren't many lights on the road between Loveland and Fort Collins and there was also a noticeable lack of roadside reflectors. So, I aimed at keeping the grasses a few feet to the right of the car, and that worked out pretty well. Once I got home, Mr. Nivose and I stepped outside for a few minutes to enjoy the snow together.

I really didn't expect it to be snowing this morning. It seems that Fort Collins really likes to play tricks with the snow. It'll start snowing really hard and I'll be excited about lots and lots of snow, then it stops after an hour. That's how things seemed to go last winter. This time it kept snowing into the afternoon, and that has made for a very pleasant day. Mr. Nivose stepped out onto the porch this morning to take pictures, then, when he came back inside, asked if I'd like to go for a walk in the cemetery and take pictures. I was off the couch in a second, getting dressed for the walk. (It turned out that I should have been a little more dressed than I was. An extra layer of pants and mittens instead of gloves would have made for a warmer walk.)

Fall has just started here, so many of the trees still have leaves, and many of those are still green. I think the leaves half covered in snow are quite pretty, so I took a few pictures of them.



I also saw a fox run along the irrigation ditch. It was a little jumpy about the traffic and kept looking back over its shoulder. Thin fox legs always strike me as an interesting contrast to the thick, bushy tail. Mr. Nivose missed the fox since he had wandered in the other direction to take pictures. I tried to get a picture of the fox, but it was too far away for my camera.

We saw several little birds on and under the pine trees in this area of the cemetery. I'm not sure what they were. Chickadees? Nuthatches? The were cute and made funny little bird peeps.


The cottonwoods in the field to the west of out apartment are still turning yellow. They look very sparkly when the sun sets and their leaves flutter in the breeze.



Mr. Nivose and I spent the rest of the day playing board games, and cooking up tasty things to eat and drink. Mom and Dad were supposed to be arriving sometime yesterday to pick up Heidi and Steve at the airport. I haven't heard anything, so I assume everything is going well for the travellers. I think they're all going to be very cold at the football game tomorrow.

-Mrs. Nivose

Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve

Mr. Nivose says:

This past June we took a trip to the Sand Dunes national Park:

http://www.nps.gov/grsa/planyourvisit/index.htm

It's well south of Denver and was quite a time of driving to get there. We drove past SouthPark along the way, and stopped for lunch at an Irish Pub who had a new cook. It took about an hour to get our food. Which is a long time for a Reuben.

Mostly the drive was slow and quiet. Steph drove, I napped sometimes. We listened to a good book. The scenery was pretty enough.

The park is at a higher elevation than Fort Collins, and I am starting to believe that I am prone to elevation sickness, a lot of times when we go for drives into the mountains I end up feeling unwell.

The Dunes don't make up the whole of the park. They are surrounded by hills, mountains and scrub land. The camp ground is just on the edge between the hills scrub and the dunes proper. But on the whole, the Dunes make for a huge area.
To see more pictures of the dunes and our trip Click Here.

In the spring the rain run off and the snow melt make a stream running between the camp sight and the dunes. The water and sand all seem kind of like the beach. The water is kind of chilly. Apparently, the system works that the water carries sediment out of the mountains and also from the dunes, and when it dries on the far side of the dunes the sand is blown back in by the wind. They say this process is constant, and is evolving the dunes themselves.

The first evening I remembered that starting a fire can be a bit of a trick, and I learned that cooking over a fire (but including a grill top) is quite a challenge with out utensils.

It's been a rainy year in Colorado, and it rained a bit on our trip. Which isn't so bad really, because I'm not sure how well I would take to the blistering hot sun and dry sand situation. However, it rained at night which prevented us from seeing the stars (which I suspect are an amazing view from the park, remembering what they were like in unpopulated Northern Minnesota). Also, it was cold. I was cold, clothed in a sleeping bag. I can't remember a time I've been cold in a sleeping bag, and I can't say I slept well.

The next day was on the Dunes themselves. After crossing the creek, which isn't very deep but was quite wide, we had an uphill climb. Most of our adventure was uphill it seems like, even a good portion of returning to the camp ground. Not sure how that works really, Dunes by M.C. Esher I suppose.

It was still cold when we started out. I had on a jacket and pants, proper long pants! Actually, it was quite cool for most of the time that we were out on the dunes. Toward the end, around lunch time I guess, I took off my jacket and rolled up my pant legs. And while I could have done with shorts, I wasn't so hot really. I got myself a bit of a sunburn on my forearms, which is more burn that I have had in 15 - 20 years. Steph got it a lot worse, but she spends a lot of time getting herself burned.

The dunes are a large rolling landscape of, well, hills of sand. Many of them are quite tall, and they're all more or less the same color. Perspective in the pictures is difficult to appreciate.

We brought my grandparent's ancient Bocce set, considering maybe playing out on the dunes. What we did do is roll them down one of steep dunes we were on the side of. At the bottom the "valley" made a bit of a bowl and they each in their turn rolled up and t the right and back down to rest. In some of the pictures you can see them and the trails they left. Though we rolled and threw them with different forces and angles they all stopped in roughly the same area. It was a very neat part of the trip.

On our way back to camp we walked along the stream. It was peculiar mostly because it lacked any aquatic life that I would expect in a steam of that size.

We had ourselves another fire and cooking adventure, and Steph made smores at some point.

