Here is a Skunk Spray Antidote I got from Paul Krebaum
In a plastic bucket, mix well the following ingredients:
1 quart of 3% Hydrogen Peroxide
1/4 cup of baking soda
1 to 2 teaspoons liquid soap
for very large pets one quart of tepid tap water may be added to enable complete coverage.
Wash pet promptly and thoroughly, work the solution deep into the fur. Let your nose guide you, leave the solution on about 5 minutes or until the odor is gone. Some heavily oiled areas may require a “rinse and repeat” washing.
We’ve always used tomato juice… with just chihuahuas that need it, we don’t require but a small can. Tomato juice works pretty well… although just like someone hurting your feelings… there is still some lingering reminder even after you do all you can to remove the offense.
Here’s some photos of our skunk on the porch… another skunk on the wall to remind the outdoors skunk to be nice…. and our Chihuahua Whitey in his tomato bath… he’s not too happy.
We’ve had nearly a week of rainy weather… accompanied by high winds.
Some local areas got twelve or more inches of rain in a week…. this is about one third of a usual year’s rainfall… all in one week. For many places, this would be merely a regular stormy week…but it is the first such weather we’ve had in three or four years.
Here is a flooded area just off the 101 in the Avila area.
Here are two shots I took near our place… one is a downed oak in the canyon.
We had several trees go down in the canyon. The soil is so wet that the winds allow the roots to semi-liquefy the soil by moving the tree back and forth, hour after hour, day after day… for five or more days while the rain comes down, hour after hour, day after day…. this can help the tree topple.
The other photo is a nearby field, used to graze beef cows…. it is years since I have seen this amount of runoff water on this spot. The water has natural drainage swales… these people treat this ground prety good… they never allow livestock in while the ground is marshy… it is bad for the feet of the animals… and it turns the wet spots into mud wallows that don’t provide any food for the animals, and keep them muddy. Their animals are rotated around different fields so they always have fresh clean grasses, and never destroy the structure of the soil.
On the left is a tree that went down on the canyon road … there was no way to get around it. This has happened before.. once I traded vehicles with a neighbor on the other side of a downed tree…. it got me home, and him to work. Some local folks carry chainsaws with them when coming in and out… you never know when a tree will come down…
In a case like this it is local custom that anyone coming along with a chainsaw may take what they can cut… but the first goal is to open the road. In this case, the county came by and cut it. Usually when a tree goes down like this, local canyon dwellers usually cut it up and haul it away before an hour has gone by…. he who waits will not get wood. In this case.. the wind was blowing fiercely, and no one else was about… I went home and waited out the storm rather than risk a tree falling on me. I was going out taking a cat to the vet to be teutored… this is the third time he has escaped his lessons… the first time he got locked in a neighbor’s garage, the second time he clawed his way out of the doggie door while being held indoors overnight… and this was the ‘third-time’s-the-charm’ thing.. and it seemed like God caused the tee to fall to keep this cat’s bloodlines going…. what’dya think?
This is a neighbor’s barn. We had a few hours of decent weather between the thunderstorms…. just after I took this photo the radio sounded off with the ‘Public EmergencyAlert’ (first time I recall hearing an actual messag on it instead of jsut a test), warning of a severe thunderstorm crossing Pismo Beach, and heading inland at thirty MPH. A few minutes down the dirt road hail started falling onto the truck. We seldom get hail… I’ve only seen it here perhaps five times in the last twenty years. The severe thunderstorm was overhead. In a matter of minutes the wind started roaring and blew like crazy again.
Here is a photo of some clouds coming onto the shore at the Dinosaur Cove area near Pismo Beach. On the way back into the canyon I saw a young deer on the road… My first photo used the flash… but the deer was too far away… but I like the deer-eyes glow. You can see what condition our road is in…. four miles each way daily will take a toll on car batteries, and suspension systems.
A storm like this can topple some of our cactus plants also. The large Opuntia ficus-indica to the far left fell over…. it was perhaps seven feet tall, and probably weighs about one hundred pounds.
The middle photo is some of the grasses growing on one of our hillsides.. notice how they are bent over by the rain and wind. I really want the grasses to grow… they absorb water reducing runoff, they also open the soil permitting more water entry, helping the water to infiltrate into the soil. Depending on the situation, we often let the grasses grow, mature and set seeds. We will then mow them to reduce the cover for snakes, and keep the weed stickers down. The cut grasses form a mulch on the soil.
The third photo is one of our outdoor cats, Elizabeth Little-Grey. She sleeps in a little cat-condo… here she sticks her head out. We often lay a blanket over the condo at night, to help keep her warmer. On occasion we’ve brought her indoors during storms, but she doesn’t like being indoors at all… she quickly runs to the door begging to get out. She’s really cute and friendly outdoors though. All-in-all, it’s been a fairly un-fun experience the last week. Plenty of ag and mining operations have lost much production. The tourism industry likely lost some revenue during these storms… but on-the-other-hand… we’re pretty darn lucky… things could have been worse (but we’re not out of the weather yet), most of the country has had much worse weather for the last two months than this one single week has been for us. So we’re really lucky, but still hope we don’t have to go through anything near this again for some years.
