In Case You Wanted to Know ...

. . . Here's The Latest Scoop

On October 25th I told ya'll about This Ole House and the work being done on it and ya'll are probably wondering why you haven't seen another blog about the progress.

Well, the reason is we are STILL working on the place, finding new problems as we go along and trying as fast as possible to fix 'em and at the same time do a bit of landscaping, tree trimming and outside painting (and SNOW in this place where SNOW seldom happens has not helped the situation).

So now you've got the latest scoop on the house.

Just in case you didn't know and might want to know, the United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services trappers have fished out six otters from a river somewhere near Lakewood up in Washington state and transported the kidnapped things to New Mexico.

They've done this four times before in the past two years I find from reading a story by Editor Dan Williams of the New Mexico Wildlife magazine.

By way of being fair about this, it wasn't a real kidnapping, of course, it's part of an effort to re-introduce otters to the upper Rio Grande. Prior to 1950 they were plentiful but began about that year to diminish and vanish from the state, the last documented otter seen being in 1950 in the Gila River.

This shipment of otters to New Mexico included four males, two of them nearly newborn, and two females.

It's hoped this group will help regain an otter population in the Taos area in the Rio Pueblo de Taos.

Later the USDA hopes to re-introduce river otters into the Gila in the western part of New Mexico.

So now you have the latest scoop on NewMexico's otter problems.

Reading the same magazine I learned something new about the state that I didn't know in the 31 years I've lived in New Mexico.

Numerous times I have been to Bottomless Lakes State Park (even before it was a state park)but I never saw what writer Marti Niman pictured along with her description of the park.

Somewhere in the wetlands which surround and make up this park east of the City of Roswell (famous for UFOs) is a tall natural stone lookout tower that appears in the picture to be perhaps 30 or 40 feet tall. Wonder if daughter Yarntangler ever saw it in her camping days there. (BTW way did ya'll ever hear about her tent and the wind one day there?)

Dear readers - I'm sorry I haven't blogged at you for a couple months but after being busy with that old house every day, I was too tired and lazy to do any writing but today I felt I must write because since it's the last hours of 2009, I had to wish ya -

HAPPY NEW YEAR !

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