The next and last morning we had to deal with a large number of people coming around the sites looking for one that was becoming free. It sounded as though the campground had been full that night and a bunch of people were turned away and so out early looking for sites.

Our drive home was again quite and slow. We stopped at the gator farm, more on that later, and ate at a tasty Mexican restaurant.

On the whole, the trip left me fairly drained, as long car rides will do. I can not possibly explain to you how completely unreal this huge track of giant sand dunes looks sticking out of the green scrub and rolling hills as the park comes into view. That might have been the most important part of the trip, just the unbelievable sites of that.

-Mr. Nivose


Mrs. Nivose says: At the beginning of June we took a short trip to the Sand Dunes. I had been there once before and really liked the place, so I wanted to share it with Peter. The sand dunes are in the San Luis Valley at the south/central part of Colorado. It's a little bit of a drive from Ft. Collins, but since there's just about nothing but mountains to look at on the way, I think it's a pleasant drive. We saw two bighorn sheep hanging out on the side of the road outside Fairplay. We also stopped for lunch in Fairplay at some sort of Irish pub. If we had known it was the cook's second day and the bathrooms weren't working, we'd have gone somewhere else. It was a very long lunch.

Eventually we got back on the road and made it to the dunes. It was a lot more crowded than I expected. We even went in the middle of the week, thinking it wouldn't be too crowded. Luckily we were able to find a campsite. We were just about to set up our tent when it started to rain hard. We sat it out in the car and before long it let up and we set everything up. Peter made a fire and we cooked some dinner over it. It's not easy to cook kababs over a fire without a lot of charring. Everything tasted good though. We were kind of cold and tired by then (it wasn't very warm and it was a little breezy), so we went to bed. The moon was somewhere over half full, so the night was very bright.

The next day we walked out onto the dunes. There's a trail from the campground to the dunes. The neat thing it that once you get to the creek and the dunes there are no trails and you can walk where ever you feel like walking. Medano creek is between the campground and the dunes. There's no bridge. I like to go barefoot and wade through it. The sand is soft and the water is cold at first, but not after a few minutes. The creek makes little waves as sand ridges build up underwater then wash away. I like this creek a lot.

I walked barefoot on the dunes for a good chunk of the day. I think it's more comfortable than getting sand in my shoes, but I did burn my feet pretty badly. The sand felt warm on top then cool below the surface. There are different colors of sand, and some of them are coarse, so I avoided those areas. My feet don't like standing on pointly little pebbles. Most of the sand is sand colored- various shaded of beige- but some is black. I think it has something to do with a high iron content.

We climbed up to the top of the first ridge. I think it was something around a 600 foot climb, meandering along ridges and sometimes straight up the slopes. It's hard work climbing uphill through sand. It's also a little disconcerting walking along a ridge with steep drop off on both sides. But it's wasn't really all that scary because I knew that if I fell over I'd just plop into the sand and stick and not go very far. We walked down some slopes that were acute angle steep, but really had to work at it. We sat on one of these slops and had lunch and threw bocce balls down it to see what would happen. They all ended up in about the same place. Once we got to the top of the first ridge, we found more sand dunes! We slowly meandered back to the campground, taking our time through the creek.

Later that afternoon, Peter found ice cream for us and we went to the Gator Farm (we'll write about that another time).

The Sand Dunes are a neat place. There is so much nothing there, and all the nothing is surrounded by 14,000 foot mountains that don't seem to look that tall. I guess that's because we were already 8000 feet up. I'd like to camp on the dunes someday. I hear it's spectacular when the moon is dark and there's nothing to see at night but the stars.


-Mrs. Nivose

Cat Sleep Over.

Mr. Nivose says: In April Magus's friend Slayer came over for a few weeks. Slayer's owner was in Europe and we took care of Slayer for the time. Slayer is a large black cat with a thick coat. She is absolutely beautiful, and kind of a brat. For her visit she was more or less good most of the time.
Sleepover is sniffing time:

To see more pictures from the sleep over, click here.

Slayer and Magus do not get along perfectly well. But they get on ok. They lived together previously and knew each other. Sometimes they play, some times they argue, mostly they stay out of each other's way. Although, Magus is more interested in staying out of Slayer's way than Slayer is at staying out of Magus's way. And Slayer would sometimes abuse this tendency to get good seats, bed, etc.

It was nice having another cat around. Though, mostly, like most cats, they didn't do very much. Slayer did spend some time in just about all the beds we've made for Magus around the house. And to prevent any arguments they each got as much food as they wanted the whole time.

We also brought them some crickets. one each, in a glass jar. It is really one of their favorite toys. There are some pictures of them figuring out how to work the jars, and then of Magus helping Slayer with hers after Magus's had been eaten.

-Mr. Nivose



Mrs. Nivose says: During Slayer's visit in April, Peter and I brought two crickets home from the zoo as a treat for the cats. Years ago I brought some grasshoppers home from work for Magus to play with and found out that she absolutely loves that game! So, we thought some crickets might be just as fun. We gave each cat a jar with a cricket inside. Magus investigated hers right away, reaching her paw around the jar and then inside. Slayer wasn't as excited, but looked at the cricket in her jar and sat down next to it and eventually started pawing at the bug. It wasn't long before Magus pulled her cricket out of its jar, caught it and ate it. Listening to her crunch down on bugs makes me shiver, because it's kind of gross. After eating her own cricket, Magus asked Slayer if she was going to eat hers. Slayer said she wasn't going to eat it, but did want to see it out of the jar. The cats pulled the cricket out of the jar and chased it around the living room for a while before Magus couldn't resist the treat any more and ate it.



