Rookery

"It was a fine autumn morning; the early sun shone serenely on embrowned groves and still green fields; advancing on to the lawn, I looked up and surveyed the front of the mansion. It was three storeys high, of proportions not vast, though considerable: a gentleman’s manor-house, not a nobleman’s seat: battlements round the top gave it a picturesque look. Its grey front stood out well from the background of a rookery, whose cawing tenants were now on the wing: they flew over the lawn and grounds to alight in a great meadow, from which these were separated by a sunk fence, and where an array of mighty old thorn trees, strong, knotty, and broad as oaks, at once explained the etymology of the mansion’s designation." 

Winter is the time of year when the starlings flock together in great numbers and hang around livestock farms looking for feed and shelter.  Hundreds of them will sit in our trees, on our roofs, or inside of our hoop buildings, leaving their droppings covering everything underneath.  That is why I keep a shotgun handy just inside the house door.  When a large flock settles in a tree near the house with a clear shot behind it, I quietly open the door, slip the gun through the opening, and sight on a spot where there is a tight group of the dirty birds.  The goal is to see how many I can drop with one shot.  Also the goal is to do this regularly because it scares the flocks away for a while, as starlings tend to spread disease from farm to farm.
Gus is scared of the gun blast, but loves the dead starlings.  He has a great time when he finds them and parades around the yard with his trophies! 

I finished reading Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte) this week.  It was the first time that I have read this classic novel.  I was amazed at the amount of Bible references and quotations she used in the telling of this great story.  The story includes a great deal of spirituality in it; traditional morality, religious hypocrisy, Christian love, confession, sacrificial service, atonement, and forgiveness.  It also includes love, overcoming hardship, English country manors, and English mansions and castles.  A little something for everyone.  I recommend it.

We got to spent an evening with our Alaskan cousins again.  I could sit for hours listening to the stories of their life, times, and adventures in Alaska.  Stories of driving a converted school bus up there from Peoria in 1973, living in it off and on for years.  Stories of work and travel around the primitive state.  Stories of bears, fishing for halibut, and moose hunts.  Cabin building and a house fire.  The neccessity of neighbors working together.  The beautiful scenery and the brutally cold winters.  Twenty one and a half hours of daylight in the summer and twenty one and a half hours of darkness in the winter.  Wildlife everywhere.   
It stirs a desire in me to head northwest and experience again that magnificent place.

Once you've gone to Alaska, you never come all the way back.

Mine heritage is unto me as a speckled bird, the birds round about are against her; come ye, assemble all the beasts of the field, come to devour.
Jeremiah 12:9