Much lake activity

We started our boat work on Wednesday, retrieving the power boat from the shop, and putting it in its winter home in the front of the yard.

Thanksgiving afternoon we took the sailboat out of the water. It was not really windy enough, so there was a little paddling by the crew, but it was lovely and warm (55), so we thought that was a better day. No mishaps occurred on removal. We waited until Sunday to cover it and put it in its winter home in the back of the yard, because we needed to have Thanksgiving dinner, and the other two days were going to be pretty windy, which makes handling large tarps more challenging.

We hauled the other mooring before taking the sailboat out, and discovered that it was actually past time to remove it, because the ring to which you attach the chain was very thin. We are lucky there was not a hurricane with wind from a direction that would have caused a real problem. We could have lost a boat. And, this time, I did bring a bathroom scale down, and learned that the formerly 100 pound anchor now weighs 80 pounds, which is about what I had been estimating.

The final lake work this weekend was to take out the rest of the dock and pile it neatly in pieces on the shore. This work was made slightly more amusing by the fact that it was snowing. Not very hard, and it wasn't windy, so even though the air was 38, it was moderately pleasant to finish this job. This is not the first time we've taken out the dock while it was snowing... Ken pointed out that this was the first time in three decades that we had nothing in the water.

On mice

I decided to stop having a heart, much as it was amusing. In the last three weeks, I have killed at least 20 mice. That is a lot! I have the kind of traps where they are easy and safe to set and easy to shake the mouse out without having to touch it. For most of this time, the mouse didn't get very much of the bait before tripping the trap, and so I could just reset without having to rebait. However, "the early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese" – we've now got a scavenger who crawls in next to its dead buddy and finishes off the bait. Hopefully if I kill enough of its buddies, it will eventually become the first mouse.

Meanwhile, our SUV started to stink badly, of perhaps dead animal or animal droppings. We took apart some of the air system, and found quite a substantial mouse nest. Cleaning it out, and setting a couple of my traps (not having a heart again) we caught one mouse. It still kind of smells in there, though not to the degree it had before, so my theory is that we were insufficiently complete in our cleaning process – it's not like it's easy to reach your hand back in there. It needs service anyway, so I'm thinking to ask the service people, who might have better tools, to clean it out. It's pretty strange that we've never had mice in our cars before. Maybe one of our neighbors has stopped having a cat or something. It's well-known that my cat is completely useless (also she is indoor only so wouldn't help with the car).