11/9-11/04 I went up to the property for 3 days: Tuesday through Thursday.

I arrived at 11:30. Just before I got there, I stopped and talked to Larry who was out walking. He told me that it hadn't snowed there since the week before. Most all of the snow was gone from the ground so I had no problem driving up to the trailer.

After moving in, I sanded all the logs that were due for another coat of varnish. I fed a flock of jays in the meantime. It seems pretty clear now that there are two different flocks. The birds in the one that is tamer and more used to taking food from me look sleeker and more mature than the birds in the other flock. I think the ones in the second flock are younger and possibly chicks from the first flock. They have mottled feathers on the fronts of their faces that I think marks them as juveniles. It makes their faces look sort of scruffy or dirty, so I have started calling them the Dirtyface Bunch, or the Dirtyface Flock. I haven't yet seen both flocks come around at the same time.

Before I quit for the night, I planed, scraped, gouged, and sanded the Grid E living room window frame so it is ready for varnish, and I planed all the remaining logs on the Grid E wall between the corner and the front door.

On Wednesday right after breakfast, I fed a flock of jays and was surprised to see a couple Stellar's Jays with them. The Stellar's were there simply to harass the Gray Jays and steal their peanuts, but they approached me closer than they ordinarily do and took some peanuts from the ground pretty close to me. One of them even mimicked the call of a Gray Jay.

When I got up to the building, I found some strange stuff on a concrete block which is part of the stoop. It looked sort of like a breakfast sausage with one end opened. Sticking out of the open end was a pink pouch with a little red appendage sticking out of it. Then a few inches away, was a little bladder that was burst and what looked like mushy poop coming out of it. There were also a few pack rat turds on the concrete block. I didn't know quite what to make of it. One thought I had was that a packrat had had a miscarriage there on my doorstep in order to make me feel guilty for having evicted them. I decided to take the thing to the ranger station on the way home and see if a biologist there might tell me what it was. I took the concrete block with its contents down and loaded it into the back of the pickup. I covered it with my old packrat trap to keep the rain off and to keep any animals off that might eat the thing before I figured out what it was.

Then I went to work scraping, gouging, and sanding the logs on the Grid E wall. It was a little awkward working between the window and the front door because of the studs in the mudroom wall. My shoulders were pretty sore so I couldn't scrape for very long periods of time at once. I was pretty careful not to overdo it. By the end of the day, I had all logs directly below the window frame ready for varnish, and the top four logs between the window and the front door.

On Thursday morning, I varnished all the prepared surfaces and then I took another 60-foot coil of copper pipe up into the woods and sweated it to the water line. I left for home at 1:00 but since it was Veteran's Day, the ranger station was closed so I couldn't ask them what that thing was. When I got home, I dissected it and discovered that it was just a bag full of chewed up leaves. I think it was the stomach and part of the entrails of a packrat, or some other critter that was left over by whatever killed and ate the rest of its owner. I guess my stoop was probably a conveniently dry place to eat. That's just guesswork and is probably as much as I will ever know about it.