Magus and Slayer get along surprisingly well. The visiting cat always feels a little out of place and hisses at the hostess kitty for a few days, but eventually they calm down and start sleeping in the same room. Sometimes they play together, running up and down the hallway or wrestling. Magus always seems a little sad when her visits with Slayer come to an end, so we either need to arrange more visits with Slayer, get another kitty, or both.

-Mrs. Nivose

Spoiled Kitty

Mr. Nivose says: Our cat Magus is quite spoiled. In addition to the two cat beds she moved in with, I've made her two cardboard box houses, a shelf near the window, a bed near that and we often make up our bed for her during the day. Furthermore, she'll use our bed whether it's made or not, steal our comfy chairs and spread out on the new couch.
Magus on the bed:

She doesn't usually like to be covered up, but sometimes she covers herself.

Click here to see more pictures of Magus

She likes a wide variety of human foods. Cheeses and butter. Mayonnaise, beans, olives, chips!, meats. We know this because of her on going taste tests.

She also likes kitty treats.

This month we've started taking her out on a leash. She wants very much to go outside, but when we take her all she does is sit around and eat grass. Exploring seems to come second.

Included in the pictures are two from a time when a neighborhood cat came up to the outside of our window. Magus was not impressed.

-Mr. Nivose



Mrs. Nivose says: One day while I was at work, Peter made a couple beds for Magus and placed them near the heaters. He makes new beds for her from time to time. Of the beds Peter has made for her, she probably spends the most time on the one next to the window, soaking up afternoon sun. She likes her cave a lot, too. We put the bed Heidi made under a cabinet and hung a towel over the opening so Magus could have a hiding place. She has to share it with cans of black olives though.

When Magus and I moved into Megan and Slayer's house, it wasn't long before Magus took over Slayer's bed on the living room chair. Magus liked the bed so much that Megan let her keep it and sent it along with us when we moved to Fort Collins. Here's Magus sleeping in Slayer's bed in our hallway.

I don't know why the bed ended up in the hallway. Right now it's in the living room next to one of Peter's bikes. Magus still sleeps in it frequently, but doesn't spend as much time in it now as she does on our bed or the rocking chair.

Magus likes taco chips A LOT, and comes running whenever she hears a bag crinkle, even if the bag doesn't hold chips. One night Peter and I made nachos for dinner and I made a special nacho for Magus. I topped a few chip fragments with half an olive and some cheddar- some of her other favorite foods. She wasn't as excited about the nacho as I thought she would be though. She sniffed it several times, nibbled at it a little, but mostly ignored it. I was a little miffed that she turned her nose up at her special nacho.


-Mrs. Nivose

Animals around the neighborhood.

Mr. Nivose says: Having been here in Fort Collins for about 6 months I've been surprised by the animals around. Ft. Collins is a fairly dense urban center. Slow traffic, people, more people when college is in session.
They've done some effort to maintain parks and natural areas. And, given the wacky water laws in Colorado it's best that they did or there would be no fishing.
Our apartment is in a good sized complex of 5 buildings with 8 units in each building. We are on a fairly large road, though north and west enough from the center of the city to minimize traffic.
Just to our south, across the road, is fair sized park like Cemetery. Beyond that is a nine hole golf course and just east of that is a pond and park. The pond-park is a decent walk from our house, but still likely contributes to the lack of housing and support for wild animals in our area.
Abutting our property to the north is a cow range of some type. It seems that the herd is a bit sparse for the amount of land, but I don't really know about these things. And to our west is a house that used to be a goat farm. Signs of goats are long gone, other than the large field behind the house which we can see from our porch.

All of this open/unused/quite space means that the deer in the area come through often enough. I've barely seen them this winter, but through the spring and fall we saw a fairly decent herd often, and there was a mother with two young that we saw almost daily:See more pictures of the deer by clicking here.
In the second picture in that album it's dark and you can barely make out the tree line and two sets of glowing deer eyes. The last picture is one of the few of a male deer I was able to get. His antlers are of a good size. He's laying down in the goat property next to a fence. Most of the pictures are of the mother, or the two young that visited us the most. The property has some apple and pear trees, and the deer were quite fond of them. They are not the deer I am used to in NH, I don't know, but due to their funny ears am assuming they are mule deer.

At the north edge of property is a fence that separates us from the cow property. The deer have no trouble jumping this. Beyond it is a small grove of trees, then a large irrigation ditch. After the ditch is the beginning of the cow pasture. Most of the time they are quite a distance out in the field. However, a few times this summer they came across the ditch and hung out in the trees. I have no idea why this is (shade maybe), but it made it possible to take pictures of them that were not just distant specs:

See the rest of the cow pictures by clicking here.
You can see how they were right up to the fence. And in some pictures you can get an idea of the grove and where the ditch is. Watching cows try to cross the ditch can be kind of funny. They are not especially nimble.
Earlier this winter I was getting the mail. It had recently snowed, but it was a warm day. In one of the piles of snow near the mail box I saw a bee:
I found it to be fairly interesting. Snow and bees are not something I usually see together.