Here’s Chica and tony in Oct 2009.
They are so close, he follows her around even though he is now much larger than her.
I think she would try to defend him if she thought he was in danger.This has been a very interesting thing, watching the development of the relationship between these animals. When we got Tony six months ago he was a tiny dehydrated little kitten with eyes barely open, and sunken into his skull. We had to force-feed him with a dropper…. a drop at a time.
Chica surprised us by offering herself to them, she’d lay down and let the kittens snuggle to her warm belly. She licked them and kept them clean…. as they learned to walk they tottered around after her. Now they are larger than her…. it’ll be interesting to see what the next six months brings.
We live pretty remote… most folks here have dogs for property protection as well as companion animals, we also mostly have cats running around eating mice and gophers. A couple of months ago a massive fire raged out of control and destroyed tens of thousands of acres of oak woodland and chaparral environment. This drove a pack of coyotes into our canyon. With the rains, the burned-over areas of the La Brea Fire will green up again…. the prey species will return and the coyotes will be able to return to their own areas and have plenty of food again. Until then they have been wrecking destruction upon the dozens of small households in this canyon.
We have several neighbors who’ve had their animals carried off by coyotes. I saw our lead chihuahua ‘Whitey’ toe-to-toe with a coyote who was more intent on a deer in the brush than he was with Whitey. I chased the coyote away and then noticed another one forty yards away. They like to ‘tag-team’ deer. Deer tend to run in big circles, so a pack of coyote will team up and run the deer in big circles, each animal able to take a break when he’s chased the deer to another coyote. Around and around the poor deer will run, always with a refreshed coyote nipping at his heels. When the coyotes finally get the deer tired enough, they will jump on it en-mass ripping and tearing, biting, holding the nose and throat, slowly over a good long time the animal will die.
I’ve not seen a single deer now for a few weeks. There have been times I’ve seen a dozen or more on our hillside. But anytime a mountain lion moves in, the herd goes down in number. But now they are totally absent. Which is fine as far as the things we grow. I don’t have to worry as much about the deer getting into the fenced edible cactus area.
I’ve been seeing these sad little signs up and down the road… put up by people who’ve had dogs missing. I suppose the main blame can be put on the coyotes. In town it’s not considered to be good form to have your animals run loose. But here in the rural areas, most houses will have a few angry snarling vicious dogs. I kind of like it that way.
The dogs that are missing are mostly smaller dogs. Good prey for coyotes. Any predator animal is choosy about what it hunts and selects to kill. They have to reduce injury to themselves, an injured predator will likely die. Generally, any predator you see is in good health, when they are not they die.
Lost Dog Sign
Sometimes the rate of pet loss will rise in the months leading to a huge earthquake. Perhaps the ground makes some noises or produces energy that upsets animals, causing them to become lost or making them flee. But I think in this case the cause can be placed on the coyotes having to temporarily leave their wilderness area after being chased out by the La Brea Fire. Soon they will return home where there are fewer people angry at them.
Chica is the Chihuahua who raised up the two tiny orphaned kitties we found. We bottle-fed them, but she slept with them, cuddled and comforted them. Even now that they are six months old and larger than her, they cuddle and play together. She licks them and searches their fur for fleas. It’s really a sweet sight to see them together… it makes me happy and reminds me that life is so very mysterious……
Chica and Tony
Everyone wants to change the world… to make it better.
but the world is like a person, you cannot enforce real inward change.
what a person believes you cannot change by force.
If you really want to change the world, all you can do is change yourself,
when your own harmony and tranquility is seen by your family,
you can slowly change them by serving as an example to them.
the stillness and tranquility of your family might cause your neighborhood to change ever so slightly,
,the harmony in your neighborhood might spread to neighboring areas.
your local areas might bring change to the state and then to the nation.
If you want to change the world… start with yourself
Little Man, the Shetland Pony who used to ride children around at a fair in Los Angeles has been living in the canyon for some fifteen years now. He’s pretty old now… heck, he seemed old when the local farrier came back into the canyon with him after rescuing him when he heard the owners of the kiddie fair were going to have him out down due to his age.
Since then he’s become something of a fixture in the canyon. He used to roam free, visiting different houses in the canyon and eating what he could find or was given. Now, since some objected to him eating their gardens and flowers he has to stay locked up. So now, many people in the canyon give him some of their leftover veggies…. but he can’t chew well either, so it has to be soft foods.
Some of the local women and children will open his pen and take him for a walk up and down the canyon road… to give him something interesting for the day. All in all, it’s a bit of a sad life for the little old guy. Still he’s better off than many animals in factory farming conditions… kept in stalls too small to turn around in, and deprived of sunlight. This would never have happened if he were only in France… they’d have eaten him by now.
He’s blind in one eye now too. In the wild animals never really grow old… they get killed by some predator….
The local Guinea hens have become friends of his… perhaps lured by the occasional produce lobbed over the fence.
