A Tale of Two Squirrels

The Sun is shining brightly here in Chaumont, N.Y. this morning. The night time temperatures have been around 24 to 28 degrees for the past week or so. That is decidedly cooler than my recollection of last year.
I am getting a bit tense because I have had no freelance work this month except a small paying guitar gig that was nothing more than a trial event at a seasonal restaurant. That would be J Fins in Sackets Harbor. I wanted them to try me out and it turned out god. They plan to have me play there next Spring/Summer season.  I lost out on one lcrative freenlance job a couple weeks before election day. It was a political rally for NY Senator Bill Owens. It took place in Alexandria Bay. The NY State teachers union asked me to cover it, but, because it was on a Friday evening,  I had to photograph football for the Post-Standard. Working Friday nights for the paper is terrible for me. It means I have a conflict shooting Friday evening weddings. Also, many brides like for me to go to the wedding rehersal which is almost always on the Friday evening before the Saturday wedding. So that's a hassle. I wouldn't mind working Friday days (which I used to do!) But working nights on Friday means I get to bed late on the night before I photograp[h a wedding. This just leaves me overly tired. Also, from a musical stand point, I have turned down numerous friday night guitar gigs because of my Post-Standard schedule. I hate it.

Young grey squirrel I caught in a live animal trap. After catching him I went up to repair the hole he used to enter our house and discovered the remains of the squirrel in the lower photo.

 Recently there has been a squirell running around in our house. We heard him inside the walls and ceiling.
So I set out a live animal trap and captured the critter in the above photo. Since then the noise seems to have stopped, so we assume he was the culprit. I drove him  eight miles away and released him. There is a hole in the eaves next to the chimney at our house where he probably got in. Back in the Spring I saw an adult squirrel enter in and out of that hole. The ladder I had on hand would not get me close enough to repair the hole. My longer ladder was in town at one of my apartment houses. I was anxious to be rid of the squirrel so I took a shot at him with my Gammo air rifle. It seemed that I hit him, or at least scared  the wits out of him because he leaped in the air and dashed back into the hole in the eves. A few days ago I finally got my long laddr back here and climbed it to close up/repair the hole and a peek inside with a flashlight revealed the remains of the squirrel in the photo below. How macabre!

Remains of a squirrel that I assume was living in my house, running around the attic. I suspect he the one I shot with my air rifle. Months passed before I got up there to close up the hole and discovered the carcass.

Christmas On Bear Mountain

I was a huge comic book fan when I was a kid. My older brother A & I had quite a collection. The DC heroes were among our favorites. That would be Batman, Superman, Hawkman, Aquaman, The Flash and more. I also liked the Disney comics, particularly Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse. I gave my comic book collection to my son to read when he was a teen. He liked them a lot. But I never saw them again. What became of them after him I have no idea. With one exception: A Donald Duck comic from 1947 with the story Christmas On Bear Mountain. I do not remember where I got my copy of it. It was published in 1947, a few years before I was born.

As comic books go it wasn't worth a lot because the cover was missing. It was also well worn from many readings over the years. However, it was my favorite. The story and art were done by Carl Barks. He created some of the greatest comic book stories of all time. So, when I passed my collection to my son I held on to that particular one. I kept it in a desk drawer.

When I bought my home in Chaumont, NY the desk and comic book came along with me. The house was in terrible condition and it took an entire year for me to get it into livable condition. All of that time my belongings were stored in the garage. That was twenty years ago and the desk never did find it's way into the house. So it and the comic book remain in the garage. Over the years I would regularly take the comic book out and look at it. Last Winter I pulled it out and gave it a read. Still like that story. I always meant to one day make a digital copy of the book just for a back up.

Then one day I opened the desk drawer and what do I find? Mice got in there and chewed it all to pieces. The photo is exactly how it appeared when I opened the drawer. What a bummer! However, the internet being what it is I can find a replacement. It has been reprinted more than once over the years. But mine, rough as it was, was a 1947 issue.

Cleaning The Chimney

I live in the village of Chaumont, NY. IT is located ten miles from the Canadian border. So it is quite a northern community. As such, the temperatures have diminished the past few days of September, reminding us that the REAl COLD WEATHER OF wINTER ISN'T THAT FAR OFF. So... today I cleaned our wood stove chimney. This Winter will be the fourth one in which we have burned wood in a wood stove. So the sove & chimney are relatively new. The first two Winters I did a visual check of the chimney and dismanteled the stove pipe that leads into the chimney at least three times during the heating season. It was SO CLEAN and free of creasote that last Winter (3), I didn't take it apart for a cleaning. I did do several visual inspections of the chimney though.



Anyway, today I took a brush to the chimney and dry scrubbed it pretty thoroughly. I had a plastic bag attached to the base of it to collect all of the dislodged soot. What you see in this photo is the entire amount of what came out of the chimney. This is from an ENTIRE heating season in which we burned about 14 face cord of wood. The stove pipe inside the house was equally clean with littled build up of ash or soot. So we will continue this Winter as we did last year: Start each day with a HOT fire, feed it as needed through the day, ocassionaly letting it burn hot. About once a month do a visual check looking up into the chimney and leave it at that. So it is that we begin to prep for Winter here in the North Country.

