Need a bigger bow saw

Los Alamos had a big forest fire in 2000, the result is that there are a ton of burnt standing and fallen trees in the area. The trees are good and dead, but usually the main trunk of the tree is excellent burning material. You can buy a wood cutting/gathering permit from the forest service for 20 bucks for 5 cords of wood a year so you can heat your home. We don't have a wood stove yet, but will get an insert this year or next. The wood gathering helps clear out the deadwood and transfer the fuel load off the mountains and into neat piles next to your home.

My buddy Adam and I went up into the mountains to retrieve a load of wood. Unlike the rest of the much more efficient wood gatherers we used only hand tools. They got more wood, but we made far less noise. Here are some pics and videos of the enterprise. We will go gather more meagre amounts of fuel when we become less sore. We pretty much suck at this and need bigger bow saws...

The inadequate handtools of doom!



Interesting Wood bugs abounded




Aspen field, roots lived creating the new growth, we dropped a big standing dead aspen, we are morons:


The day's haul



Ash blackened rubes


My half of the haul


Need the bigger bow saw


I made a pretty good pile of wood


Mostly aspen and ponderosa pine. Next more gathering and more sawing and perhaps some splitting action.

Great horned beetle!

More mutant insects crawling up from the depths of the Los Alamos canyons.


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Not one of them novelty pennies either.

Frozen Carnivorous Insect

Found in Elena's Dad's backyard when we were stranded in Albuquerque just before new years:

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It probably was styling in the usually mild Albuqerque winter when mother nature decided to drop 14" of snow on it. Lights out, bam.

big bug

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Some sort of testosterone enhanced jurassic looking hornet that the cats knocked down over the weekend. About 2" long. Yeesh. Any budding entymologists know what thisun is? I will do some research.

I speculate that it is some sort of plutonium mutated hornet that was entombed in an ancient mudhole deep in a canyon here in NM, released by recent thunderstorms and in search of the dinosaurs that it snacked on millenia ago.

Whoops,

Long time no post. Ran out of camera batteries and was attempting to put my creativity to the thesis this week. Mosca is as yowly and love demanding as ever. I sit here looking at the return of the cold grey sky after 4 days of brilliant sunshine. And I have nothing new but the pictures of this nice weird beetle that made its way around the porch for three days. I dub it the "Greater Pojaque Ridgeback Beetle" if'n it is not named yet.

Bugs

Lots of good bugs down at the house.

The best thing thus far has been the nice paperwasp (?) nest that fell off during the not so big thunderstorm a few weeks back.







There was a good plague of grasshoppers this year and a nice hatching of praying manti lately. Mosca, for the record, is barely interested in either bugs or hummingbirds.

The last hummingbird siting was 9/30 and none over the weekend, so it appears they have boogered off for the winter.

More bugs as cat news slows...