Four Hours to Unbox, On the Front Door, Covid to Coyote Comparison

Yesterday at lunch I opted to skip the gym to run errands.  Those errands included dropping off my Prusa printer to be shipped back for repair, depositing the cash from the tractor sale and finally picking up my Inmotion V11 which had traveled from Hong Kong to Florida in one day.

Last night I opened the box on a live stream that went on for an unbelievable four and a half hours.  I had a ton of people on the stream who were peppering with questions about the new wheel as it was one of the first production models to land in the United States.  It was a lot of fun exploring the wheel and the changes that have been made with the final version compared to the test wheel I had for about 10 days.  Cindy took over the stream for at least 45 minutes while I worked on the wheel in the background which was sort of funny.  I am definitely looking forward to putting the new wheel through a lot of testing this weekend.

So yesterday the inevitable happened, we had our first employee in our building test positive for Covid 19.  We have had four or five branches already be shut down for covid so it is not surprising it has struck here as well.  The case was a clerk up in the public area which I rarely enter.  I haven’t seen her in person in probably a month so I don’t have immediate concern however there are dozens of employees up there that have been in that circle of potential transmission.  There has not been a mask mandate yet in our area so not all employees have been wearing them.  I have not heard if the infected person was regularly wearing one but if I were to guess, she probably wasn’t.

With my job I could totally work remotely without anyone even realizing it as I can do most everything from my office computer which I can remotely access.  It is going to be interesting to see the fallout from the positive test.  In general I don’t think the outbreak has been taken as seriously as I think it should be in our area but once it starts knocking on your door, things change.

I was thinking about that scenario, how so many people like to dismiss or ignore a problem unless it is directly impacting them.  I then thought about how our recent loss of Georgie to a coyote predator this past weekend was a perfect example of how my behavior changed.  We had lost Cocoa to a coyote 2-3 years ago.  After that happened I recall adding more cameras to the DVR system for better surveillance and Cindy hanging ammonia soaked rags around the fence perimeter to dissuade coyotes.  However over time no further attacks occurred and the fear subsided.

Last year we lost Stephie to a predator that I now realize was a coyote. ( we did not have that attack recorded on camera)  That happened early in the morning, shortly after the automatic door let the birds out in the yard.  Our reaction to that was to change the opening of the door to the yard so it wouldn’t happen until we were out there with the birds doing morning cleaning.  However over time no further incidents occurred and we didn’t think much about it.

So now fast forward to this weekend.  Prior to the attack we had no concerns about coyotes.  They had not been an issue for a long time so we had a false sense of safety for our birds.  In the span of 10 seconds that all changed when Georgie was snatched out of the yard and then the anxiety was really piled on when Cindy caught the predator back within 5 minutes getting ready to do it again.

To me the coyote represents covid 19.  Until it got in my face I had lost focus on how devastating it can be.  However now that I have freshly seen the end result first hand I am doing whatever I can to ensure the birds safety.  Don’t wear a mask because someone tells you to do it.  Wear one because someone doesn’t need to tell you to make a small sacrifice for the greater good.