Slightly more interesting than yesterday

Every Sunday in August, Loveland, Ohio has live bands at Nisbet Park. The favorite band, hands down, is Robin Lacy and Dezydeco.

They play a cool blend of zydeco and rockabilly, throw beads and get the crowd up and dancing. If you squint, you can pretend you're at Mardi Gras. They are my special favorite because the tambourine/washboard player and backup singer is a former associate of my uncle's, who has a court reporting firm. (Joan's the one wearing/playing the washboard on the left)

The kids especially like Robin Lacy, because it's music they can get into...not heavy, but bouncy, boogie-woogie music.

Isabelle and Lorelei are in this crowd, somewhere.

Bless the people who own the land this tree is on. I drive by this tree snag every day, and I am so glad someone leaves trees like this standing. I always look for woodpeckers in this tree, though I haven't seen any yet.

Word up, people! If you have a tree that is dying or dead, and it is not in danger of falling on your house, leave it standing! Trim the branches off if you must, but leave a snag. There are few enough natural sites for cavity-nesting birds, like woodpeckers, some owls, chickadees, BLUEBIRDS, etc. I am actually hoping one of our trees die (like the non-native Bradford Pear or some others) so that we can provide a natural place for some critters to make a home.

On the way back from the concert, I saw a few hot air balloons drifting overhead. I so love hot air balloons. If anyone out there has one, I would love to go up in it!

Okay, some set-up for this one:

We have given up on live-trapping the mice in the basement for now. Why? Because they figured out where to chew so they could get out. I kept finding the traps with the peanut butter gone and no mouse. So, (and I get the feeling that I will get flak about this from some, but it's our basement and we all know what I do for wildlife in every other way) we have resorted to electric traps. The mouse smells the peanut butter, enters the trap and is electrocuted instantly. I had to make a choice between that and snap-traps, and I chose these because snap-traps don't always kill instantly. And I also couldn't get poison, because of the kids, the dog, the cats, the birds, the rats. And if the rats get out, they are too big to get into this trap. Okay, on to the picture: We caught our first mouse last night, and this morning, I placed the dead mouse on our fence, to see if anyone wanted it for a meal. This evening, the mouse was gone and this feather was laying next to the fence:

Looks like a hawk feather, doesn't it?

So, we are getting the mice out of the basement and into the gizzards of raptors. Works for me.