Monday night, as I did chores, I heard the voices of the night. Here we have two coyote packs, one to the east, and one to the west. I heard them calling as I went out to take an extra bucket of feed to the little birds, and I stopped to listen. After a minute, they grew silent. Then as I trudged along, I heard one lone coyote begin to howl for his friends. I could tell he was moving in the wild area to the west, across the road from our yard. This undeveloped area is a run for them, and he was searching. Keith came out and I cautioned him to listen, and we heard him, trotting along and stopping to howl. Soon, we heard the answers as they all began to move off. I looked at Keith and told him that there were many little wild animals (and coyotes) that would not survive the storm.
This is what the yard looked like yesterday as the wildings frantically fed the first of about four buckets of feed we put out in the morning:
As you see, it was early, and there is no snow on the deck as yet.
Inca and Tony hunkered down in their barn, with Aztec behind them. We moved the hay buffet clear to the barn on Monday night, as we felt we would be doing well to keep everyone fed adequately.
Several hours later, there was a sizable amount of snow blowing and drifting, and we could not longer see our neighbor's big ponds clearly.
The kitchen took on the signs of a war zone with buckets, boots, waterers, etc. everywhere... and the coats flung across the chairs.
While Keith, who made trip after trip to check on the animals during the storm... .while the Princess sat on her throne ensconced with her followers most of the day, because She fell the night before... watched tv.... and finally Keith had to lie down and rest for a bit with his special chest warmer, Gertie.
And the snow kept mounting until the deck looked like this at 7:
While I watched endless news:
Then we discovered that SNOW had come in through a window I had left slightly open:
Showing how very hard it was blowing by then
(I heard about this, believe me!)
But this morning, Groundhog Day, dawned clear and sunny. The llamas were covered in snow and ice, but okay. Once their hay buffet was cleaned off, and they had their feed bowls uncovered, they were fine, and ran and jumped and kicked their heels to be up and out of the barn.
Punxatawney Phil says spring is on the way! YAYYYYYYY!
But the best part is, we found someone to clean the driveway and he did in 15 minutes what I took 3 hours to do the last storm, and would not have been able to do with this amount of snow!
