Skyes Spirit Wildlife Rehabilitation & Education Center

This is Skye - the horse they named the rehab center after.

This is Skye and their other horses

The Tepee Maryjane and Robert Angelo have set up on their land. Their children sleep out in it sometimes... The Vulture - his feathers are so much prettier in person

Broadwing Hawk - a quiet observer

The Bobcat - my favorite

These are some of the pictures I took when Hope and I visited the wildlife rehab center. The picture of the vulture doesn't even begin to show how pretty his feathers are... The top ones were black with teal and the lower feathers were black with a tan color. You can see his beak is crooked. That happened when he was a baby and fell out of his nest. He's very friendly and likes to have his beak rubbed.

The Broadwing Hawk was not friendly. He just stayed up on his branch watching us. He also has very pretty coloring on his feathers...tan with black.

The Bobcat was my favorite. He's so pretty and just looks like an overgrown domestic tomcat. He's about the size of a medium-sized dog. His ears are unique looking... the backs are black and they each have a white triangle of fur in the center. And of course he has a cute little bob-tail. Because they took him in when he was just a baby, he became too 'people friendly' to release back out into the wild. He purrs REAL LOUD too.

I can't wait to go back in the Spring when they have their Spring Festival! (if I can manage to get the day off work)

Back Online!

In my last post I'd talked about going up to Skye's Spirit Wildlife Rehabilition Center in Harrisville, Pa., which is just about 20 minutes away from New Castle. Hope and I went up on Saturday, October 6th. The owner-operators of this rehab center have it on their own 15 acres. I spent several hours there because I fell in love with the Bobcat that was there. He was found when he was just a baby. Someone had owned him illegally and let him play with a rubber dog toy. He chewed it up and ate it and it became lodged inside. He wasn't able to eat or anything and was very sick. The owners couldn't take him to a vet or they'd be found out that they owned a wild animal illegally, so they just turned him loose to live or die on his own. Someone found him and brought him to the rehab center. They took him to a vet and he had to have surgery. By then he was too old to turn out into the wild as he wouldn't have learned his hunting/survival skills, so he's a permanent resident at the rehab center. He has been declawed for easier handling. He was GORGEOUS and he's very friendly. When we walked up to his enclosure he PURRED!!! And he kept pacing back and forth and rubbing up against the wire in the front as if he wanted petted! I wish I COULD have petted him. We also saw a Broadwing Hawk that is a permanent resident because he lost the claws on one foot. There was a vulture there as well who is also a permanent resident, since he fell as a baby and is blinded in one eye and his beak is twisted. I'd always thought vultures were black and ugly, but upon seeing one up close I discovered they have BEAUTIFUL teal and black feathers. The vulture was very friendly too and came right up to the edge of the enclosure to bask in the attention. We weren't able to see some of the other animals they are dealing with who need medical attention. They said due to hazards of dealing with wild animals they could not allow those animals to be viewed by the public just yet. I have pictures that I took up there, including the photo of Skye...their white horse the rehab center is named after. When I get my Paint program working right, I'll post the pictures.
The evening we came home from the wildlife rehab center, when I got on my computer I discovered it had crashed!!! I was devastated! I couldn't afford to take it to a professional and get it repaired, so first I tried running my recovery CD to try to repair whatever errors there were but that didn't help. I needed a new hard drive. Oh NO!!!! I figured I was stuck for awhile. I couldn't afford that. I got my webtv up and running, but there's only so much you can do on a webtv... I was getting deparate... I pay all my bills online and since it was the beginning of the month they were all due. I played around with my recovery disk...running it multiple times with no luck.
I was able to pay just a few bills online on the webtv, but the rest had to be paid by snail mail, which caused a problem as I had to locate all the addresses to send them to. Webtv didn't allow me on some websites due to encryptions so unfortunately a lot of my bills were paid late... :-( I got most paid but then I went to visit Abby and Ryan and Abby let me use her computer. I got the rest of the bills paid on her computer and then I was also able to get into my AT&T email account and delete out most of the 2111 emails that had stacked up in there. That was a big help! I was also able to order my medication online using her computer.. Our prescription plan at work requires us to order all medications to be delivered through the mail.