There are a number of animals that we have been unable to catch in pictures so far. A branch of the irrigation ditch that the cows use cuts south through one of our west end neighbors property and runs along the cemetery into the golf course. It includes many crayfish, and sometimes little fry or minnows. It drys up sometimes too, but when it's muddy it has prints of most of the animals that live around. There is one or more fox that seems to live in the cemetery but crosses our parking lot to hunt in the goat field. We also see bats in the goat field and the cemetery.
A large tree about 20 feet from our porch houses a family of raccoons. I didn't see them when they are small - though little raccoons are one of the cutest things in the world- but I have seen them full grown investigating the pumpkin remains in the dumpster.
I have an eye for cats of course. I've seen a few just once. But two I see often belong in another building in our complex. They live upstairs from each other and their owners leave their windows open for the cats to come and go. Keep in mind Colorado has little in the way of mosquitoes. The downstairs one is all black - sleek and cute. The upstairs one is also all black, but he's quite fluffy. His name is Sphere - I know, I picked him up once and that's what his collar read. He's a little shy, but cats like me pretty well.

Living in trees in the cemetery are a handful of owls. We are uncertain if it is a mother and about 3 nearly grown young. Or if it is a bunch of adults living separately. This spring we might have a better idea if we find some of them are moved on. They also hunt in the goat field, but the cemetery itself seems to provide some small mice or moles or some such.


Owls are not the easiest things to take pictures of with conventional cameras, but you can see the rest of the pictures by clicking here.
The owls do perch on the headstones at dusk a lot. If this is watching for signs of rodents and small birds. Or just getting their head straight before hunting, I can't say. One time we were coming up on one and it took off. From a distance we could see a small rock or something on the gravestone. My first thought was that it was an owl pellet. And it actually turned out to be one. You can see it in the last few pictures in the album.
The owls can be tough to spot in some of the pictures. It's easier once you know they are there, but that doesn't help terribly does it?

I did see a toad once, near our porch steps. But that's about it for amphibians. Despite all the irrigation ditch, there's not a lot of frog around here. We saw some baby snakes at a trail up the road, but no awesome lizards or tarantulas. Might have to venture to the even dryer areas for that. Though, this summer we had a couple very large praying mantises around. Which I did not see regularly in NH.

-Mr. Nivose

Mrs. Nivose says: It's not uncommon for me to run into deer in the parking lot as I leave in the mornings. I see them less often now that it is winter though. Sometimes there are 6 or 7 deer passing through. Some have antlers! The apartment complex we live in has several fruit trees around the buildings, a big field to the north and west, and a cemetery to the south. In addition there is an irrigation ditch running through the cemetery and another through the field, so there is plenty for the deer to eat and drink. They seem to like the apples quite well. I would say that the deer aren't too afraid of us. They'll keep eating if we're watching from the porch. They aren't tame though and will run away if we get too close.

When I first moved in here (a couple of months before Peter got here) there were two baby deer. One of the neighbors said they were twins. They were very, very cute and had still had a few spots. One evening I had been out for a walk and saw the mama deer and one of the babies over in the cemetery. As I approached the apartment, I heard a noise that sounded like a mewing cat. It turned out the other baby deer had gotten separated from its mama and was crying. I had never heard a deer say anything before, so this was very interesting. It thought about coming over to see me, but in the end was too scared. I tried to tell it where its mama and sibling were, but I don't speak deer very well. They all caught up with each other eventually.

The little deer are much bigger now. I can't tell them apart from the rest of the herd.
I've also seen the deer play with the fox that lives in the field. They looked like they were playing tag.
I last saw the deer about the beginning of January. There were 3 or 4 in the field having breakfast.

The field to the north is intended for cattle grazing. A few times this past summer, the cows crossed the irrigation ditch and came right up to the fence bordering their field and our parking lot. Up close, these were certainly not the groomed cows of the stock show, but regular cows with poop on their back ends and flies buzzing all over them. I got up close to take some of the pictures. Some of the cows were camera shy and moved away, others didn't care. They were so very cow like. Cows have this look on their faces that make it look like they're incapable of processing any information beyond whether or not what they are seeing is grass. It's almost like I can look into their eyes and see the molecules moving between the neurons in their brains. Cows just look like they think slow.

Still, having a field full of cows behind the apartment is a lot more interesting than just having more buildings behind the apartment.

I mentioned earlier that there's a cemetery across the street to the south. It's full of big trees and is quite park like, and during the growing months, water flows through the irrigation canal. We talk walks through the cemetery fairly often. We usually see raccoon and deer prints in the mud along the canal, and at night we sometimes go shine flashlights at the crayfish. But we don't have pictures of those things. We do have pictures of one of the owls. I once saw four owls in the cemetery on the same evening, but usually we just see one or two. As best as I can tell they're great horned owls.

The owls perch on the tall headstones and in the trees waiting for little rodents. Sometimes the owls leave gifts of pellets on the headstones. We can usually get close enough to them to make out some of the markings on their bellies, but we can't get close enough for a really good picture. They're very quiet when they fly away and have a huge wingspan. Their eyes are big and round and their heads rotate to watch us watch them. It's really neat to live so close to these big owls.

We also had a raccoon family living in the cottonwood tree just outside our apartment. There were 4-5 babies this year and they were adorable! They'd follow their mama in a line, and climb into the fruit trees and make squeaky little noises. We haven't taken any pictures of them yet. Hopefully there will be more this year!

