In town for a couple of nights so I figured I’d fire off a quick post.
Last trip out started off with a bit of excitement. One of the areas I have to drive through has a lot of cows. It was early morning, the weather was beautiful then I rounded a corner and saw them. They had the road completely blocked and it only took a glance to realize
that they weren’t at all in a good mood. It was my worst nightmare, right there in front of me were a herd of Cow Lives Matter protesters and worse yet, I had a couple of pounds of ground beef in one of my coolers.
For a moment I thought of making a U turn and running but no, at some point I knew I would have to confront these bovine bullies. As I approached at a crawl I was sweating profusely and wishing I had opted for ground turkey instead of ground beef. In seconds I was surrounded by a milling herd angrily chanting “Eat mor chikin!” accompanied by the sound of spray cans being shook vigorously.
By now my hands were shaking while I wondered if I could reach the shotgun in the back seat if they all decided to charge. Then it occurred to me that I could end up sharing a shallow grave with the ground beef if they decided to search my coolers. By now the chanting was virtually inaudible over the sound of spray cans in action then I saw it.
A no Cow Lives Matter Safe Zone! Easing the truck into reverse I was able to beat a safe retreat. Looking confused the cows appeared 
as if they were going to turn on each other for a few moments allowing me to engage four wheel drive and take to the open pasture. The last I saw of them some of the slower protesters were spray painting each other while hurling racist remarks about in hopes that something might stick. Though I never got more than fifty feet away they never seemed to notice. But then you have to be dumber than a box of hammers to get caught up in the movement to begin with.
I had a tree die a couple of days ago. By that I mean that I looked at a few days before and it seemed fine. Then two days later I started by it and being an expertly trained observer I thought “Something is different.” Stopping I looked around a bit and after a few minutes thought “Why am I standing here looking around?” I find myself doing that more often than I did about two hundred years ago. Then I remembered that something was different so maybe I should figure
out what it was. It should have been really obvious since I was practically leaning against the tree but you just don’t expect a good sized shade tree to die overnight. Finally I figured it out and broke out the chain saw. With the tree gone I was feeling like I had accomplished something until I thought “What was I doing?” But that’s another story entirely.
I’ve mentioned that the fridge is drinking propane. So I disconnected the thermistor and set it to run twenty percent of the time. At that setting the ground beef I had in the freezer thawed. Since I had risked life and limb to get that meat out there I wasn’t about to give up on it so I set it to run forty percent of the time. I headed back to town for a few days then returned. Everything was well frozen so I cooked some burgers the first night and ate them. No adverse affects so I guess it worked.
It’s starting to get cool at night. We’ve already had night temps down
into the low 50s. Daytime temps is still near 100 so there is a huge difference between day and night clothing. It is also great sleeping weather. I’ll be taking some extra blankets out tomorrow since the bed hog steals all the covers.
There are several properties I walk once or twice a week at the request of the owners. I check for damage, vandalism and to see if their feeders are working. Usually all I find is feeders damaged or not working which I text to the owners. Bears are really rough on feeders.
“Hmmm. What’s that little box?”
Needless to say, the owner wasn’t at all happy about this. The bottom edge of that feeder, where it starts to form a cone is about six feet off the ground. Want to know how big that bear is?
I had to do some light stuff to pull this out but you get the idea. He’s a big boy. That’s not Ziggy dressed up up in a Winnie the Pooh costume.
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
― Theodore Roosevelt
