Once again it is overcast.... and Fanny has her eyes crossed.... I mean that is one tenacious ewe. She was bred on the 23rd of September..... dumb ass. It is now almost 6 months since then (gestation is 5 and 1/2) and she's as wide and she is long.... if she's not pregnant then she's got some weird and awful growth going on there. Meanwhile Dex is getting stronger every day. I think it is the oats that I'm hand feeding him, (so that the others don't push him off his food). Meanwhile, I let the dog out this morning as I do every morning, and she took off after some deer that were hanging out munching on my HAY! (Erg) One deer took off straight away and the other was limping... of course my dog did what comes naturally to her and circled... the deer was not happy. So I thought maybe he'd go off down through the trees if I went out with my pitch fork... (best laid plans of mice and men!)... the stupid thing jumped over the fence to run through the thickest snow there is... Erg. Of course with it having a limp it jumped the fence with not much success.... and there it hung with its hind leg in the fence.... stuck....! "Great!" was all that I could think... now what do I do? So carefully, and then more carefully, I approached the deer. It was down on it's side... not moving. So I grabbed a hold of its leg and shoved the wire this way and that way and managed to free its leg but not without scraping some of the hair off its leg first..... then taking Jiggs with me (who really was behaving admirably considering that there was meat on the ground not defending itself) I moved away and came in the house. We watched to see what would happen but the deer wasn't getting up... I was worried that it had broken its leg... and the alpacas kept wanting to go over and check it out. That worried me because I really didn't want it hurting them.... After 20 minutes of watching it, I decided to call the police.... so I did... (That's because the conservation guys are at least an hour away!) Usually the police respond. Anyway I talked to a very nice person... a receptionist I guess... who switched me to the Conservation office, (figures) and I told my story again. They would respond. I figured I had better get dressed so I went and had a quick shower and got dressed.... While I was in the shower the phone rang and they wanted me to go see if the deer was there still... and so I did. The stupid thing had finally gotten up and disappeared.... I was very grateful that it didn't have to be dispatched here. But I know that with it's bum leg and now the big scrape where I tried to get its leg out of the fence.... it is coyote fodder for sure.... The coyotes have been very active recently as I hear them every night since the full moon last week. This time in the year when the deer are emaciated the coyotes are always active.
So, that was my excitement for the morning.... now if the damn moose would just die... yes he's still around and yes, he will die.... but not by my hand. The poor old guy is covered in ticks... we've been able to get close enough now that we can see where it is riddled with them and there are bare patches of flesh all over him. Also I saw where he peed in the snow and he is passing blood. There is no doubt in my mind that he will die... no wonder he is eating the hay. He is probably too weak to do anything else.
God, living on the frontier is weird! and wild!
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