Classroom butterflies! Goat last time stuck.

Everyone,
Several of you guessed it, I finally called Animal Control about the neighbors goat problems. We heard the goat stuck every morning for 3 days. At noon on Friday I went and looked and found the goat as shown below.

 Notice the weeds on the right of the goat, that is Japanese Bamboo Grass unchecked, hope you never get it in your yard or garden, it is insane.


Anyway when I called Animal Control I told them the neighbor never hears the goat crying due to closed windows, loud AC unit and barking dogs. So they asked if I wanted to sign a complaint, I  agreed to. So I waited two hours in the mean time the mini bee swarm happened in our back yard as noted in the last posting.


2 pm the officer finally shows up. She tells me I can sign a complaint about barking dogs, but not a goat being stuck in the fence??? The dogs don't bother me, so she goes to investigate without my complaint about the dogs. Today she called me and said when she arrived there the goat was free already and she checked over the animals with the neighbors, no problems to speak of, I'm relieved. So they are going to get the goats horns removed and she is to follow up on that.

 As some of you might recall I rescued this goat and another goat 4 times last year during the heat of the summer.


Now some fun. The butterfly cage I built for Meg's classroom currently has 25 or 26 Black Swallowtail chrysalises, all the caterpillars are finished. The photo below shows 7 chrysalises hanging from the ceiling of the cage in her classroom. My best guess on swallowtails emerging would be at best Thursday or Friday. Likely as things usually happen most will emerge over the weekend. 

The school had a picnic at the shelter where they hold the Durham Farmers Market on Sunday. Meg was doing the composting station, we collected 75 gallons of compost! Amazing that every kid in the school is taught recycling and composting from kindergarten and many of the parents did not know what compost was...... Guess the new parents are off the hook on this one, still a crying shame to see adults just toss everything in the garbage right next to recycling and compost containers. In Durham you have to recycle, it is the law, still many do not do it.

 So OK I'm off the soap box now. I did get to play a little with my camera. I walked accross the street to investigate the iron bridge over the creek. I found this Hackberry Emperor posing on the iron bridge for me.

 This proves I'm a likeable guy right, the butterfly jumps from the bridge onto my camera then on my camera hand. So given the camera has a swivel mounted viewfinder I managed to take this photo by myself. Not easy photo to take and manually focus my point and shoot,.

I carried the Hackberry Emperor across the street and into a crowd of about 500 children and adults. From there to Meg, she coaxed the butterfly  onto her hand. Then she let not one but three second graders coax the butterfly on to their fingers. I don't ever recall finding a wild butterfly and getting it to walk onto 5 different peoples hands before. Took some adorable photos of the kids with the butterflies but would need parents permission to post them here.

Oh, I'm helping with a second grade butterfly walk at Duke Gardens on Wednesday if the hurricane doesn't hit us.