Short Pre- TDay Deer Tracking

How short was the tracking? About 16 minutes and 1/4 mile of deer path. Followed a pack of deer and shot five clips on 11/23, the Saturday before Thanksgiving.

I found it amusing that the first clip showed decorative spider webbing among the foliage. That resident actually managed to remove it before Thanksgiving day. (I appreciated the web decoration serving as a visual cue for timeframe.)

During my deer pack follow, additional items of interest were a couple of balloon arrangements. One was a sitting turkey (on a straw cushion), another one was a group of smiling jack o'lanterns beside a sitting turkey.

Interestingly, the jack-o'lanterns were dual-purposed, having been around for Halloween and kept in place for Thanksgiving.

While I reviewed and edited items for creating my video for including the inflatable balloons, I decided to also work in a couple of deer images from just before Halloween. One pic has a fawn and doe seemingly playing peekaboo with each other, to the right of a Halloween skeleton.

The other pic is a composite of a buck. Lucky for me, I happened to have had my camera with me during this car trip. BTW, almost all my image captures are on foot. (Video clip frames vary slightly from the stills shown here.)

My video featuring the deer pack includes the following sections:

1. Web-strung foliage at a house, deer pack ambling away
2. A close deer trio moving from my left to right
3. Pack starting to cross street and apparently doubling back halfway
4. Pack deliberately trotting across street right to left
5. Pack ambling away
6. Halloween/Thanksgiving pic potpourri near 11/23 timeframe

The potpourri section includes a few Halloween and Thanksgiving images for timeframe reference. (I really wanted to include the timeframe-proximate regal buck and peekaboo deer.)

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For more articles about deer, enter "deer" in the search box at the upper left of this window. Or find and click "deer" link at Partial Index of Keywords section (just below Popular Posts section). BTW, additional deer videos are available at my YouTube channel.

Composting Cleanly, Way Reducing Ick

Recently, we started participating in the community composting program. At the lead-off seminar, we received a specifically designed compostables pail for indoors. About a week or so later, outdoor carts arrived in the neighborhood. It took a few days to gingerly get with the program.

Although the seminar literature didn't help ease the ick apprehension, the Q and A session planted some ideas to "neaten" compostables. Actually implementing them was less messy than anticipated. Reduce ickiness possibilites by avoiding fouling both containers:

• Use castoff food boxes to line the indoor pail, additionally helped if you initially use paper towels for spills/cleanups then toss into the boxes. Toss in items like egg shells, coffee grounds, fruit cores, post-meal wipes, etc.
• Use newspaper to wrap food scraps, produce (fruits, veggies) trimmings, melon rinds.
• Prepare the outdoor cart with a layer, maybe half-can full, of tree debris (leaves, small branches). Compress by pressing down with dustpan or similar item if you want.

When disposing of castoff food boxfuls and wrapped compostables, place them into the prepared cart instead of overturning the pail into the cart.

My video, less than 3 minutes, has four main sections with captions:

1. Cart for compostables, intro and prep
2. Pail for compostables, preparations and fill
3. Kitchen wrapping preparations (some examples of produce)
4. Compostables into cart

Pizza boxes are a type of castoff that the seminar emphasized as fine to compost. Also OK, meat-based tossouts. Visit top level info at "Curbside Composting Collection Program". Get smaller info bites at "How-to-Guide" and "Curbside Composting FAQ".