Three days ago, as we were taking our afternoon walk, the neighbor who lives
across the field from me stopped and asked if I would be willing to sell the
scraper blade that has been sitting in the small lot behind the stable since
whenever I last used it, which was probably which ever past winter had enough
snow to make getting out of the driveway problematic. I told him I wouldn’t
want to sell it but that he could borrow it if he needed to scrape something. I
should have asked him what he wanted to scrape before telling him he could
borrow it. He wanted to drive along his side of the fence line separating my
property from his and push out the small trees that have sprouted there. He
regularly mows along that fence line, but if any object is in the way, the
concept of stopping the mower and moving anything at all isn’t in his universe.
That has caused the fence row to gradually grow out further and further from
the fence.
I didn’t tell him then and there that such a thing couldn’t be done
with a scraper blade, but I looked at the fencerow later and saw that some of
the trees were already much too big to push over with a scraper blade. Sensing
that he already knew that and that when he tried and failed to push the woody
growth out with a blade he would then hit me up to get a bulldozer to push out
the whole fence row, which nowadays only serves as a boundary marker. Thinking
that such a thing would cause undue disturbance to the Barn Owls, I have spent
the cool of the last two mornings cleaning the offending trees out with an ax
and grubbing hoe. Have a little more yet to do. Additionally, to insure that he
doesn’t attempt to do anything in that vicinity with my scraper blade, I moved
it from the stable lot to one of my tobacco barns. Me working near the stable
doesn’t seem to be bothering the Owls. I saw one perched atop the nest box
before I started working this morning. Checked again when I got hot enough to
quit and saw it roosting on the cross beam the nest box sits on. It was still
in that same spot when I peeped in this afternoon. Only took one picture, but
it is my best so far.
https://ebird.org/checklist/S71732707 ;<https://ebird.org/checklist/S71732707>
Frank Lyne
frank@xxxxxxxxxxx - near Dot in Logan County, KY
