9/24-26/02 I went up to the property for 3 days: Tuesday through Thursday.

I arrived at noon. It was a beautiful 60 degrees with the fall colors starting to come out. There was no frog in the gate lock. After moving in and having lunch, I insulated the top seven and nailed the top six seams on the southwest gable peak. During the work, I was constantly visited by four jays, including Scruffy. He still looks different from the others, but he looks a lot better than he used to. They all visited me at the trailer during dinner too.

On Wednesday, I chinked the top six seams and removed the top scaffold. I'm glad to be done with that scaffold because it was so awkward to get up on it and back down again. The jays were all over me during this work too. They are running me out of peanuts.

Shirley stopped by with the address number sign I bought from the fire department. I was supposed to have stopped in at the station to pick it up, but I forgot. Shirley came in and took a look at my work. She hadn't seen it since before the floors were in. Bert and Ernie were with her and this was the first time I was able to pet Ernie for any length of time. Bert was being petted by Shirley so he allowed Ernie to get some attention to me. It must be rough being second dog.

On Thursday morning I got a flashlight and binoculars and tried to see where the mice had entered the ceiling. I couldn't see at all on the west corner because of the strong light from the sky, but on the south corner, I could see that the screen was pulled away from the rafter a little. I suppose a mouse could get through there, and since that was the only possible entry I could see, I got the 20 foot ladder, set it up on the deck, and went up and stapled the screen tight to the rafter. If that is their only hole, and some of them are still in there, I will have dried up mouse corpses in there forever. I guess that's better than having a thriving colony in there.

I heard the sheep bells in the valley so I walked over to see if Pepe was the sheepherder. I knew that Jacinto was back in Peru and that Pepe had taken over a few years ago, but I haven't seen either one for a long time. I found the new sheepherder and met him. His name is Eladio and he speaks English a little better than Jacinto, which isn't saying much. He had to draw numbers on the ground to tell me how many sheep he had -- 1,130. He told me that Pepe was in Wyoming and Jacinto was still in Peru. I recognized four of the dogs from before and they are getting very old. Eladio told me that one of the sheep dogs I recognized was completely useless. But there are a couple young pups that are taking over the work. The big, huge, dog, Leroy, that keeps the sheep safe from cougars and bears, was the same dog but he was looking very old.

Before I left for home, I insulated the next six seams. I left for home at 1:30.