Ok, here's the wildlife roundup: Mysterious owls, adorable raccoons, playful fox, hungry deer, stupid cows, crayfish and various birds and bugs and bats we haven't gotten into yet. We'll stay on the lookout for more!

-Mrs. Nivose

Halloween 2008, Pumpkins

Mr. Nivose says: This past year Steph has been doing her graduate studies, and part of that involves farm work. Short story is that the farm grows a bunch of pumpkins to make mold to use the mold on other plants they are experimenting on. So there's more than enough pumpkins and we got a bunch free. The car wasn't full, but it was a lot of pumpkins to have in a Civic.
The week of Halloween we spent most evenings carving them. By Halloween we had not even carved them all. Some of them, as you have seen, became our Christmas tree.
My favorite was the small pumpkin I carved as a cat face:


You can see the rest of the Pumpkin pictures by clicking here.

Steph's camera, it turns out, handles the low light bright thing far better than mine. The blurry ones are from my camera, poor shutter speed or some such.

Some of the pumpkins were kept inside when carved, but most went onto the porch.
As you may know, I own more glow sticks than most people.
Glow sticks were safer and less of a hassle than candles. They worked well enough for the porch pumpkins that we could put in the back shadowy area. Additionally, most of the carved pumpkins that we kept inside were placed around the bedroom with glowsticks. I especially enjoyed the red and the blue, though I do not believe there are any pictures of that.
Many of the Pumpkins we had carved and left around the livingroom and kitchen were lit with candles. It's a nice glow and I like the look very much. But when it comes to sleeping, or putting outside in the wind there's a lot to be said for glowsticks. Plus the colors are so much fun.

We allowed our neighbors to take some of the pumpkins we brought home, there is one picture of 2 pumpkins in a hall way. Those were carved by our immediate neighbor Merrill.

It turned out to be fairly time intensive, and I was actually working a lot then. In spite of how much time it took I would say it was very worth it. By the end it was sort of an imagination drain trying to think up different faces. But I'd do it again in a heart beat. I hope to do it again this year.

That's really about all we did for Halloween. No party or adventure or anything really. Mostly though, it was enough.

And just this week (mid January) we've been throwing out a few uncarved pumpkins that are reaching the end of their non-mushy lives. Still a few left holding up though.

-Mr. Nivose


Mrs. Nivose says: We got the pumpkins from ARDEC. Some were the ones Kris (the lab manager) and I planted in early June and others were volunteer pumpkins from seeds left from the previous year's pumpkins. The pumpkins get planted to be used in mold studies on dry beans. Once the pumpkins are ready Kris bores a hole in them and adds a half cup or so of moldy birdseed which she had prepared earlier in the year. Once the seed has been added to the pumpkins, she spreads them around the bean field. As the pumpkins decompose, the mold works its way into the dirt. Now the field will already have mold in it and we can plant different varieties of beans and find out which are resistant to the mold. There were way more pumpkins than she needed so Peter and I took a bunch home- many, many more than I expected. We gave a couple to some of the neighbors, carved most of the rest, and the few that weren't carved ended up as our pumpkin tree.

We spent about 3 evenings carving the pumpkins and listened to some detective stories while we carved the pumpkins. I don't remember who wrote them, but some were better than others. Peter had lots of good ideas for the pumpkins he carved and I kept kept getting stuck for ideas. We lit them with glow sticks, but because it was cold outside, the glowsticks weren't as bright outside as they were inside. Some were very small and others were quite large. The small ones were very cute. It's very hard to make a scary carving, but cute ones are not so hard to do. We had them spread all over our apartment for a few days, then gradually took them outside as they broke down. Eventually we had to throw them away.

On Halloween night we lit some of the indoor pumpkins with candles, turned off the lights and took pictures. These are just a few of them, and one is actually a ceramic candle holder.


It was pretty fun carving all the pumpkins and seeing them everytime we came and went from home. I don't know if Kris is planning to plant more pumpkins this year, but I hope so!

-Mrs. Nivose

2009 Western Stock Show!!!!

Mr. Nivose says: We attended the 2009 National Western Stockshow in Denver CO. It's always in Denver, they built a huge complex for it. So far as I know it's the only thing the complex is used for. It's not a sports arena or anything. It's two large main buildings, one for livestock and one for horses. It's just off the Interstate, and part of the grounds are under the overpass. Instead of graffiti under the overpass they have tile mosaics that are stockshow themed; A big Blue Ribbon, LiveStock, Cowboys. And between them they have repeating tile patterns in "Western Colors".


You can see the rest of the underpass pictures, and the rest of the stockshow pictures in our album by clicking here.

The first thing we did when we got there (after taking pictures of the underpass and using the bathroom -long drive) was to head to the place labeled on the map for animal feeding. We didn't know if this meant that visitors got to feed the animals, or if it meant that visitors got to watch the staff feed the animals. We still don't. There wasn't really any feeding going on. The area was for the Future Farmers of America. It was a grouping of caged animals. A small calf, a goat, some pigs, bunnies, lots of chicken like things and some water fowl. The bunnies were cute, the birds were, well, they were birds. Though the black runner ducks were very entertaining. They stand straight up like people, not like normal ducks which are shaped like boats with legs.

