Birdie Crashes & a Strange Creature Found
This week at Freedom Acres was full of new adventures. I never know what to expect. I go with a plan but it rarely gets followed perfectly. This week the goal was to mark the second drive onto the property and see and hand clear a little more of the property I haven’t gotten to thoroughly investigate yet. Oh, and to practice with Birdie some more 🙂
Birdie was amazing … she learned to spin and orbit all while slowing down. She even filmed in vertical mode so I wouldn’t have to crop the footage in order to put her videos on YouTube. She is much smarter than I am, compensating for all my ineptitude and awkwardness. With her camera pointed towards the ground she made several long glides around the property. She hovered above the trees and gave me the beginning of a view of the property that I hadn’t been able to piece together from just being on the ground and walking it.
I was following her progress both by watching her in the sky and beginning to get a better knack of watching her on my little control console even though the sun made it hard, at times, to see the screen. Getting her to orbit was a big win, now I just need to figure out how to have her make wider orbits. It was a giddy kind of fun watching her go round in circles. Clearly I am easily entertained. Once I got her to orbit I admittedly obsessed with spinning so many circles I think I made her dizzy.
Her dizziness (or perhaps really mine) might have been part of the reason for what happened next. Despite her courage and the fact that I had her in bypass mode (which was supposed to have her bypass objects) I managed to fly her right smack into the top branches of a tree. I listened and watched as she crashed against the limbs, then tumbled downward, hitting limb after limb after limb of the tree until she spiraled downward hit the ground.
I lost sight of her at some point and literally ran in her direction in a bit of a panic and found her, lying still in the leaves and faithfully still filming the ground. Bless her … she survived it all. Unfortunately, she did have a little broken propeller. Awwwwwwwww, poor baby! Considering the sound and sight of the plunging downward it was a pretty minor injury. I was grateful. This was one of my biggest fears for her so, now it has happened (like the first scratch on a new car) so I can free up some. It was the end of the day anyhow so I lovingly turned her off and tucked her safely in her case to fix when I got home.
As for Gracie, she got her mean face on and barked at Birdie every time I launched her … as if Birdie was someone new she needed to protect us from each time … forgetting that she was part of the family now. That little kid is quite the protector. LOL
For the working part of my day, I happily moved through areas I was not too familiar with … brush cutter buzzing along ahead of me to cut the bramble and vines out of our way. The land becomes more and more comfortable to me each time I go. I am getting used to the various areas of sand pits and leaf covered ground under the pines and oaks. I now know the sounds of the crows as crows. I marked the second drive into the property and was humming right along when I spotted an area that seemed to pull me towards it right off where the 2nd drive is coming onto the property.
That was when I saw IT. The visual was the remains of some strange-to-me creature. I have discovered various areas around the property with creature bones. They have been, up til now, all cleaned and bleached to white and mostly small parts in size. I had figured that it was to be expected on raw land. Creatures doing what they do as creatures.
This was different. It was almost a full skeleton about 3 1/2 feet in length and not bleached out completely cleaned or bleached out from the sun yet. I gotta admit, it was horrifying to me. I took a few deep breaths and slowly approached and then stood and looked at it from several angles and couldn’t, for the life of me, figure out what it was. A coyote, a fox, an alligator (there is no water on the land of within several miles). It had ribs, and a strong spine looking spine. I couldn’t see any leg bones. It was really disorientating.
Then the sun suddenly caught something metal in my camera lens. I enlarged view. It was some kind of pointed arrow tip, spear gun tip or crossbow broad head or something. It was sticking up completely through the body. Several feet away I found what looked like the rest of it broken off on the ground. OK, so first I was just horrified by the dead creature now I was even MORE horrified by the thought of whoever killed the creature.
It is one thing to know that creatures live by survival of the fittest and there is prey and predator in nature. It is another thing to think that a human killed the creature with great aim and was not only on this property but obviously the one that walked away with it’s great aim and no doubt more of those arrow things it used to shoot this creature. I am telling myself that the person was protecting themselves. I got it. But it still gave me the creeps. Meanwhile I still don’t know what the creature was. So if anyone reading this does then please let me know. I love a good mystery but no necessarily in my yard LOL.
Onto better things: This coming Saturday is THE Day!! Lacey & Jeremiah from The Tree Shop are meeting me at the property. Jeremiah is THE guy who is going to forestry mulch about 2 acres of the property. I found him on YouTube doing videos where he is gleefully whipping around properties in one piece of equipment or another and leaving the land mulched and cleaned and cleared. He is a hoot and Lacey has been amazing to talk to and taught me alot about how this all works while being very patient and kind with me.
After this forestry mulching is done I will be able to get trucks on the property and begin laying out my temporary living area. If you’ve been following along with my blogs or my YouTube channel you know that this is the first BIG step in getting me living on the property … everything else begins to happen after this including temporary electricity, drilling the well, etc.. I AM SOOOOOOO EXCITED!
