I’ve complained before that (ahem) certain people seem to think I’m the local game warden. I was eating breakfast this chilly, cloudy, damp morning and enjoying the nice warm fire when the cheap Tracfone I keep for local comms rang.
“Hey, Joel, there’s a bunch of dogs barking out your way. Sounds like they’re coming from [landlady’s] place or maybe that cattle watering station.”
Down in my hollow I can rarely hear a thing if it isn’t right outside my door. I needed a walky out that way anyhow, may as well not wait. “Okay, I’ll go look directly.”
“Bring a gun.” And he chuckled as he hung up. Private joke…I’m afraid I have a bit of a rep in that regard.
We’re surrounded by predators, almost none of which are a danger to us but that would be a danger to our animals if they ever thought they could get away with it. About the only thing we really worry about is dog packs. If a bunch of dogs are barking close enough to hear, it might be a new pack and is certainly worth a little walky. LB’s on light duty right now since he hurt his paw, and anyway I didn’t want to deal with his lead. But Ghost was welcome to tag along.
As soon as I got to the wash I heard dogs, and they were definitely sounding off in the direction of Landlady’s place. I crossed the wash and climbed her ridge, stood for a minute to get my heartrate down and turned on my Peltors.
Somebody else might laugh at this, but they’re not just for the range. I’m not as young and stupid as I used to be, but I used to be very young and stupid. As a result I’ve got something like 25% of the hearing I was born with and tinnitus I used to think was going to drive me crazy. Every time I pop a round without earpro it hurts for days. Usually I just use the ear plugs I always keep in my pocket but if I’m hunting, I kinda need the amplification. So yeah, I keep a hook on my belt for when I want to carry the muffs. Laugh it up.
Okay, well, at the top of the ridge I could hear three or four separate dogs very clearly, out in the direction of the plateau – which also happens to be in the direction of the watering station. I noticed that Ghost was finding this very interesting, and not wandering off the way he usually does. Not that he was getting an actual scent because the wind was from the wrong direction, but he was hearing the same things I was. In fact our scent might have been driving them away because no matter how close I came to the watering station the dogs never shut up but never seemed to get closer.
We cast all around and didn’t cross any trails of anything but cattle. Fortunately there didn’t happen to be any cattle at the station, so there wasn’t any problem with them and Ghost. He was actually helping for once, but there just wasn’t anything there to find. As we turned to go back to Landlady’s and check on her chickens, the sleet started and the wind picked up. Right in my face all the way home, of course…
By the time I got home the ground was covered with new snow but now the clouds are breaking up, at least for the moment, and it’s all going to make more nice new mud. Right now, just outside my window, there are flocks of sparrows and what appear to be chickadees pecking up water from the dirt and rocks.
Speaking of birds, I’ve been having fun watching the new dynamics in the Fortress of Attitude since Seymour and the older hens discovered he’s a rooster.
All of a sudden there’s a new center of authority, and something like peace. Now and then one of the older hens will momentarily chase one of the younger ones, but it’s just status-establishment now. It doesn’t have that murderous flavor it always used to. All the hens are keeping their feathers. Once in a while Seymour does a prancing little dance, the three older hens gather around to watch – they tend to stay close to him now, he’s no longer the pullets’ big brother – and once in a while it goes places from there.
The hens don’t seem to enjoy it particularly when he does that, and sometimes he seems to do it in a disciplinary manner: If one of the hens gets her stabby face on toward one of the pullets, as likely as not she’ll suddenly find herself with her head shoved into the straw and a rooster on her back. He wouldn’t be popular on an ivy league campus, I’m thinking.
But strange as it seems, things are suddenly much more peaceful in the chicken yard. Overall, that is. It begins to appear that what the ladies needed all along was a man.
Chickens are strange.
