A Covid Christmas Tree Hunt

It's early December and at this point our assumption is that Christmas is cancelled. At least from the point of view of having people over. This means no big Christmas dinner, no Christmas fondue and it's looking like no family visits at all. Barb and Reg usually come down for Christmas but there is a travel ban in place with rising numbers and little hope that it will be removed. We may still decide to self quaranteen in advance and risk it but I think people are leaning towards a quiet Christmas. Just because there aren't people coming though doesn't mean we don't still need to get a tree.

We planned our traditional tree hunt at Dogwood Christmas Tree Farm. Unlike many places they decided against trying to do any sort of reservation system for your visit. That's probably okay since everything is outdoors. It was busy but easy to physically distance. The other change was that they had no food or hot chocolate to purchase and of course masks everywhere. We got another Noble fir and aptly named it Henry after Doctor Bonnie Henry. It's not a celebrity tree like last year but we still got close to what looked like a Hallmark movie shoot at a nearby farm. It was either a bigger production or they were shooting multiple movies. All using the same farmhouse and gazebo of course. 

 

A Very Covid Halloween

This year's halloween project was a proper chiller for my smoke machine. Smoke machines superheat a liquid and blow it out. The heated smoke tends to raise and spread everywhere. If you can chill it below ambient temperature however it will stick close to the ground. I had previously thrown together something simple with a five gallon pail but envisioned something fancier. The end result was a box with holes coming out of skull heads with the smoke machine, ice and blower fan all encased inside. The box was meant to look like a crypt and had a dog skeleton on top. It worked quite nicely and was a hit with the everyone walking by.

This of course was 2020 and the year of Covid so Halloween was very different. Doctor Bonnie Henry did not explicitly say no however she encouraged a physically distant Halloween. This mean avoiding kids having to come to your front door and making sure you made every effort to keep six feet distant. One of the popular projects online was a candy delivery system. I briefly considered doing something that I could use in future years but in the end only had time to create a simple candy chute with some PVC pipe. It worked okay but wasn't quite big enough and due to lighting issues, many kids didn't notice it. The ones that did though liked the idea of having candy thrown at them through a pipe. I think I even got some day time trick or treaters that didn't intend to try to get candy. Their parents were very excited their kids didn't have to get too close.

It was definitely not a normal year. We had 160 last year and this year we only got 50 kids. Carter went out and found it very difficult to find houses to trick or treat at. The number of homes participating in our neighbourhood was already down and now people had a further excuse. I hope things rebound next year. I'll have to start thinking about what my next project is going to be. The yard decorations definitely help us bring in more kids than most people on our street.

 

Raine the Bunny in Trouble

Since the spring we've had at least two bunnies living in our back yard. We're pretty sure there were two because they seemed to be different sizes. It was hard to tell though so we named 'the bunny' Raine and weren't too worried about which one we were looking at. Raine was chosen because Oliver's bunny based dog food is from a brand called Raine. It seemed fitting. We weren't entirely sure if they bunnies actually lived in the backyard or if they just visited a lot. They seemed to be there most days and you could see their various escape routes under the fence. Necessary as Oliver would often chase them.

One day in October during work I was outside on a conference call and the bushes near the deck were moving. I discovered that Raine was there but wasn't running away the way he/she normally wood. Upon close inspection I noticed that he/she was entangled in some grass. You could tell this was where (let's just go with she) she was living because she had eaten out the inside of one of my perennials. More noticeable now that the plants were dying back for winter. She had either become entangled trying to jump in or out and the grass had wrapped completely around her stomach. I quickly grabbed some kitchen scissors and freed her hoping she would hop away. Unfortunately it looked like she had injured herself while trapped. It was very apparent that she had either severely dislocated or broken one of her hind legs. She made a very feeble effort to get away from me but it was obvious she wasn't going anywhere quickly.

After a bit of thought I decided the immediate action was to protect her for a while and watch to see if she could get better on her own. I surrounded her with some metal fencing and got a light bulb to keep her warm. We fed her some water and spinach and other then the inability to move she seemed fine. She drank and ate and made efforts to move around her cage. After a couple hours however it was obvious the leg was broken. It hung limply and I knew there was no way for us to care for her. I did seriously consider looking after her for a few weeks while she got better and it might have worked if it was a sprain. A break though needed more aid.

I biked over to the vet and they recommended a wildlife shelter in Langley. We got Oliver's old kennel from the basement and put her inside. We drove to the sanctuary and dropped her off and then came home and made a donation. I suspect generic rabbits are not one of the rarest animals they get. We don't know what happened to her. The sanctuary does care for rabbits but the break may have been more effort than they would want to do for a species that 'breeds like rabbits'. Of course, our assumption is that she is living out a long live at the animal sanctuary with other bunny friends. All this in about 5 hours on a slow work day.