More or less with the exception of today (which is rainy) the heat wave here has been continuing in British Columbia. Wild fires are burning across over 150 locations around BC. Although its dry down here in the Fraser Valley theres no bush fires although there is a complete camp fire ban.
The continued warm weather has had us making trips to the local rivers to walk the dogs and cool down. We've only been camping once recently. We stayed overnight on a sandy island on the Fraser River while fishing. Camping meant the fishing could go on till as late as allowable and from as early as sun up. Its the first time we slept with the dogs in the same tent. For me it was not such a bad experience as the dogs seem to believe Jaime is much more comfortable to sleep on and spent most of the evening settling themselves on her legs, back and head and then moving around again. Come the morning for some reason Jaime's mood was not conducive to me convincing her to come for an early morning dog walk.
Some big Salmon are being landed at the minute. Jaime landed this cracking 17+lb fish but apparently 20+ and much larger are not uncommon.
A lot of people are now starting to reach the limit their freezer can physically handle. But the leftovers from filleting are not going to waste. Jaime has been taking the fish heads and backs to work for the bears who seem to love them. Charlie and Chester the black bears, make short work of any Salmon thrown their way.
Jaime is loving her job, in particular spending time with the wolves is a personal favourite. It took Jaime a couple of weeks for the wolves to feel comfortable with her, but now she is in with them on a daily basis, feeding and grooming them. Jaime has a very unique job and is really pleased to be in a position where she can take care of the animals.
On the subject of animals we had a little drama last week when Flash the ferret made a break for it. Her cage door was not quick clicked closed fully and she managed to contort her way out and make for freedom. By the time we realised she had gone AWOL its possible she had been out for 5 hours. Our neighbourhood has a large number of cats but these were not the greatest concern, more worrying was the number of roads. Within an hour of realising she was gone we had search parties out, posters up around the neighbourhood, local vets and food stores followed by calls to all of the local animal shelters. As dusk started to come in, we called it a day and could only hope she would return over night. We left a cat basket with some food and blankets out to encourage her. Jaime had a very sleepless night with worry. The following morning I went out to check the garden at 6am while the dogs were eating breakfast and hearing some scrabbling from our shed watched very closely to see a small white ferret face pop out and dart back. After shouting for Jaime to get up we managed to grab her and put back in the cage for what seemed to be a very welcome feed.
There are big similarities between life here in British Columbia and life in the UK, but its the odd little difference which poke you between the eyes and often make them tear up with laughter. Simple things like the statement - "My neighbour is Randy" here simply refers to the name of the guy who actually lives next door and nothing to do with his 70s'esk porn facial hair. I'm forming a list of these differences in my head for a blog post at a later date. We did have a brief encounter on Friday which I suspect is highly unlikely in Britain.
While heading to one of our usual dog walks we spotted a tipi as we walked through a wooded area. As we passed further towards the field where Loki and Duffy would usually run around we discovered more tipi and campers. As we continued to walk we could just about make out a chalk powder white line marking a circle around the whole field. Just as we were about to cross over the line a middle aged woman shouted dramatically after us asking us not to cross the line or walk the path we had many times before. They were holding a "Healing Ceremony" and apparently we had just walked right through and over their spirit path, we were warned we should watch our dogs closely over night as they may have been affected by evil spirits. Now in this day and age of cultural sensitivity and health and safety, surely such a thing should clearly marked, A sign such as "Do Not Enter Spirit Guides Only" would be useful. In the interest of a quiet life and avoiding a supernatural misadventure we gave them a wide berth, the only evil spirits which manifested themselves over night we believe were actually related to something one of the dogs ate while under a bush.
