The Squamidian Report – Dec. 13 / 08
Issue #342
Including:
The Ontarion
Hi All,
Not sure if this is strange, or not so strange after all, but we don’t seem to have any coyotes left around here. For a few years we were almost over run by them. They were very where. You couldn’t go for a walk or drive without seeing them. They were on the streets, in the back yards and all through the town. When an emergency siren went off down on the highway, it would set off the packs of them up in the hills and the howling would go on for quite a while. Quite eerie, really.
Then the cougars started turning up. There are lots of the big cats in this area, always have been but when their numbers rise to the point where the local deer can’t keep them fed, a few of the cougars will work their way into town and start taking household pets. Somewhat similar to the household dogs are the coyotes. As the number of hungry cougars went up, the number of marauding coyotes went down. The hills are now silent and they are absent from the back yards and streets. Natural cycle I guess, makes you wonder who is next!!
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Well now, we have finally had our first shot of winter. I know, the rest of the country has been hit hard and often but the west coast has until now managed to avoid the cold and snow. Even our November was pretty tame. Usually November is an endless parade of wild Pacific storms, each one becoming wilder and colder than the one before. But this year there were only a few storms and they were quite weak, relatively speaking. We even had some nice sunny mild weather in November and early December.
The ski slopes on the North Shore Mountains have been sitting bare and unusable. Hopes for a ski season were starting to fade. Even Whistler has been feeling the ‘lack of snow’ pinch. And yes, they have enough snow for skiing up on the higher slopes but they have had almost none down on the lower half of the mountain and none in the village. They’ve gotten by so far by doing what they call ‘up-loading’. That’s were everyone has to take the lift up to the staging point at mid mountain and then take the lift again up to the top. Then they ski down to the mid point and lift back up again. At the end of the day they ‘down-load’ back to the village.
We finally had our first snow of the season yesterday (Friday). It was supposed to be a good blow with some half decent accumulations. Even the city and Lower Mainland were supposed to be hit. As it was, about the best that can be said is that is was white. It started out as rain and turned to snow for a while, then quit altogether here in Squamish. In the city it was mostly just rain. Out the valley it was mostly just rain. Depending on where you were in Squamish, the amount was somewhere between virtually nothing, up to 3 or 4 inches. Further north up the highway it will have been more. There is pretty well nothing to the south toward Vancouver, except on the higher elevations of the mountains.
So our first winter snowstorm of the season has been a bit of a fizzle, amounting to more trouble than it was worth. Slippery roads and lots of slush. Forecast is for very cold, sunny and very, very cold. So the ground will freeze solid and thing could be a bit icy. Oh well, I was hoping for a good snowy season again, like the one we had here last year. One where I can put the blower to good use.
doug
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Hello
everyone!
First
off, I’d like to congratulate Beth and family for the arrival of their new
baby!
Sounds
like mother and baby are healthy and doing well! We’re all very happy for you!
CONGRATS!
Life
keeps on rockin’ heck even Tom Jones has a new album out and it’s climbing the
charts just as his music did back in the 60’s. He’s even got a new show under
contract with MGM Grand Hotel in Vegas and it’s a smash hit too! He’s doing
just great for a 68-year-old grandfather. Of course, it helps that he can still
sing as well as ever! Tom’s always been a hit with the ladies and that hasn’t
changed much in 45 years. He says he’s still packin’ them in at MGM Grand. He
was introduced the other night by Jimmy Kimmel on his late night talk show as
the only man with a 3,495,000-piece collection of women’s panties! LOL! I guess
he must have kept most of them! LOL!
*
There was
some very sad news the other day. A family of four lost their lives in
Woodstock because of a blocked vent on their wood stove. She was an OPP officer
with 20 years on the job. When I heard this it made me want to give every
person within ear or e-mail shot a shake! Why in the world wouldn’t every
household have a “Carbon Monoxide Detector”? They are almost as cheap as smoke
detectors and every family should have at least one in their home, especially
when they have a wood stove. The only home that really doesn’t need one is an
electrically heated home with no fireplace! I have said this for many years to
anyone who will listen that in my opinion, you can’t give a more thoughtful
gift than a smoke detector or a Carbon Monoxide detector. After all, if your
gift saves a life, wouldn’t you feel GREAT for having given it on any occasion?
I sure would! If any of you are stuck for something to give a loved one this
year for Christmas, get out and buy them a couple of smoke or CO detectors.
They just might be around to thank you a second time for such a meaningful
gift! When you can purchase these units from CTC or any other hardware store
for $5.00 including the battery, what the heck are you waiting for? The CO
detectors are usually “plug in” devices and you should have one of each on
every floor level of your home!
One more
item I’d like to pass along to all of you this holiday season is some advice on
tree lights. We have on our artificial tree a set of lights that are made in
what I call bundles of strings. Each string of lights is made up of several
strings tied together and each length of bundled lights plugs into the next so
you can wrap them around the tree from bottom to top. The light bulbs in this
type of light are the mini lights I think they call them. When one of the
strings in this bundle burns out, the other 5 or so strings of lights takes on
the energy from the one that burned out and the remaining lights become
brighter and consequently hotter to the touch. I noticed that several strings
in one of the sections of bundled lights had burned out and only one was still
lit. I noticed this because the remaining lights were “Extremely” bright! When
I went to touch them I couldn’t put my fingers on them without feeling a burn!
I was in the process of removing that bundle of lights when they finally burned
out altogether. I shutter to think what might have happened had this string of
lights not finally failed altogether. In the middle of the night we just might
have had a fire caused by these overheated lights. So please check your lights
on the tree often and by all means unplug the tree every night before you go to
bed! It’s not worth the risk to leave them on when nobody is awake in your home
to see and enjoy the lighted tree anyway. You can always plug it in when you’re
up and awake during the daytime. IF you’re sleeping or not home, TURN ‘EM OFF!
This
isn’t paranoia from years of responding to fires, it’s just common sense! OK
maybe I am a tad paranoid but I’ve seen first hand the destruction and death
that’s caused by fire so why take the risk?!!!
I guess
that’s enough preaching for this week!
Thanks
for tuning in and I look forward to talking to you all again next week in The
Ontarion Report!
Bye for now… Greg
PS:
Something To Think About>
Have you
cleaned or changed your furnace filter for the winter yet?
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Have a good one..
the doug
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