A few animal pictures today

These pics are in need of a click

A mule deer that tried to follow me home as I was walking around the Mesa Verde National Park. I tried to get him in the truck but his antlers wouldn't fit in the doorway. He will shed those antlers this winter so I told him I would try again if I'm in town.

It's steadily warming up now, hitting 70° today, and starting tomorrow, the next 10 days is predicted to be sunny and in the 70s and 80s, which sounds very comfortable to me.

One problem that always develops this time of year for me is there's a massive tree in my daughter's front yard.  The sun, during the summer, goes straight over the top of the Arctic Fox, giving my solar panels full sunshine. But this time of year, the sun gets behind that tree and is partially blocked, which means my solar panels don't produce as much power as they do during the summer.

Typically, when I leave here about the middle of October, the sun's location isn't a huge problem. But staying here until after Thanksgiving with the big tree blocking the sun, and houses and other obstacles doing the same, I'm not sure if I can live on solar power only, especially since we will have colder and cloudier days than I have to deal with now, so I may have to plug into the house.

At least the snowstorm cleared out the air from all of the smoke we've had from Colorado's various forest fires. It had been getting pretty annoying with my allergies acting up. So now I can not only breathe normally, I can actually see the mountains off in the distance again.

                           theboondork

This is the offending trees in my daughter's yard. As you can see right now the sun is only a minor problem for my solar panels. But as the sun gets lower on the horizon during the Fall, it sinks deeper into the trees and I only get the suns full strength for a small part of the day. And because the sun is so low on the horizon even without the tree I'm not getting as much charging as I do during the summer.

I spotted this  Moose feeding in the shallows at a little pond on my way to the Sand Dunes National Park. She pulled her face up out of the mud as I was taking her picture and made a noise that sounded like a fat man sitting on a Whoopee Cushion. I thought she might be trying to tell me something but not speaking any Moose myself I'm not sure what she was saying but like a lot of women she was probably concerned about  me taking her picture while her face was covered with mud.

Their definitely not the prettiest critter in the world. I can see why people chose to ride Horses and not Mousses. I wonder if she is one of those Chocolate Mousses?

Not nearly as interesting as a Moose, but a whole lot easier to take a picture of, is this bright yellow Grasshopper. I guess his bright yellow colors makes it easier for birds to find him and have him for dinner. If you've ever wondered, like I have, why grasshoppers don't wear shoes, this picture makes it pretty clear that shoes just won't work on their funny looking feet...... figuring that out, now there's one less thing I have to wonder about.