More From My Neighbors Bedroom

These are some more snaps I took of an upstairs bedroom in a neigthbors house down the street from me in Chaumont, NY. He passed away some time ago & his home is being sold in a tax auction.

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Some days, like today, I wonder what the point of it all is. I'm sleepy, it is late, I may as well go to bed. Tomorrow I go to Teaism in Clayton, NY to p-lay some guitar during luch hour. Roughly 11:30- 1:30. Might be 12-2. It is a loose affair. What will come of it in the end?

I am a landlord and every 30 days I collect some rents. I am a newspaper photographer (really not the same as a photojournalist). Every 7 days I collect a paycheck. I am a guitarist and once in a while someone pays me to play my instrument. I also teach guitar and 2 days a week a few students pay me for a half or an hour of my time. A couple of times a month I manage to land freelance photography jobs. In my off time I practice guitar, try to keep up maintanence on my home in Chaumont and my rental units. Cars too. Today I spent most of my time stacking fire wood.
So that is life in the North Country.

Gas At $3.99 A Gallon

It is April and gas has hit this price in Brownville, NY. About ten miles from my house. Here in Chaumont it is $3.96/gal. This is an outrage. I am convinced this is a scam or ploy being played upon the American people by business & government. I say that because of speculators in the commodity markets and government policies are driving up the price of oil. How would it be if the air lines were shout down following a horrific crash that killed three or four hundred people? That would be ridiculous because accidents happen. The big ones are fairly rare. We are told that the number of crashes & deaths are incredibly small compared to the number of miles flown world wide, year in, year out.
Well why did our government halt all US oil drilling for at least the next 7 years after the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico when thye BP drilling rig exploded? Isn't that overkill? Sure it was terrible, but let's get real. World wide there have been billions upon billons of barrels of oil pumped for how many years? In the past 50 years it is a number that would be incomprehensible. There have been a handful of oil spill disasters. The accidents compared to the prodution numbers are miniscule. The United State is the ONLY country in the world that is not drilling for new oil.

For the past 3 years I have been watching the price of oil. It affects me. I cannot stand it. On January 20, 2009, Innaugeration Day, as Obama was sworn into the presidency oil was $45.00 a barrel. The price of gas well under $2.00 a gallon. Today the price of oil slipped back to $106.00 / a barrel. A few days earlier it was $110.00

Don't forget, the price of oil affects much more that the price of gas. How about home heating oil? For most of the 20+ years I have been living in Chaumont the price we paid fro fuel oil has been around $.89 cents to maybe a $1.19 a gallon. We use about a thousand gallons a year. When it went to 1.50 a gallon our heating bill went up by $500.00. Ouch! In 2007 it was well over $2.00 a gallon. Our heating bill was going well over 2 thousand dollars. In 2008 it was climbing up over $3.00 a gallon. I simply could not afford a 3 thousand dollar fuel bill. But I had no choice. However, we installed a wood stove as a supplement, not a primary heat source. With the combination of oil & wood we have managed to keep our heat bill to about $1,500.00 Otherwise it would be well over 3 grand. In Summer of 2009 (Obama's first Summer in office) we paid $1.99 for a gallon of home heating oil. # weeks ago when I bought some it was $4.00 a gallon. The HIGHEST, HIGHEST price EVER. That would be a $4,000 heating bill for the season if that price heald & we didn't have the wood stove. And believe me, we keep the thermostat LOW!. There are millions and millions of people in this country in the same predicament. How can we absorb such an increase? And Obama has tha audacity to say that the people really wouldn't be bothered by the price if it rose up slower. He was talking about gas at the time, but has he & everyone else overlooked the home heating oil crisis? And BTW, natural gas in not available where I live.

The Syracuse Symphony Orchestra has filed for bankrupcy and will be dissolved. This event is happening in their 50th anniversary year. Among the problems they have had was a 23% decline in ticket sales in the past 36 months. Is it any wonder? When one's heating bill rises from $1,500.00 a year to $4,000.00 a year, and one's income stays the same or goes down (as my income did)there's not a lot left for concert tickets.

I lay the first round of high oil prices squarely on George Bush. I blame the current problem squarely on Barak Obama. Obama halted the drilling, no one else.


Obama has said more than once that we NEED higher prices to change peoples behaviors. So he WANTS higher oil prices. How can I change my behavior any more? Move south? Shut the oil furnace off all together? The following video clip is him talking about electricity. He wants that to rise too. What am I supposed to live on? Sawdust and ashes left over from the fire wood?


Here is a video of Barack Obama talking about rising electric rates m

Day Fourteen

It's been absolutely beautiful here in Chaumont, NY today. I cannot remember when we have had March weather like this. I have been outside all day working on the wood pile, consolidating it, making it smaller. Cleaning up debris from it. All day there have been a steady stream of geese flying overhead. These are not great photos as nature photography goes, but they are what fall into my category of personal snapshots.