Hey Joel, it’s nice to learn that I’m not alone in the hearing loss issue. I’ve lost around 30% so my hearing ain’t that bad. For the last decade or more there have been a set of ear plugs in my pocket everywhere I go. Just like carrying a pocket knife, I don’t know what I would do without them,
It’s good to see the issues with the chickens are subsiding, admitting that all the ladies needed was a man just might get you in a spot of trouble with the fem-nazis however. :^)
MJR… I seriously doubt any feminazis read this blog. But if any do, they can just go stuff it where the sun don’t shine. 🙂
Or Seymour will do it FOR them, ML?
}:-]
You could put it that way, Mark. 🙂 I don’t suffer contact, much less conversation with feminazis if I can help it. The few times it couldn’t be avoided I was nearly overcome with the desire to smack the fools silly… but that would be aggression on my part, so I just renewed my determination to avoid them (or reading about them). Mental images of their nonsense being stuffed up their butts are harder to control. LOL
And, BTW, there is actually nothing actually “feminine” about the feminazis anyway. They are almost invariably hard core control freaks who happen to have been born the female sex.
@ MammaLiberty… LOL!
You’re getting kind of cisnormative there, ML. Don’t make me ban you. 😉
“cisnormative”? Well, yeah. That’s the way I see it. Anyone can pretend differently for themselves and others who accept it… but it matters not to me unless they get aggressive, of course.
Congratulations, you actually caused me to look up a word I never saw before! LOL
Actually ML I think I read somewhere that a spouting feminazis is considered to be aggressing against pretty much everyone except other feminazis so slapping one silly would be well within ZAP principles.
Hmm, I’ll have to give that some thought. May never run into another one, of course, since I won’t be going back to Calif. ever, and I stay out of big cities. Never saw one here in my little town. But then…. I’m careful with whom I associate. 🙂
I never saw the word before either and having looked it up am not sure what purpose it serves or maybe not even what it means. The only context I know for the term cis is isomers in chemistry. Then I looked up normative, which I thought I knew what it was. Totally bewildered now. How to work that word into a conversation with someone newly introduced? Nice to meet you. So, are you cisnormative? and how do you like it? Not sure I know what a feminist or a feminazi is although I have heard those words. Sure hope there isn’t a quiz tomorrow. Joel, I hope your blog topics go back to chickens, flashlights, guns, rats, muddy roads, wood stoves, Spam (the canned stuff), laundry and other topics I can understand. I’m headed for a cisnormative cup of coffee.
Zelda, I’m taking the word literally. A person is born to one sex or the other, with a few mangled genetic exceptions that can be neither or both. The fact is that this genetic set point can’t really be changed by any amount of hormones or surgery. At autopsy, the pathologist would have no doubt at all what sex the person had been born with. They can’t change their DNA, bone structure or most other sex linked characteristics. And sadly, in my experience, most discover that problem much too late. Many commit suicide.
Now, if people want to mess with that and attempt to change what can’t really be changed… it’s no skin off my nose as long as they aren’t trying to use force, especially the force of government, to insist I change my life to accommodate them or, worse yet, pay for it. What people do, or call themselves in their private life is none of my business. But when they use the force of emotional blackmail or the government to destroy people and businesses over it, they are aggressors.
What they call themselves, and with whom they associate isn’t the problem, really. I’d be happy to leave them alone, do business with them, and hold nothing against them. I’ve only dealt with a few transsexuals, but many homosexuals over the years. They are people, and need to be treated as people, as long as they don’t become aggressors.
The evil is the same as with so many other groups and belief systems… the overwhelming desire of a few to control other people.
from Zelda; “Joel, I hope your blog topics go back to chickens, flashlights, guns, rats, muddy roads, wood stoves, Spam (the canned stuff), laundry and other topics I can understand. ”
Me too. I’m especially anxious to hear about the next round of care packages that you said were to be delivered soon. Always the coolest most fun stuff, lots of it that we’ve never even heard of. I’m so easily amused.
Weather reports are good too, because lately it seems like whatever you report hits our neck of the woods in a couple of days.
Oh, me too.
“Somebody else might laugh at this…”
Only somebody who’s never used active ear pro. 😉