Varmit report, new camera, Dead Zone

[tenaya]

I think I may have said that Cutiepie has brought her babies by? I think it was about two weeks ago or so. We've only seen two babies. Well, Mom has seen them; I saw two fast moving grey blobs as I opened the door to give her some food. These guys are pretty shy. Cutiepie just looked at them racing for the elm tree with a slightly embarrassed expression. "Yes, they have no manners, but I'm still here!"

There are two sets of four litters of skunks. The maternal instinct isn't that strong and I've seen babies wandering around on there own, and today on mom had six babies with her. And for the first time, I saw a mom skunk notice her young. She had walked out from beneath a tree that has a lot of foliage under it and the young followed, more or less. She went up to two that had gone the wrong direction, grabbed them by the scruff, gave them a sharp shake and tossed them in the right direction. It seemed a tad harsh but the little guys simply took the direction without complaint. I've yet to get any good photos recently.

Speaking of which, my camera is giving me a hard time and I've bought a new one on ebay.
It's a Canon PowerShot S3 IS and I bought a two gig SD card with it. I need to play with this because it will be coming with me on the cruise. It has an image stabilizer to compensate for blurriness from breathing and such. http://www.steves-digicams.com/2006_reviews/s3is.html

And for the Dead Zone, I was really irritated by the opening scene, but was won over by the who dunit type plot. Johnny's relationship with Bruce seemed strained and sometimes the show seemed forced but at least it was a much better ep than last week's.

Comments

[sherrold.livejournal.com]

I completely agree about DZ, but the thing that kept occuring to me throughout the episode? How damn gay Johnny and Bruce looked -- Bruce was wearing capris for heaven's sake!

[tenaya.livejournal.com]

Yes, the changes in costuming gave me pause. Was it because they were going to spend the day at the beach or have the boys had a make over? I have to say I'm looking forward to this week's episode even more.

[moonchildetoo.livejournal.com]

So you think Cutiepie only has two kids this year (that survived, anyway)?

Maybe mama skunk was PMSing... ;-) Or she needs a babysitter really bad!

My new camera has the image stabilizer too - I love it! Fantastic for taking kitty shots indoors.

[tenaya.livejournal.com]

I'm watching them right now. Just mom and two babies. Everyone is very skittish and I can't get near the door without the kids running up the hill and mom following suit. She took a break from eating kibble to stroke one along the back and nuzzle a little grey shoulder. She is such a sweet raccoon.

Good to hear about the stabilizer. I like the looks of natural lighting indoors, but usually end up with a blurry photo. This sounds encouraging.

As for momma skunk, I think the thing with skunks is that all their movements tend to be sharp and jerky. It's just the way they are.

[moonchildetoo.livejournal.com]

Aww! Maybe a coyote got one of the babies and they're all still shell-shocked. Poor things! I love the visuals of momma stroking them.

Every time I tried to take a pic of the Kids indoors with a flash, I got "space kitty eye", but not so with the 'high sensitivity' (my camera has ISO 1000) and image stabilization. Not always crystal clear, but definitely viewable.