There is a number or pictures of them, plus a small video we made of them posted on our youtube account which you can see by clicking here. They actually are shaped like the ducks I see upside down and skinless in Asian markets.
If you're into cute, I would suggest Steph's pictures of the bunnies, or my pictures of the chicks. Also in the mix of bird things there's some bird with a really long tail. I don't think it is a road runner or a phoenix, but I forget what it was.
After that we wandered through the agricultural displays. Took some pictures with a fake cow and a fake chicken. Saw the tiny dairy display they had to offer. I found that disconcerting, I understand most of the cows out here are beef cows, but still, there's a lot of dairy here too. What I decided in the end was that beef cows have a higher turn over - that is beef farmers have to buy new cows more often - that it was understandable that the dairy offering would be light.
We also talked to the bee guy for some time. I was interested in the idea of having one of those viewing hives for the bug zoo. It would have taken a lot of agreement from CSU, but ultimately what occurred to me was that the amount of pesticide/herbicide on campus would make it non-starter. The guy did tell us a little, though about all I remember him saying was
1: He eats a spoonful of pollen each morning. I don't remember why he does this, but I do remember that pollen is expensive.
2: The wasps were bad this year - attacking his hives (they steal honey and baby bees).
3: It's not that expensive to start your own hive, and it's cheaper if you can get a wild colony to move in and then replace the queen with a farmed one.

After the agricultural displays we were on our way to the petting zoo. Which was another high priority thing for us.
The Donkey was a little depressed looking, the LLamas (Alpacas?) were very over bearing. The Goats were ok, and the little ones were quite cute. One of the little ones was laying under the net that holds the hay that the goats eat from when they aren't being fed by visitors or eating your coat, this same little goat was covered in the hay that had been dropped (see picture in album).

Next we headed to the lower part of the building. Where they shear the goats and sheep. There's pictures of them in their little jackets after they are sheared naked, as well as some sheep with out jackets put back into their herd. If that's to help them keep warm by being pressed up against other sheep, I really don't know.
Later on, coming back through we saw that they had a room where they wash the sheep/goats before they shear them. It looks like a drive in car wash. Not a big automated one, but like the bays where you park and wash it yourself with the coin operated hoses.

Following the sheep we entered a larger room of cows. Lots of cows. The cows have a wash room too. We actually saw it before the goat wash. It's really funny to watch some dude scrubbing down a cow. This area was huge with cow after cow, though most of them were probably a year or so old. Young, but not tiny. Every stall that had a cow had a small vacuum looking thing that they used to blow the cows fur with. Person after person was blowing down the cows, or trimming them with eclectic shears. We did watch a few of the show-cow competitions where people bring in their cow and judges decide which is prettiest, or most cow-like, or really, I have no idea what they are judging them on.

Outside now we headed over to the stockyard where the large cows are kept. Last year there were signs for buffalo, but we didn't see any actual buffalo then or this year. There were lots of fliers that offered cow semen for sale (bull semen, technically, I guess). You'll understand that this was a funny thing.
The outside lot is HUGE. You can walk among the stalls, or up along a catwalk about 20 feet tall cutting through the middle of the stock yard. We did a little of both. Some of the pictures show the size of the yard, or the huge adjoining lot of pickup trucks (heh)(you could tell the pick-ups were people attending with livestock and not just visitors because they all had snow from the day before still on them). Some of the pictures show types of cows, or the ways that they were lined up.
A number of the pictures show the snow-cow that someone made next to their stall:We first saw it from the cat-walk, but had to go over to get a better look and take some pictures.

After that was the horse building. I don't really enjoy horses. There's some pictures of people riding around the warm-up rink, and some pictures of the judging/ribbon presentation we watched. Note the girl with out a horse being given first place. I have no idea where her horse went. We missed the actual riding event that we saw the score presentation for, so I don't know where her horse is or why it's not there. What you can't appreciate in the pictures is how unbelievably shiny many of the outfits of the women and girls had for riding horses.
In the horse building there were also a number of 8 or so foot tall metal windmills (decorative) just like the one my grandfather has had in his lawn for years.

That was about the whole of it. It goes on for more than a week, but we only attended the one day. It's probably not especially different day to day. On certain days (weekends especially) they do more show-based things. Rodeo stuff- bronco busting, cattle roping, etc. What they also have is "Mutton Busting". Mutton Busting, as I understand it is children doing a bronco riding like thing of sheep. I'm sure it's an absolute hoot to watch. But the weekend are likely too busy for my tastes, and the shows during the week are usually in the evening.
Additionally there were tons of people selling stuff. The big sponsors, like Jack Daniels, as well as companies selling big pick up trucks (Toyota and Dodge especially as I remember). Plus people with farm equipment, horse trailers, and other such stuff. More so there were huge sections of westernwear, leather goods, cowboy hats, a whole booth of belt buckles*, ribs and other BBQ food, junk for kids (plastic hats and guns). One huge booth was western furniture. Lots of leather couches, tables with legs made of steer horns, lamps with feet made out of spurs, stuff like that.

What they don't seem to have, which I am used to back east is Cow-Pie-Bingo. Which, if you don't know what it is, is basically an area of ground sectioned into a grid of small squares. You put down money for a certain square (C6 for example) and you get a ticket. If the cow wandering around that area craps in your square you win money. Not that I play, I'm just surprised it's missing. There was, after all, no shortage of cow shit.

