Have You Ever Seen a Muskrat Chase an Iceberg?

 

Today after Mass and another joyful baptism of a cute baby, Travalon and I had lunch at Zippy Lube because I was craving the sauce and pickles on their fried chicken sandwich, then we took a walk at Tenney Park along the canal. It was so warm compared to how it's been, and as we walked back, we saw a tiny, pyramid-shaped iceberg zipping along down the canal. For some reason this struck me as really funny; we didn't get a video, but Travalon did get a pretty good photo with his cell phone, since he didn't have his good camera along.

We wondered where the "iceberg" was going in such a hurry... and then we saw a muskrat swimming rapidly after it. We kept walking and didn't see if the muskrat caught the chunk of ice, but I was surprised that it was awake and not still hibernating in one of those muskrat lodges like this one we can see off our dock.

The Irish say spring starts in February, and it seems like the muskrat agrees! The Irish also say the year starts in November, which I find fascinating because there have been several times, like last year and in 2019, when I definitely felt like a door had opened in November and I had walked through it to a new reality. 

We went home, and I read a few more chapters in the book for the Shamrock Club book study, then we wanted to walk at Governor Nelson State Park, but the trails had signs that said don't hike if there's snow because of the skiers. We went to Jackson's Landing, but there was too much snow there to hike, so we went back to our own place and went out on the dock. We didn't see the eagle I saw yesterday evening, but we did see the fake swan at a nearby dock frozen into the ice.

It's supposed to scare geese away, but what goose is going to be fooled by this??

Here are photos from yesterday, of common mergansers by the dam in Sauk.

There was also a young eagle flying around.

And here is the view looking down the river from the dam.

Here are a few shots of last night's sunset.

This evening I went to the Slow Irish Session while Travalon went to the arcade, where he finally managed to knock out Bald Bull - twice! Then we went to Sultan, a Pakistani restaurant, where we split curry shrimp, chicken marsala over French toast, and garlic naan. Wow, was the food there good! It was like the food at the Globe, very flavorful and fresh. Then on the way home we went to the North Side Lounge to see if they still had the raspberry sour beer. They did, so I tried it straight, and then Travalon and I chewed on magic berries and tried it, and it was so much sweeter. So that was dessert. 

Someday I will bring my violin to the Slow Irish Session, but today I brought the mandolin again. Playing her is like wearing a pair of sweatpants, so comfortable that it's not work. She desperately needs new strings, so maybe next weekend we can bring her and the violin to the instrument repair place to get new strings for her and a new chin rest and shoulder pad for the violin. I'm sure I still have the old ones somewhere around the house (I removed them back when I was doing a lot of early music), but at this point it would just be easier to buy new ones. Same with the mandolin strings - Travalon bought me a new set a couple of years ago, and I have no idea where they are now. Might as well get a new set.

Famous Hat