A Welcome Guest and a Bit of a Scare

Molly and I walk down our long dirt driveway every evening to get the mail, and lately I had been noticing these enormous footprints in the dirt.  They were obviously from some kind of bird, but they're about 9 inches long and 6 inches wide!

I have some kind of Bigfoot bird visiting me!

Today, in broad daylight, I looked out my window and saw Bigfoot.  He's been here before, and I even photographed him once, but thought it was a fluke. Judging from the number of tracks I've been finding, I think he might have moved in..

So what's a big beautiful heron doing on my little homestead in the boondocks?  Don't they eat fish?

Apparently that's not all they eat, because after stealthily moving across the field (I thought he was just afraid of me), he suddenly darted his head into the soil and came up with...

A gopher!  One of my millions.  That makes Mr. Heron a very welcome guest at Sábado!

The Scare

One of the things that made this property affordable, in addition to the lack of electricity, is the fact that there is a road easement cutting right through it.  If the County ever has money to burn and decides to straighten out the S curve that wraps around me, they could re-route the road right through my place.

The easement is that Miss America sash cutting across my place.

 Currently, and for as long as the locals can remember, the road sweeps around me in a big S curve.  It's been that way since it was dirt.  But if they ever decide to straighten it out, the road would go in front of my house, and I'd probably lose my beloved circle-drive oak tree.

So I get very nervous whenever I see Public Works people within a mile of the place. Today while I was watching the heron, I noticed a half a dozen people in orange vests walking down the road.  Through the binoculars I could see that they had measuring equipment.  Not good.

Molly and I jumped in the truck and headed north to find the workers' truck, and sure enough, it was Department of Public Works.  We turned around and headed back toward home and there was the chilling sign..

   

They were painting these marks in the road, but the encouraging thing was that the marks continued all the way around the S curve and past my place.

When I caught up with the crew, I rolled down the window and asked them if they were re-paving the road. "Getting ready to!" he said.  I told him I lived back there (pointing to my place) and he said "Then you'll be happy."

So... the fact that the marks followed the current road, with no stakes marching across my land, and the fact that he said they were merely re-paving, not re-configuring, makes me believe I live to fight another day, AND investing the money in repaving suggests that they aren't planning to make any changes to the road in the foreseeable future.

Whew!