Ken Wheaton's Blog

Trigger warning (and spoiler alert): Death and dismemberment

It had already been a long morning here at the house. A storm system moved through around 4 a.m., the sort of thing fit for an old-fashioned Hollywood horror movie. I’ve lived through numerous hurricanes and other storms and I don’t know if I’ve ever seen that much lightning. It looked like someone had turned on the world’s biggest strobe light. And the thunder at 8,500 feet is always something, but this was extra.

And then R...

Date: July 9, 2023

Location: Silver Dollar Lake, an alpine lake off of Guanella Pass, Colorado.

Elevation: 11,945 feet. (3,640 meters)

Hike in: 1.9 miles. Moderately challenging.

Gear: Sage Dart (3 wt) with the Sage Spectrum LT (aka, the “I got my annual bonus package”); a Simm’s SolarFlex hoodie; Hoka Speedgoat Mid GTX2 boots; an old Patagonia hip pack; REI hiking pants that were too tight and came unzipped a few times (but only when I was walking in front of ...

Friday morning. 6:45 a.m. Driving slowly through the dark up a snowy mountain road in Colorado. I’ve just dropped Cara off at the Park n Ride because she’s got to go to work down the mountain but we didn’t get her snow tires on ahead of this snow and it’s one thing to crawl to the Park n Ride but another to venture out onto the 285 Frozen Speedway, so she’s catching a ride down with a coworker.

And I’m thinking of my childhood in Louisiana. I think we had snow maybe four...

Up here in the mountains of Colorado, things have been moving about below our feet, sneaking about in the night, brazenly making themselves comfortable during broad daylight. Sometimes we catch glimpses. Sometimes we hear noises. But how to prove it? Put a game camera under the deck.

So in this edition of Wheaton’s World of Wildlife, we’ll meet the animals that make themselves comfortable under our deck.

Let’s start with something exciting. A bear! He (or she) has only come through tw...

Myth: The Australian Shepherd was invented by Vito Von Trembleflurb in Squinkleburra Australia in 1893. Trembleflurb crossed two of his herding dogs with a kangaroo, a koala, a sheep, a crocodile, and three species of Australian spider. His goal? To create a wooly vegetarian guard dog that could spin silk and herd itself. After three months of lovingly raising his creation, the animal trapped Trembleflurb in a web, drained him of all his blood, and escaped into the out...

As I sit here typing, it’s a cold Monday morning in October. Seven a.m. Nineteen degrees out. First bit of light coming into the sky. We’ve yet to light the first fire of the season, so I’m bundled up on the couch and I have a seven-month old miniature Australian Shepherd pawing at me for attention and play time. She finds the laptop a stupid distraction that is diverting my attention from where it rightly belongs.

This is Ruby. And anyone who knows us in real life or follows me on so...

Facebook reminded me this morning that on this day last year, we brought Sylvie home from an overnight at the vet.

On the Saturday night, she’d had an episode. I heard a fall and woke up to find her on her side. The carpet underneath her was wet. We took her to the regular vet on Sunday, and they suggested we take her to the emergency vet, where she was diagnosed with pulmonary hypertension and sent home with meds that we hoped would work.

They didn’t. After a week of almost normal be...

When Sylvie got sick earlier this year, we put a nightlight in the bedroom room to make it easier for her to see at night. After she passed in March, we kept the nightlight in place because Lucy had gone mostly blind and the light helped her get around too.

Last night we slept without the nightlight. The room was so dark, so quiet, so still. Empty.

That’s how this story ends and I just wanted to get that out of the way. On Monday, we said goodbye to Lucy after months of illness took th...

I wrote a fairly twisted short story. It’s a bit of a departure from the type of writing in my novels. The kind folks at The Yard: Crime Blog published it on their site. Read it there.

On the up-side, it’s super short, so it won’t take you any time at all to read it. But it may take you a while to forget it. I hope.

When you hit a certain age, a number of activities you once engaged in as a youth start to cause you physical pain. Activities like running, yardwork, household chores, sitting down, standing up too fast, and sleeping. 

Yes, sleeping. In fact, the sleeping thing might be the most insulting. All you want is a few hours of silent slumber to recuperate from that muscle you pulled while tangling with a fitted sheet, and the sleep itself is causing harm. Your back hurts. Your hips hurt. Your n...