The cows were spread out in the pastures all around us yesterday and spent hours playing their version of Marco Polo. Even the ones WAY up on the side of the hill… sound can REALLY carry around here. MOOOOOO! …. (( mooooo! )) … etc. etc.

Speaking of the hills around here, I believe I’ve discovered the origins of that really low flying helicopter that buzzed the house some days back…. there was a story in our local paper (which I can’t find the link to right now) about a guy who runs a helicopter hunting service – he’s only supposed to take hunters into a certain, government owned area (miles and miles away from this area), but has been caught dropping hunters in on private ranch lands around here and is getting fined $100,000 apparently. Apparently, they’re not allowed to use helicopters over MOST of the government lands where hunting is allowed because it freaks out the wildlife (flushes them out of the underbrush too, giving hunters another unfair advantage) – in particular, the nearby Pinnacles National Monument has just released about 20 California Condors into the wild that don’t really need to get sucked up into a chopper blade. People, people, people…