-Mr. Nivose


Mrs. Nivose says: Last weekend we decided we wanted to go to the stock show and settled on going on Monday when it wouldn't be as crowded as on a weekend. It snowed a little Sunday night and Monday morning and there was enough of a wind that it was pretty cold outside. I think that made it even less crowded that day. (Magus is very sure she needs to be on my lap right now, helping with the writing.) We went to the stock show last year, but didn't take a camera.

The National Western Stock Show happens every January and lasts for about three weeks. I am still not entirely sure what all goes on. I know there is livestock judging and subsequent auctions. There are a lot of advertisements regarding breeding, so maybe the ranchers make arrangements to make more cows. There are also rodeos, but we didn't go to any rodeos. We did watch a little bit of cattle judging and some sort of horse riding competition. The horse riding was not very exciting. It wasn't like rodeo style barrel racing where the riders and horses look like they're going to fall over when they loop around the barrels. During this contest the riders barely got their horses to a trot, did some weaving around cones and came to a stop in front of the judges. It was very slow. All the female riders wore sparkly outfits. In the end, I'm not really sure what it was all about.

We also watched a little bit of the red and black Angus judging. I'm not sure what factors were being judged, but the weight per day for each animal was announced, and the cattle handlers had thin sticks to make the cows stand a certain way. It seemed like the handlers wanted the cows to be stretched out with their feet lined up. It was like cow modeling. It was even more like cow modeling when we went 'backstage' and saw how the cows were fluffed before judging. The cows were washed and blown dry and even combed and trimmed with clippers. It was really funny to see big rancher dudes walking around with hairstyling tools in their back pockets and fussing over cows hairs being out of place.

I think our favorite part is the petting zoo. I really like the little goats. I don't know if they're just really young or if they're just some sort if mini breed. They're really cute, but hard to feed because the bigger goats butt in so much. I think the animals in the petting zoo are far more interested in eating than being patted. It's too bad the ducks are fenced off. I would like to pet them. I'd also like to hold the bunnies, but they aren't even part of the petting zoo.


-Mrs. Nivose



*OK, I made up the belt buckle booth. Perfect plausible none-the-less.

Bug Zoo! With Pictures

Mr. Nivose says: Steph's school has an entomology club. We joined it, and volunteered for Bug Zoo duties. The Zoo is a small room a little bit wider than a closet with cages and tanks of various bugs*. Currently they are all shelved on one long wall. The other long wall contains empty cages and related equipment. The door is on one narrow wall with room left only for a currently unused large aquarium (literally an aquarium, set up for water - as apposed to a glass tank containing terrestrial life). The far end's narrow wall has a shaded window and a large shelf for gear/equipment/notes.

More than half the wall of cages is Tarantulas. One to a cage.

That's Steph holding Rosie.

We have an album of more pictures here LINK TO GALLERY. Including more pictures of us holding Rosie. Rosie is a Rose Haired Tarantula. So named I assume because of the reddish color on their backside (not that you can see it well in any of the pictures). It has been mentioned that with a name like that many pet Rose Hairs are named Rosie. She is pretty docile, we don't handle most of the Tarantulas. But we do feed them live crickets every week as well as water them.
Some eat more than the others, but most are a little slowed down now (for the winter I assume).

Last week when we went in one of the Tarantulas had molted! It was the first time in the months we've been doing this that I'd seen it. We took down his cage to feed and water him and...there were two of him. There's a couple of pictures, including an underside so you can see his teeth, as well as one showing the hatch in his back that opens. It was quite an amazing time.

One of the Tarantulas is a BirdEater. It is quite big. I believe it was Shiloh-chan's previously. Many of the bugs are donated pets. There's a couple of pictures of the BirdEater, including one with my hand outside the tank for scale. It's the most likely of the tarantulas that we have to eat it's cricket right away.

A couple months ago we lost both of our WolfSpiders (they died, they didn't get out and wander the school), which are not web makers. They look and act a lot like small tarantulas (which makes them fairly large spiders nonetheless). They also would eat as soon as dinner was served.

There are also a large number of Widows. Western Widows though, not casually distinguishable from Black Widows. It is a tiny bit unnerving to open their jars and feed them crickets. But it mostly goes well. It's hard to over come the idea that what they really want is to get out and bite me. But part of tending all the bugs is misting the cages. And the mister is a good way to herd any Widow that isn't just running scared to the bottom of her cage. We don't actually have any pictures of them, but in the one picture of the room itself you can see in the middle a hamster cage - sawdust, weave nest, water bottle, hamster wheel. In that cage is a Widow. She's also the most regular eater of the half dozen or so Widows that we tend. It's actually quite entertaining. She also seems to rest in the hamster nest ball.

The rest of the Widows are in glass jars of various sizes except for one that is in a canister for tennis balls.

Our scorpion died earlier this month. In the few months we were tending him he wasn't eating much, and rarely came out of his coconut home. In the gallery there are pictures of me holding him after he died, as well as one of him (dead) in his cage with his coconut. Before he died it was pretty clear that he wasn't doing well. Also he had recently had a trip to Reno, and just possibly he partied a little too hard there.