BUT... MY BIG BREAK CAME... my WONDERFUL cousin John Double in Colorado Springs is a real CHAMP!! He just 'happened' to have the 80 gig hard drive 'laying around collecting dust' as he put it that I needed, so he sent it to me along with his confidence that I could actually install it myself and get my XP loaded back in and all the drivers and programs. I got it on a Wednesday, but I waited until the following week on my day off to try to mess around with it. I wanted to be able to give it my full attention and not have to stop and go to work.
Well, that turned out to be easier than I thought. When I took the cover off the tower I WAS a bit daunted when I looked at everything that was inside, but I just proceeded to unscrew the bracket holding the old hard drive, removed it, inserted the new hard drive and screwed the bracket back down. I put in the recovery disk, loaded XP, put in all the disks for the drivers, put in my AT&T disk so I could get online. I went to Windows Update and download all 87 updates (groan...it took 6 hours on this dial-up connection I use). Next I put on my McAfee Security Program and I'm BACK IN BUSINESS!!!! Whew!!!! What a relief to have my computer back in operation again!!!!! It sounds like I did it all in one day, but no... it took two days because I didn't work on it non-stop.
Unfortunately my Paint program is not what I had on here before..it seems to be a very basic program and doesn't have the features the other one had. I can't resize my photos. Also I don't have my Microsoft Office or Word programs... Hmmmm... I've got to figure that problem out. When I do, I'll be able to post some pictures, but until then it's strictly text on this blog.
One last thing I have to do is to connect up the old hard drive (as the slave) and try to copy my personal files from it to the new hard drive. I sure have learned my lesson. From now on...everything I put on the computer.. documents..photos, etc. will be copied to a CD IMMEDIATELY. Luckily I DID have most of my photos on CD's already, but there were a few I just had downloaded and hadn't saved yet on a disk. They're still on the old hard drive.
I'm not in too big a hurry yet to try to do that... I'll wait a bit on that, but I definitely need my OFFICE AND WORD programs. John seems to think I may have another disk laying around here somewhere that has those programs on it, since they came with my Dell computer when I first purchased it. I'll have to do a thorough search tomorrow while I'm off work and see if I can locate it. I sure can't afford to buy them as new programs just now at Christmas time!
We had a baby shower for Abby on November 4th. I have some photos from that which I'll post hopefully when I get my Paint program back. There's only SIX WEEKS to go until her baby boy is due. He's named Eden Connor O'Donnell. I can't wait... I'm soooo excited to be a GREAT-grandmother!!!! I can't wait to hold that baby boy!!
We had a nice Thanksgiving dinner at Jodie Fye's house. Everything was very delicious! I LOVE turkey, but the only thing about eating at someone else's house is there NO LEFTOVERS! I roasted a Butterball turkey breast for myself a few days ago, so now I can have lots of turkey!
Well, that's about it for now until next time! :-)

October 1st

I had today off work and was supposed to go out to eat with my neighbor Kathy. She quit work at 5:15 p.m. and said in an email that she'd call me when she got home. I called and left her a message on her answering machine. I've had no answer... guess no dinner tonight with her. :-( I'm hungry! I was looking forward to a nice chicken salad at Edward's Lounge. Oh well....

I have to work for the next 4 days then have Saturday off. Have plans to go visit Skye's Spirit Wildlife Rehabilitation and Education Center in Harrisville, Pa., which is not too far away. I didn't even know that place existed until a few months ago. They take in wildlife that has been injured, hopefully fix them up then release them back into the wild. The husband-wife owners of this strictly volunteer organization are both part Native American. I'm anxious to go visit their store and see some of the wildlife.

It was a beautiful Fall day today, but I didn't really spend any time outdoors like I would have liked. The leaves are just getting fringes of Fall color to them. It gets dark so quickly now and I'm not real crazy about that.

I've got to go do a little clean-up in the kitchen now, then I'm going to take advantage of having the evening off work and watch a little tv for a change... or... I might work on a stone painting I have planned... we'll see.