Jack’s Walk

It’s a white winter wonderland in Ontario today, but Jack and I are hiding out in the house avoiding the snow. It looks like it’s going to stick around for a while, though, so Jack will be able to frolic to his heart’s content on Tuesday. In the meantime, I thought today I’d share some winter photos of the Gaspe Coast. This is sunset on the Perce Rock and it’s magical to watch. Mt. St. Anne sits directly behind Perce in the west and as the sun slowly sets it casts a shadow that rises up the rock. Every day the sun shines, the show goes on. These photos were taken in October of 2016 on North Beach.

©voyager, all rights reserved

©voyager, all rights reserved

©voyager, all rights reserved

Jack’s Walk

Riviere Peche, ©voyager, all rights reserved

It’s been snowing here since last night and Jack is chuffed. He wants to go out and play, but he’s isn’t allowed any exercise until next week when the stitches come out. Jack does not like this and he’s been making his displeasure known. He sits wistfully looking out the windows and whenever we pass by he looks up and makes little crying noises. When we tell him he has to wait he heaves a heavy sigh and lays his big, bowling ball of a head down dramatically with a thunk. He hates the word wait and his patience has worn thin. He was full-on giddy with excitement this morning when I took him out to the yard for business and even the promise of cookies couldn’t lure him in. I had to promise ice cream (a rare treat) before he even paid me any mind. It’s going to be a long few days until Tuesday.

The summer photo for today is of Riviere Peche, or Fish River. The river empties into the sea at the bottom of the hill where it meets the beach at Smuggler’s Cove.

Jack’s Walk

This is a bit of an extended Jack’s Walk with a few photos we took while traveling through the Matapedia Valley on our way east. The area is world renowned for salmon and trout fishing and the river is dotted with high end fly fishing resorts. The Mr. and I fish with rod and reel, but we’d both like to try our hand at fly fishing. Most resorts are now catch and release (after the photo, of course) and there are strict limits on what can be kept. There are also fishery officials out and about watching. I know from personal experience, but that’s a story for another time. The last three photos were taken from the car.

Passing over the great rivers of the Matapedia Valley, ©voyager, all rights reserved

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Wednesday Wings

David sends these wonderful images of pelicans.  Plus a bonus cormorant, I think.

I don’t think there can ever be too many Pelicans, so here is a bunch
roosting on a submerged tree, Murray River, Loxton, South Australia.

pelicans

©David Brindley, all rights reserved

pelicans

©David Brindley, all rights reserved

pelicans

©David Brindley, all rights reserved

Jack’s Walk

Fashionista with a happy tail, ©voyager, all rights reserved

This is Jack this morning and you’ll notice that his tail is out of focus. That’s because he was wagging it for the first time since his surgery last week. He had a few post-op complications, including a vein that popped out and bled for 2 days before the vet had to add 3 staples to his incision. Even after the staples were inserted the area oozed for another few days. That finally stopped on Sunday, but it wasn’t until this morning that Jack looked up at me and smiled his goofy guy smile. Now I can relax a bit. It’s another week before the stitches come out, but the incision is looking good and Jack is his usual happy self again. I’ve never been happier to have an out of focus photo.

 

Jack’s Walk

 

The tracks at Corner of the Beach, about 15 minutes outside of Perce, ©voyager, all rights reserved

Lack of routine maintenance now equals expensive major repairs, ©voyager, all rights reserved

When my husband was young there were daily trains going to Perce, a little town at the end of the Gaspe Peninsula. The train brought supplies and tourists and was the main form of transportation for residents of the town to get Quebec City and Montreal for specialist doctors, hospitals, shopping and schools. Over the years the trains started coming less often and finally in August of 2013 the train stopped coming at all. Today train service will only take you as far east as  Matapedia and good luck getting farther east from there because even the buses have stopped going to Perce. It’s all about economics. More people drive nowadays and there is an airport in Gaspe that handles a lot of supply and tourist traffic. Also, track maintenance is expensive and everybody thinks somebody else should pay for it. The tracks in this photo were a vital part of life in the Perce area for just about 100 years. When I first started coming here 20+ years ago we used to wave at the trains from the beach as they passed us by.  I miss that.

Jack’s Walk

Jack won’t be allowed to take walks for the next 2 weeks so I thought this was a good chance to post some of the photos I took over the summer. Today I’m sharing the place we overnighted on the way to Perce. It’s a little place called Saint Luce, Quebec and we arrived just in time to watch the sunset over the St. Lawrence River.  There are a few more photos under the fold  and you can click for full size.

 

Sunset on the St. Lawrence River, ©voyager, all rights reserved

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Jack’s Walk

Jack is doing fairly well after the removal of his lump yesterday. The wound has 18 stitches and it’s on the back of his front leg running up to the top of his shoulder which turns out to be a difficult place to keep covered. Every time he stands up the dressing slides down to his toes and the area starts to ooze a bit of serous fluid tinged with blood. We see the vet later today and I’m hoping she has a solution for this. I tried using a child’s sock with the toe cut off to keep things in place. That didn’t work. Then I tried a long swath of veterinary wrap wound tightly and that didn’t work either. Ditto for Kling wrap and a tensor bandage. He’s pretty sleepy today so it’s not too much of a problem, but it will be in a day or two when he’s brighter. The stitches stay in for 2 weeks and no walks until they’re removed. I’ve added a surgical photo under the fold in case anyone is interested. It’s a bit gory, but we nurses like that sort of thing. If you don’t or are squeamish please don’t click-through.

Not quite HappyJack today, ©voyager, all rights reserved

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Jack’s Walk

Jack and I took our walk at 6:30 this morning when it was still dark because Jack is having Larry™ the fatty lump removed from his shoulder girdle this morning. Larry™ has been quietly growing in Jack’s armpit for the past 5 years, but this summer he reached baseball size and started to track down the arm (leg?) so it’s time to go. Jack is very healthy going into this. His bloodwork is all normal, he’s lost weight and he’s ready for to say goodbye to Larry™ himself. Imagine a baseball in your armpit! Anyway, our photo for the day is Jack, with Larry™ front and center. I’ll let everyone know in TNET later today how he makes out.

Jack and Lumpy Larry, ©voyager, all rights reserved

 

Wednesday Wings: The Story of the Kinglet

©Giliell, all rights reserved. Click for full size

In German, a wren or kinglet is known as a “Zaunkönig”, the king of the hedges, and this is how he got his name.

One day, the birds decided to crown a king. They wanted the strongest bird to be their king so he could protect them, and they decided to hold a competition. They would all fly towards the sun, and the bird who could fly the highest would be their king. They all flew as high as they could. First, the small birds needed to return to earth. Then the geese and swans. the falcon flew very high, but finally he had to give up. The eagle flew higher and higher until the sun burned his light plumage to a dark brown. Finally, he was at the end of his tether and turned around. But the small king of hedges, who was still called by a different name back then, had hidden himself between the feathers of the mighty eagle. He had waited for just that moment, and when the eagle turned around, he came out, flew a bit higher and sang his triumphant song, declaring himself king.

The eagle was very angry at the cheating little bird and swore to kill him. The little king of hedges flew into the thick hedges to hide from the eagle, who was named king by the other birds. He keeps hiding there to this very day, but he still sings his song about beating the eagle in a flying competition.