Just this week our Praying Mantis also passed. She was beautiful and huge. She had been my favorite bug for a while, and while it is sad to loose her it is notable that December is quite late for a Mantis to survive to. She molted twice while we had her, she was quite small when we got her late this summer. It's amazing how huge she got as a final stage adult. She also had quite an appetite and was better fed than any of the other cricket eaters. Many times she would eat her whole cricket while we were still there attending to other bugs and I would give her another which she would start on right away. The pictures in the Gallery of her are when she was not quite dead yet, but no longer able to stand. We didn't name her, but she'll always be special to me.

As numerous as the widows and tarantulas may be. They are easily outnumbered by the two types of roaches. The discoid roaches (pictured in the gallery enjoying their fruit) and the Hissing Cockroaches.


That's me holding a Hissing Cockraoch. They're actually a lot of fun. They're large and cranky, well, they Hiss. They don't seem to crazy about being picked up, but they are kind of lazy and once you have them they won't do much to get away or help you once you are done holding them. They hold on surprisingly well for bugs their size.

The discoid roaches are if anything even more fond of their food. Both types also get small dashes of fish food. The discoid roaches are used for racing in childrens outreach programs. There's a small cage of painted roaches that the kids get to pick out and race. They are quite quick.

One of the most amazing bugs is the millipede, he's huge! There's more pictures of him in the gallery, to get a good idea of the scale of him. The past two weeks he's been very thirsty and has come out when we've misted him. He drinks for a long time. Being from out of state I can understand this, it is very dry here. He holds on to things very very well. I've not seen him move as quick as you might expect him to be able to. But he has a small cage, so it might be tough to get up to speed.

There's a couple of cages of beetles. One picture of them. They like their food very much. One of the cages also has grubs and little beetles.

Steph and I also pop-in on Holidays when we can to make sure everybody has holiday cheer and gets a little extra food if they've already finished what they've got. Otherwise there's 2 feedings a week. We do the Tuesday one, which is also cricket day. On Fridays it's just fruit and water.


-Mr. Nivose


Mrs. Nivose says: We joined the entomology club at the start of the school year mainly to help take care of the bugs in the zoo. We also though it would be a good place to keep bugs we caught since we don't really have room for them at home, but we haven't caught a lot of bugs yet. I don't know a whole lot about bugs, but it is fun watching them and getting to know them.

There's not a whole lot of variety in the bug zoo- mostly tarantulas, roaches and black widows. Too many black widows in my opinion. But there's also a wind scorpion which is a small spider (not really a scorpion) that lives in southern Colorado. They burrow under the sand. I never see the wind scorpion out and about in its cage, so I have no idea if it is still alive. There were two, but one died before it was moved into a cage. We didn't take a picture of the wind scorpion because there isn't really anything to see.

There have been other spiders, too. There was an orb spider for a few weeks, but it died. It had narrow brown and white stripes all over its body. There were two wolf spiders for a while, but they also died. They were fun to watch at feeding time. Peter would throw the crickets into their cages and the wolf spiders would see the crickets and pounce on them so fast! A lot of spiders only live for a year or two, so it's not a big surprise that they often don't live long in the zoo. A wolf spider crossed our path once when Peter and I were hiking in the hills around Horsetooth Resevoir, and once at night when we were out looking for frogs in Boulder. They're pretty big spiders. Not tarantula sized, but leg to leg, easily bigger than my palm.

The black widows (Whitney says they're actually Western Widows- a close relative of the black widow) are my least favorite. I think we had 8 in there at one point and are now down to 5 or 6. One of them was a male that Peter caught near the laundry room of our apartment. We didn't know what it was at first because the males have a different color pattern than the females, but the people in Whitney's lab identified it for us and we left it in the zoo. We watched one of the widows get very, very big, then she got smaller and smaller and now she's dead. So, they seem to life out their life span then die. We keep a close eye on them though to make sure they haven't laid eggs. The last thing we need is an infestation of baby widows. Peter feeds and waters the widows. Sometimes I will give them their squirt of water, but usually Peter takes care of them. When he starts feeding these spiders I get either hot or cold and slightly nauseated. I'm more comfortable around them than I used to be, but still prefer to stay away from them.

The spiders get fed crickets, and we put water in their dishes and mist their cages. The tarantulas don't like being misted very much and start running away from the mist. The smarter ones run into their little houses. The roaches, millipede and darkling beetles eat fruits and veggies- mostly apples, oranges and cabbage- and get water and mist as well. I like the darkling beetles. They just sort of clunk around in their cage, crawling over everything and falling over. The seem to spend their time eating, crawling around and trying to mate. Judging from how many baby darkling beetles there are, I'd have to say that a lot of the mating works out for them.

The hissing roaches are pretty boring. They hiss sometimes and that's about it. The discoid roaches are a little more entertaining and I think they're cuter than the hissing roaches- at least when they're adults and have wings. The discoid roaches run very fast and get very excited about their food. They also burrow into the ground stuff of their cage. Other than that they don't do much.

Sometimes the bugs go on trips. Some have been to Reno, some have been to the local farmers market (touch the tarantula for free if you buy something!) and there are other outings to schools and fairs.

I like feeding and watching the bugs with Peter. It continues to be fun to get to know these creatures together.

If any of you come visit we can take you to the zoo!

-Mrs. Nivose


*I am using "bug" in the vulgar - anything generically creepy crawly- and not in the scientific "true bugs" of the order Hemiptera, nor in the sometimes argued "just insects" context.