our yard mother

Last year we had a yard rabbit. He used to pretend to be a rock but I was onto him and eventually got so he would let me get about 6 feet away from him. This year we have a killdeer. She has what passes for a nest - I'm sure she's very proud of it but its just a depression in the ground to everyone else. She blends in pretty well too, maybe even better than the rabbit did. We're guessing that the female is a lot more trusting than the male. They both look identical to us but there is definitely one of them that is much easier to approach than the other one. Most of the time the quieter one is on the eggs but once in a while it is the other one. The quiet one will let us get about 8 or 10 feet away but the other one gets excited as soon as we come out of the bus (about 30 feet away from the nest).

We've been slowly packing stuff up in the house. Its hard to feel any pressure but we are making headway. Today I got the waterbed drained; tonight I'll take it apart. We'd like to get started doing some work on the master bedroom because it is clearly the room most in need of TLC. I got a call out of the blue this week from some woman who is about to graduate from the RCMP academy and has been told she will be posted to Nipawin. We've been hoping to get a tenant that we could trust who would keep the undesireables away from the yard. I guess we wouldn't do much better than a cop. I don't think there's a whole lot of decent rental accomodation in Nipawin so maybe we have a chance of renting to her. Time will tell.

Marilyn got an email from Alison today saying that she has the OK to hire Karla. We tried to phone her this afternoon but couldn't get any answer. We'll try again tonight. Alison has already sent her an email but she doesn't check it real regularly so she may not know yet.