poll: heat wave

I've updated the Blatherings for Sunday and Monday, for those interested.

Ruth, Kaarel, Sara and Annie left the cottage this morning after a last swim in the lake. At one point, Sara yelled, "Oh my goodness!" and swam very quickly to the dock and climbed out of the water, saying that something had popped up beside her in the water and looked at her before diving down again.

Apparently the cottage snapping turtle decided to make a reappearance this past weekend. It's been around for years (if it's the same one, that is), but has only been seen a few times. About a foot and a half in length, it seems to mainly come up when it's really hot outside. Jeff suspects that the turtle lives underneath our dock, where it's dark and cool.





Earlier in the weekend, Jeff tried gently poking at the turtle with a canoe paddle to encourage it to swim away, but the turtle just ignored him. Interesting, since supposedly the snappers are "defensive if confronted on land, but, in the water, they usually slip quietly away from any disturbance".

We're going to try to figure out a way of safely moving the turtle to another area of the lake, just to minimize possible incidents in the future, such as someone accidentally injuring themselves on the turtle's shell, or someone inadvertently causing the turtle to snap.

Any advice from snapping turtle experts out there welcome!





As fun as the cottage weekend was, I'm glad to be home. I'm not great when dealing with humid heat. I far prefer ice and snow and subzero temperatures; at least you can always add layers to keep warm! This past weekend was especially bad for heat. We could jump in the lake to keep cool, but you can only stay underwater for so long. :-)

Poll: How do you deal with heat?

Do you prefer hot weather over cold? Do you have air conditioning? What do you like doing in hot weather?

I'm anxious to get back to work on my novel, which was sadly neglected during the audit. I've decided to postpone looking for new magazine articles this month so I can focus on catching up on my book.

Hope you Canadians all had a great Canada Day!