Rural Life

Living in the country, I've seen all kinds of animals. In the heat of the summer, the animals are more active in the cool morning hours. Driving home from work at 7:00 in the morning, I'm used to seeing coyotes crossing the road (yes, to get to the other side, where the river is so they can get a desperately needed drink of water). One morning I was startled to see two horses running side by side on the road coming towards me. I had to take evasive action to avoid being hit by them, but they looked like they were having fun, running free (having escaped a nearby horse farm).

But this morning I saw something totally unexpected as I drove home. Turkeys. Yes, turkeys. There was one adult and five or six half grown turkeys walking along the side of the road. They were tall and thin, the way turkeys are meant to be, not the plumped-up, hormonally-injected commercial turkeys. These were either wild turkeys or more escapees from a nearby house or farm. They weren't in any hurry; they just padded peacefully along the side of the road.

In fire news, there's another fire to report. Ron and I went to the grocery store this afternoon and driving back, we noticed big smoke clouds billowing up, but they weren't where the smoke clouds from the Santa Fe fire had been yesterday. So we realized there was another fire (Sigh). Sure enough, I checked the website of our favorite Albuquerque TV station, and they said there's a fire 12 miles south of Los Alamos. At 3:15 pm the fire was 100 acres and of course was 0 percent contained. Click here for the story. It's hot and dry today, and very windy again. The weatherman on that station said it's officially the windiest spring and summer ever as well as the driest.

Update (5:15 p.m.): The fire is now 400 acres in size and the smoke from the fire is showing up on KOAT's weather radar!

The new security guard at work is already wishing for winter. His view is that when you're cold, you can get warmer by putting more clothes on, but when you're hot, you can't do much to get cooler (except turn on ceiling fans and the swamp cooler (which is more efficient the drier the air is, so of course it's working great these days)).