Weekend Activities

So the good news is that it appears Lucy is at least frequenting Crestwood, if not largely residing there, at this point.

Day 12 -- Sunday, 2/15/09

After Saturday's sighting, we spent Sunday posting fliers in Crestwood, and Forest Hills, and grilling some cheese bratwursts.  (Lucy loves cheese, and of course meat products; we hoped that a few hours of the smell drifting over the neighborhood might entice her into the open.)

In the afternoon, Laura Totis and wonderdog Chewy came down to track Lucy's comings and goings.  This time around produced a more solid result.  Chewy found several good tracks.  In the end, partly due to the geography and human traffic, we had a good idea of some of the areas where Lucy wandered, but did not have a lock on a nesting site.  Which is to say, we got some good leads, but no target location to set a humane trap.

After another of those incredibly long and tiring days, we went to bed with a solid plan for the morning.

Day 13 -- President's Day -- Monday, 2/16/09

Sarah and a couple dedicated volunteers set about posting fliers at major intersections along commuter routes going several miles out from Lucy's latest sightings.  Meanwhile, I treked up into the woods south of Blagden Ave., following the trail where Chewy caught part of Lucy's track.  Up on a big hill, I set up a scent station (a few pieces of laundry that smelled like us), with a motion-sensor camera set up to capture the fun, should any animal (or say, a particular brown-eared pain the butt animal) show up at the site.

Something definitely tripped the motion-sensor, but unfortunately the camera takes 5-6 seconds to wake from standby mode, and the creature was gone before the shutter snapped a photo.  We'll never know if it was just a racoon, or hiker, or Lucy.

I also hiked all the way through the woods, to our front door, hopefully leaving enough of a trail of my own scent for Lucy to follow home.

In the afternoon we received a call, placing Lucy over in Forest Hills, just a short trip through Rock Creek Park due west from Crestwood.  But no luck.

Still, the whole weekend engendered some hope, since it seems that Lucy has spent a lot of time in this neighborhood.  Sarah even spoke with a gentleman who had seen her 4-5 days prior, right along Blagden Avenue somewhere.  And since we didn't have any fliers posted in this neighborhood until last Thursday, that explains why we went a week without sightings.