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Here is a random assortment of photos from recent weeks, mostly wildlife but not all.

First up, many people are saying this year is a bad year for ticks. I would rephrase it to say it is a bad year for people, due to ticks. For the ticks themselves, this is a good year.

Either way, we normally find a few ticks per year, and they’ve always been dog ticks, which I find is a relief because they are listed as transmitting neither Lyme disease not Alpha Gal.

On a side note, I wonder if an alpha male gets Alpha Gal syndrome do they cancel out?

Back on topic, I usually can feel them crawling on me and pluck them off before anything happens. Somehow this one ended up on my leg during the night, as I woke up to a severe itch on my leg. It was not a typical itchy feeling, something a little more substantial, and that caused me to look at what was causing that.

The burny itchy feeling was caused by the tick’s bite, which is a good sign because that means I can’t get bitten without noticing it, so I’ll be able to remove any ticks before the 24-hour window expires. And when I pulled the tick off, I saw it was not a dog tick. I got my first deer tick.

Any ticks I find, I stick them to tape, then fold the tape over and press it so the tick is really stuck, then throw it away. I don’t care what tape – Scotch, painter, duct, etc. In this case the closest thing at hand was blue painters tape so that’s what the background is.

Next up, Some Wife decided the bathroom needed a refresh, so she found a sink/vanity on Facebook marketplace that she liked and we picked it up. For the few days that we had it but I hadn’t pulled out the old sink yet, it was sitting outside. It was in a sheltered area so it didn’t get rained on, but it was not otherwise protected from anything.

I saw this frog was appreciating the coolness of the porcelain and decided to hang out on the sink for a while.

Next up, bagel day! We do not have a pet in our house, but we have the next closest thing, which is sourdough starter. Gotta feed and water it regularly. Some Wife ends up baking something sourdough-ish about once a week. Usually it’s a loaf of bread – sometimes plain, sometimes chocolate-chip, sometimes feta-dill, sometimes cheddar-bacon. But this particular week we did not bake bread loaves, we made bagels. Here it is near the end of the boiling process.

Last up, a lone wild turkey. We get wild turkeys around our yard. It’s always fun hearing them. Them, and the cranes. Or herons. I can’t tell cranes and herons apart but I know what the ones we get sound like.

The wild turkeys are in flocks, sometimes 5, sometimes 12, or any similar number. But occasionally there will be a lone turkey wandering by himself. The first few times we saw a lone turkey we thought he was lost, like he got separated from his flock and was looking for them. But knowing how some flocks/packs work, now I wonder if he’s an adolescent male who broke off on purpose to start his own flock.

I was working in the kitchen and heard a noise at our patio door. Birds do occasionally fly into our patio door so I thought it was that again. After the second time, I went to see what was going on, and I saw the lone turkey, pecking at our window. He saw me and started wandering away, but I was able to get this picture of him.

I was thinking, “Don’t you want to lean way over and check on the grill?” But no, he wandered away unharmed.