We got Whitey in 2001 from some folks we knew in Santa Maria who had to ‘get rid’ of him. They are Hispanic and thought the name was cute since he’s all white, and they are all brown. The name fits him, though some folks might think it’s a racially motivated name… but I never considered it so, and I don’t think the folks we got him from are racist types. He was scared of me when we first got him… he’d cling to Vickie, but run from me. It took six months before he sat on my lap on his own…. Chihuahuas can be that way.
After some time he became my buddy, and follows me around as I do some of my work. Once he sees me working, he’ll just sit in the shade of the trees and watch. I don’t often take him in the truck with me to town. But this day was an exception since it was cool and cloudy on the coast where I drop our boxes of cactus off.
Whitey goes to town
He especially loves to ride on my lap on the tractor…. I can’t do real work that way… but when all I’m doing is scraping the road, I can have him sit on my lap.. he enjoys it immensely.
Animals can be very good for people… and people can certainly be good for animals. But do get your pet spayed or neutered… there’s plenty of animals that are abandoned each year… rescue one of them…. rather than paying a ‘puppy mill’ to breed more animals.
Here’s Tony the orphaned kittie and the Chihuahua who adopted and raised him.
He’s now almost five months old, and a bit bigger than his ‘mama’.
Looking at his feet, you can see he’s got a lot of growing to do yet.
I hope he always stays close to his mother.
Tony has grown bigger than his 'mom' in four months!
Rocky on top, Whitey and Chica, and Tony the Terrible
Here’s Tony siddling up to his ‘mama’.
Whitey doesn’t know what to make of this kitten who tries to sleep with dogs.
Back in May our son called us and told us of a litter of semi-feral kittens outside his apartment in Oceano.
The mother had gotten hit by a car, and he’d heard the little ones mewing in the bushes.
When he got them from the bushes, the majority were dead, and the two still alive were just barely hanging on.
We took them in and forced them to take ‘kitten milk replacer’.
We force-fed them as they were dehydrated and wanting to give up and die.
After a couple of days they were able to crawl around a bit, and their eyes had filled out again
(they were sunken into their skulls, they were so dehydrated).While feeding the striped one which the neighbors named ‘Tony’,
I would tell him of the great life he’d have if he lived,
of all the little creatures he could catch,
of the trees he could climb and the animals he could see
Gradually, they grew stronger,
and were adopted by our female Chihuahua Chica,
herself an orphan we rescued.
I hate to anthropomorphize animals, and ascribe human traits and compulsions to them,
but it seemed as though Chica received the ‘mothering’ she never got by giving it to the kittens
and the kittens had a nice warm tummy to snuggle to and knead with their paws.
I suppose in so many ways we give out what we never got but wanted
and it is in giving we receive what we need through substitution
Here’s photo of Tony and Chica a week or two after we introduced them
he’s her size now, just four months later.
And they are still close, it is touching to see the way they snuggle together.
Chica has some odd facial characteristics, she looks mean but is actually very sweet
That’s merely a cowlick on her face… not a scar
but I kid people that she got her head caught in a mechanical cactus-picker
but there is no such machine, we pick our cactus by hand
Alligator Lizard in the air
Tony seems to have learned a lot from our little ‘talks’
He’s been bringing lizards into the house now.
Here are two Alligator Lizards he has brought into the house in the last few weeks
We give the lizards a little talk, warning them to stay clear of the kittens
then we let them go back into the cactus garden from whence the kittens got them
I suspect lizards don’t taste good, our mature cats ignore them
the kittens play with them for the fun of it, but don’t eat them (as far as I know)
You can see that this lizard has already lost his tail.
It’s pretty rare to find a mature one with an original tail….
but when you do, they are impressive
Alligator Lizard in the air
The animals here like this place as much as we do.
Here’s a video of Chica and Tony together.
It’s cute, but has no audio….
If anyone owns the rights to some nice music you’d like us to put into the video,
let us know
We’re interested in making our videos more appealing by having nice music
Tony and Rocky have been getting out a bit more lately. One day last week, we found them climbing in the oak trees in front of the house.
It scared Vickie a bit… they got twenty feet and more up, and their inexperience shows… they were on little twigs as small as a pencil…. I wandered under the trees ready to catch them if they fell. We had a pretty good time. It made me laugh, because just three months ago, when we got them, we were concerned when they crawled out of their little box we kept them in. We were worried they might fall six inches… but they were little itty bittie things then. Now they are starting to toughen up a bit.
It’s a bit sad in a sense having animals…. we can’t take them to the vet like we’d like…. our animals will get torn up by some wild critter, and there’s not much we can do other than to doctor them ourselves the best we can. I try to assuage my guilt by rationalising that these are all animals that wandered in from feral parents, or were found orphaned somewhere and we rescued them… if we had not taken them in, they’d have died long ago. One thing I’ve noticed about our animals… they are all really tough and durable survivor-type creatures. If they were not, they’d have never made it as far as to our door.
Often I will watch our critters doing their thing in the wilds…. and I have to say, they really do have a good life. They have plenty of little things to stalk, deer and foxes and other animals to watch (and be aware of). Our animals for sure do not live in gilded cages.
Here’s some photos of these little kittens in the tree.
