No, people, as much as some might dearly wish, Mojo is not dead. She was not swept out to sea by Hurricane Sandy--although Sandy DID rip a substantial amount of roofing off the bedroom addition to the house. Now that we have two inches of snow forecast for tonight, instead of fixing it proper I was up there with bandaids and chewing gum, hoping my fairly-native (okay, so we moved to New England when I was six months old) Yankee ingenuity will somehow keep us from waking up with a big pile of snow on the blankets. And looking forward to a proper big ol' roofing job once the weather turns warmer.

So Mojo thought, in her infinite wisdom, that rather than paying for her roof out of pocket, she should instead launch a MASSIVE CHRISTMAS SEASON OBNOXIOUS MARKETING EXTRAVAGANZA and raise the funds for her new and exciting Lamborghini oops, I mean, "roof". (That's okay, Mojo, you will just remember to take that out before this post goes live. And while you're hiding things from your adoring public, remember, Mojo--you're the greatest!)  MORE Mojo! »

If you ever have the very good fortune of hanging out with Mojo for a considerable length of time, she will eventually go into one of her private television sitcom references. Usually it's the Simpsons or Monty Python, but once in a while she can get fairly obscure. For example, just this weekend she suddenly squeaked, "Ohhh! Mister BREEZY!" in a cartoon mouse-style voice, which caused the Favorite Husband to ask, "What does that mean?" So Mojo had to drop whatever Important Work she was doing to find the clip. Because it was THAT IMPORTANT.  MORE Mojo! »

I can remember the first time I saw a wild turkey. We were renting a house in the middle of an industrial park--sort of this island of woods and fields in the middle of this huge airport industrial park, maybe half a mile from the airport. We had this very long half-a-mile driveway, and we were on our way out--the driveway dumped us in the middle of an aerospace contractor's parking lot--when we encountered this huge bird sitting in the middle of our driveway. It was way too big and ugly to be one of our chickens, and not ugly enough to be a turkey vulture.  MORE Mojo! »

So we've had the windows open for a week. And hence even if we wanted to sleep in--and today Mojo was a slugabed and slept in until 5:30, due to a stressful day yesterday--our feathered neighbors make sure we don't. First up is this fellow to the left: a pileated woodpecker. In addition to the very loud pecking--if they find a hollow tree they start to resemble a machine gun--the pileated has a very loud, alarming call similar to the sounds one hears in the movies when people are being chased by monsters in the jungle. All this noise comes from a fairly large bird, looks to be over a foot long. They are something to see, and to hear. BUT NOT AT FIVE IN THE MORNING.  MORE Mojo! »

Of course, they've been back for the better part of a month. I've just been lazy blogging about them. "Them" being juncos. They've been taking a back seat to all the flocks of turkeys strutting about, because turkeys are honkin' BIG dudes, whereas juncos are anonymous little flittery things. If they didn't have wings, they'd be mice.  MORE Mojo! »

No, not in the usual usage, of a stupid person, although heaven knows Mojo has suffered her share of them. No, this time I mean the birds. As in, LOTS of them.

I don't know what's going on in Turkeyland--I'm fairly sure they don't migrate to any great extent--but lately I can't drive more than two miles without encountering FLOCKS and FLOCKS of them hanging out by the side of the road.  MORE Mojo! »

This'll be short and sweet and devoid of many of the obvious jokes. Suffice to say, Mojo glanced out the window the other day and saw something large and suspicious lurking near her beloved vegetable garden. As we shall see over the course of this week (and as loyal readers already know) Mojo never knows exactly what is lurking in her back yard. So she got her trusty video camera, went upstairs to the bedroom, and discovered the following:

   MORE Mojo! »