The stockings were hung by the chimney with care (and catfish heads were hung in trees)

I got bit by the Christmas bug today and decided to hang the stockings:

The four on the right are ours...

...and the rest are the animals'. Everyone has one, except for the rats and the parakeets. I will be getting them tomorrow. As you can see, Nellie's stocking is one of Geoff's socks that she chewed a hole in back when she was a puppy. Fitting, isn't it?

And the fish stocking is a Zip-Loc bag.
Isabelle made this card for me in school today. She is learning her lower case letters...and I think we need to work on her "S".

While the girls were in school, I stopped at Lake Isabella to bird. A great tree that I used to stand under had been cut down, but the rangers left this neat little chair behind.
As I sat and enjoyed the bird song around me and the 60 degree weather, I turned and looked at the tree next to me. A very large, natural hole was open at the base, and I saw something poking out. I got up and looked a bit closer, and saw vertabrae. Cool!

I am always sticking my nose into cavities in trees, looking for signs of owls (pellets) or mammals (tracks or fur). Hopefully I never get my nose bitten by looking in the wrong tree.

This is what I found today:

I stared and stared at this, thinking that it was a duck skull. There were holes in the "bill". But I realized that the spine was protruded out the back of the skull, instead of the bottom, and I realized that I was holding a fish skull. A catfish, to be exact. The holes must be sinus for nerves leading to the "whiskers".

I got a closer look, and saw that the fish had "teeth". This is the underside of the skull, and in the upper right corner, you can see what is left of the air bladder. The bones were pretty chewed, so I guess it was a raccoon who went fishin' and came home with a honking huge catfish. There was also a small amount of snake skin inside the skull...I'm assuming that either the raccoon also got a snake for dinner at some point, or a snake had lived there before. Good reason not to stick my nose in too far!

This skull was larger than my hand, so imagine the size of the mother when it was alive and whole! I knew Lake Isabella had big catfish, but this is one that got away! (But only from the humans.)

By the way...I have been trying my damnedest to comment on some of your blogs, but I can't seem to "log in". I don't know if it's a beta thing or just a temporary glitch. Trust me, I want to comment! Hopefully I can get it figured out.