Rip Snorter Night, Rainy Thursday

Two more countries under her belt.  Annie has reported geocaching finds in Poland and the Republic of Slovakia.  Looks like she's been pretty busy with her GPS.

I have no idea which country is represented with the flip-flop photo above, but I do know that the shot with the wonderful background colors was taken in Slovakia.

She put a note on her Facebook wall that she was going to "sneak" into Poland.  Don't know if that happened, but she does have the cache to prove it. 

Back here in North Idaho, we had quite the lightning storm overnight, leading to a warm, balmy morning.  

What happened to September where wind shields are fogged up in the mornings and there's a cool nip in the air?  Seems a little unusual.

On this morning's walk, I noticed that the lightning had hit and snapped a tree over in the north part of the Meserve Preserve.  

Speaking of trees, Debbie and I witnessed a first in our game-related, sheltered lives last night.  While sitting on the deck, I spotted some birds launching off like pheasants and aiming toward the trees in Gary Finney's woods.

First, one, then another, then another.  Debbie turned around in time to see a few more headed for the limbs. 

I wondered if there could possibly be rooster pheasants over there cuz Bill has seen and heard pheasant signs around our place a couple of times this summer.

Well, upon walking over to the road, we both discovered a phenomenon that had never entered our brains.  

Until last night, I did not know that turkeys sleep in trees. 

Now, I do, and so does Debbie.  

We listened as one---probably the self-appointed turkey sergeant---quitely piped out instructions to the others.  A few relocated in different parts of the trees, and then all went silent.

This morning they had already gotten up---oops--downand were over visiting the young calves in Taylor's field. 

As I walked down the road, I observed another more disturbing item. 

What gives the telephone company and the producers of all those telephone books, they think we need,  the right to litter the road with their annual editions inside big plastic bags?

Are they exempt from any rules for polluting the countryside?  This has been bugging me for the past couple of years as I've witnessed plastic book bag after book bag dumped and sitting alongside the road for weeks on end. 

I'm wondering whom they pay to make these deliveries and if they specifically instruct them to throw the books on the ground rather than taking the time to insert them inside mail boxes.

Is there a law against their putting them inside mailboxes?  Is that why they show up on the ground near the paper and mailboxes?

I really loved picking up my drippy bag with a Frontier telephone book inside this morning while also carrying my papers to the house from their assigned boxes. 

Do Frontier or the makers of the other books have any sense of civic or environmental pride?  

Seems to me that,  with the amount of money they must bring in from ads, they could afford to have the job right, like every other business-related entity in this country. 

I also wonder if those books are pinpointed for just Frontier customers, or do they just land wherever there's a mail or paper box?

I'm finding telephone books less and less efficient with each day as more and more telephone users bypass the land lines for cell phones.  

This has also led to an increasing challenge for journalists like me,  trying to track down people for interviews.  

Indeed, frustrating but not nearly as maddening as the corporate garbage depositors. 

Just sayin'.  And, definitely thinking these companies need to show better civic responsibilities.  

They're surely not enhancing their public images by dumping telephone books along our beautiful country roads. 

Okay, I've got that off my chest.  Now, I'm thinking about cleaning out some litter on this rainy day.  

My drawers and shelves have way too many telephone books.  Maybe I need to go dump them near a telephone company mailbox.