Mouse in the House

Today’s mystery photo is brought to you by cholera:

We had the last of our summer visitors,  Ina and family from New York.  The standard protocol for entertaining guests in Salt Lake City is to throw them into the Great Salt Lake:

If you look closely (click to enlarge), you can see Helen way off in the distance.  She was trying to find a deeper spot, but I think that is 10 miles out (deepest spot is 30 feet).

Selly was an unstoppable swimmer.  My daily swims became more of a challenge as she would hang onto my foot for a ride, was a good workout.   After she wore me out, she would then wear down Ina, and she STILL had hours of swimming left in her.

We took a visit to the Kennecott open pit Copper mine.  2 miles across, 3/4 a mile deep:

Helen was fascinated by the big trucks with 10 foot tall tires.  At the bottom of the mine they look like ants.   Here she is trying to pick them up with her fingers:

I found this happy guy in her sunglasses:

And I found this happy guy living under our dishwasher (still negotiating a territorial treaty with him):

And this guy found us one night.  Just as we were about to go to bed, he comes galloping into our living room, via a garage door I had left open:

After checking out our house, Helen got him settled down and I found a distraught neighbor outside, looking for his dog. 

Yesterday we had a pool party for Helen’s EEG group.   Was great fun, with 30+ guests, including her dept. chair, who here is not sitting in a chair:

I’m continuing to explore the trails near here.  This is up City Creek, which feeds directly into downtown:

And on that hike I discovered the land of the dragonflies:

Some more backyard critter photos.  This is the squirrel that gets very upset when I visit our backyard when he is using it:

And this is a Magpie that is just waiting for Helen to take off her gold watch when she goes swimming.  These guys are famous for stealing shiny things:

This is a morning dove about to poop on a finch:

And here we have a hawk towering over the Salt Lake City library:

 

So that mystery photo was a close up of the beak of this dead bird, found on the shore of the Great Salt Lake:

Every few years, depending largely on weather conditions,  a bacteria wakes up and kills thousands of birds.  Called Avian Cholera, it doesn’t affect humans …. at least not yet  (dun, dun dah … that was my scary-apocalypse-could-happen-any-minute sound).

Bruce