Eating bird

God…today has been a hot one!

I am well aware that the temperature in Death Valley the other day was 53° C and that our 36°C would have felt balmy to them. The way I see it is that if you live in a place called “Death Valley” then you should expect all sorts of unpleasant. That would be the “Death” part of “Death Valley”. It more than likely got its name because a lot of people died from the heat. I suppose that it is possible that those people just happened to die of natural causes or perhaps they were the victims of drunk drivers. Whatever the reason, I am not surprised the weather is shitty there.

I’m also not surprised that the Town of High River flooded last week or that the town of Okotoks has a big rock just outside the town. “Okotoks means “big rock” in the Blackfoot language. I’m going to assume that “Dead Man’s Flats” involved a dead man at some time in the past. You would think that Trois Rivieres Quebec would be located at the confluence of three rivers, but it isn’t. It is at the confluence of Saint Maurice River and the Saint Lawrence River, but the name comes because the Saint Maurice River has two islands at the mouth of the river and it must have looked like three rivers at some point. You would think it should have been called Four Rivers…

I took Buster out for a walk this morning early, hoping to beat the heat, but although it was the coolest part of the day, you couldn’t really call it cool. It was actually quite nice, and it reminded me of when I lived in Ontario. The mornings were sunny and warm but there was a freshness that made me happy I was up before the crowds. We were almost home when Buster saw three Magpies just standing on the grass about ten feet from us, like they owned the place. Buster wasn’t having any of that and took off to chase them for as far as the leash would let him. One of the birds just wasn’t fast enough and Buster jumped about four feet into the air and came down with a magpie in him jaws.

I tried to get him to let it go, but I guess he figured he was the one doing the hunting and he’d be the one doing the killing. I finally managed to get him to let the bird go, but sadly (not really) the bird was already well on it’s way to birdie heaven. Buster walked away with a satisfied grin on his face and a small black feather clinging to his beard. We managed to get home with no further deaths, but I plan on sleeping with one eye open for the next couple of weeks. I’m not that comfortable living in the same house as a cold hearted killer.

Arwen’s car broke down on the way home from work today, so she borrowed our car to pick up Hurricane and Tornado from daycare and brought them back here for dinner. We had a typical hot weather meal of store bought rotisserie chicken, a pasta salad and a potato salad. We were sitting outside watching the kids play and chatting when Louise noticed Buster go to the end of the yard and start to chew on something. When she got up to look, she saw that Buster had helped himself some Chicken scraps off of the table.

I guess he figured that one way or another, he was eating bird today.