Our new neighbors are from Indiana and were referred by the ones from Illinois who were here earlier this month. They don't own a computer, but do have GPS in their van and cell phones. He worked all over the country in commercial construction, and she was a school custodian. Now they are retired and travel a lot.

We are still keeping track of the big fire. The latest stories aside from more evacuations and more homes burning down (189 so far) have had to do with animals flushed out of the fire area.

My friend Diane's husband designed a new house for a couple who lost their house in forest fire in roughly the same area as this one last year, this new one in a different forest area was half built, and now this fire has burned it down. I don't think these people are meant to live in the woods.

Yesterday a moose swam across Horsetooth Reservoir and was gathered up for relocation. Today, a moose found its way to the Hooters/Harley Davidson complex over by the Interstate and was gathered up for relocation. They are such large animals, and I wouldn't want to get between them and something they care about.

Here is a moose who visited us a couple of years ago:





There are stories about packs of coyotes coming into residential areas in non-fire areas and attacking the dogs out in the yards, and hungry bears looking for food. The gal at the post office told me to start carrying my gun whenever I go outside. Oh, great.

I wouldn't mind seeing some more wildlife. With this drought, we're not seeing our usual deer around here. The fox hasn't been around for a couple of days, but that's his usual pattern. I always give him a dish of water in case he is thirsty, but he seldom drinks it. He smells it and finds it uninteresting.



Tomorrow the tree company is going to come spray for pine beetles, and we have to move the hummingbird feeders inside during that. This always upsets the birds a lot, but nothing we can do about it.



Last week we moved all the feeders away from the house because we thought the roofers were supposed to come start work on Thursday. They haven't shown up yet, and no word from them, so we're waiting for this Thursday to call and see what the latest news is. The birds were very upset about it, and we think some of them left in a huff, but they might have left because of smoke in the area. We have had only a couple of days where there was a haze of smoke in the air, and we could smell it. Generally, the wind blows it in other directions. Just think of all the wild animals in that 60,000 acres of burned and burning forest land who have lost their homes.

There are still horses up there in the burn area, but the sheriff's mounted posse have been working with the Humane Society to bring them out, housing them at the county fairgrounds. Every so often there will be a news story about a lost horse wandering up to the firefighters seeking assistance. There are still requests to the firemen to check on livestock in place to feed and water them. I don't know if the chickens I heard about one day were evacuated or are still there.

The UPS guy came today, and I was excited thinking it was my new cushions for the patio furniture, but no, it was the driveway sensor that is going to ring a chime inside the house when a car comes down the driveway. The sensor gets buried and detects cars, but not animals. We decided it'd be nice to have some notice that someone has come down our private drive.