While the Cat's Away...

It only happens when you're away.

• Five hundred miles away from the farm. 
• The first trip that Deb and I have taken together to visit family in Michigan for years.
• A cadre of friends and neighbors carefully selected and instructed on the care and nurturing of all of our animals and plants.
• Four days into the trip with three days left before our return.

And the phone rings at my brother's home.
My brother's wife: "Deb, it's Pat for you."

I hear my wife give a cheerful, "Hi! How are you doing? What's up?"

"You're kidding, right?"

"Are the animals safe?"

"I can't believe it. Did they catch him?"

"Do they know who did it?"

"No, tell Jack not to chase any cows."

"No, we'll fix it when we get home."

"No, there's nothing you could have done about it. Sorry that it happened on your watch. Thanks for calling."

By this point, I'm dying. This was not anywhere near as clear as a Bob Newhart telephone monologue. "Deb, what in the world happened?"

"Some time in the night last night, there was a high speed chase down our country road. A vehicle ended up missing the turn, went through our pasture fence, into the field, and ripped out another hole in the fence on its way out. Pat doesn't know who did it or whether they caught the guy.  A neighbor rounded up the horses and llamas, but Jack hasn't seen the cows."

Based on what I had to say, and on what I thought but left unsaid about the situation, if St. Peter really has a log book with him at the Pearly Gates, he wore out a few erasers wiping out any brownie points I may or may not have had accumulated over this long and sordid life.  I was mad. That kind of thing isn't supposed to happen in my little piece of  North Woods Paradise.

When we got home, our neighbor who had rounded up our horses and llamas, had taken photos of the scene and provided them to us on disk.  This is what we had greeting us on our arrival home a few days later. The entry point:

And the exit point.

Upon speaking with the County Deputy Sheriff, we learned that the high speed chase had started miles away when he tried to pull over a pickup truck for speeding. The chase extended into the next county where the driver pulled off into a logging road that the Deputy could not get down. They didn't catch the guy that night.

Fortunately, our trusty fence ripped some pieces from the truck, including the license plate. So the Deputy was able to find the owner, who just happened to have a warrant out for his arrest before the chase for nonpayment of child support,but who naturally claimed that his vehicle had been stolen that night, and who "lawyered up" after having been read his Miranda rights, so we could not find out whether he has any insurance to cover our damages. The state victim assistance program also has no funds for covering property damage.

So we will have to foot the bill for new fencing. It was previously woven wire that got bent and stretched out of shape much beyond the two holes, so now we are replacing at least half the fenceline with cattle panels attached to much more closely spaced posts. The new fence may not stop a speeding truck, but it may do  more damage and slow it down some. Whether we see any compensation will have to await trial and jail time.

At least the animals were uninjured.... by the vehicle at least. The horses, while out broke down a section of the neighbor's fence trying to get to their horses, again without any major injury. The cows were safe and sound in a different pasture on our property.

But in the new paddock where the horses were put, our little Arabian filly decided to investigate a passing porcupine and got a face full of quills:

 

We were able to extricate two from her face before she decided that she had enough of that. So add in the costs of an emergency vet visit to have the horse tranquilized for the remainder of the process. The vet said that the good thing is that unlike dogs, he has never had to pull quills out of a horse's face more than once.

All in all, I guess it could have been much worse. After I get the fence mended and the bank repaid, all I will have to do is try working on ever so slowly re-accumulating those lost brownie points.

Be Careful of What You Wish For

Several years ago, we were told about a horse that was looking for a new home. At the time, we simply had our hands full with our own horses, boarded horses, and all of the other sheep, goats, donkeys, cows, a camel, llamas, chickens, geese, dogs and cats. When you own a barn with about 20 stalls and eight paddocks and plenty of pasture, there is a tendency to overdo yourselves with animals in need of a home. With just the two of us we had our hands full. At the time, we decided against taking the horse in. But I have always wondered what it would have been like to take care of this one. It was the first and only Bashkir Curly I have ever come across.

They are called Bashkir, because they are said to have originated in a region of Asia called Bashkortostan. (That's a new ...stan to me.)

They are called Curly because they have fine, soft ringlets of hair that can get to be several inches long and it can actually be collected, spun and woven. They say that the hair is more closely related to mohair than horse hair. If the Obama girls ever get to a point that they want a pony, these are supposed to be hypoallergenic, too.


Yeah, I know. Curlies are kind of goofy looking, but what they lack in looks, they make up for in personality and durability. They are said to be even tempered, calm, friendly and intelligent. They have short, strong backs, very dense leg bones and very dense, hard hooves. Some Endurance Riders swear by them. When their heart and respiratory rates become high with exercise, those rates recover unusually quickly.

For a long time, I kind of wished that I would run across another one needing a home.

Then look what I got this summer.

Meet Zoey. She looks like a Bashkir Curly, but unfortunately, she's not. Zoey used to live on our farm and has given us some beautiful babies.

Zoey is a mini and was sold to a friend a few years ago when we downsized our livestock operation. Last winter she got into some feed and foundered. Her owner couldn't afford to have her cared for, so we took her back this Spring.

We had the farrier out immediately to try to work on her feet. They had become so long that it will take several months' worth of trimming to get her back to normal again. She is still long and more lame than normal.

We also waited and waited for her to shed out her winter coat. But she never did. This is not normal. Deb recognized it as a possible sign of Cushing's Disease, and the vet has since verified it.

Cushing's Disease is caused by a benign tumor of the pituitary gland. The pituitary regulates the endocrine system, so hormonal, metabolic, and immune problems are symptomatic. Her failure to shed out, and an increased water consumption were the most obvious symptoms. The vet has prescribed a dopamine agonist, Pergolide. She will be on this medicine for the rest of her life.

Aside from her improving lameness, she doesn't appear to be in pain. We keep her isolated and on a restricted diet right now. She is a typical mare and lays back her ears squeals at the other horses through the fence when they get too close. Hopefully, we can give her a few more good years of life on our farm...

And I can pretend she's my little Bashkir Curly.

Jules and the Acoma Pueblo

We have had two mustangs on our farm. These are wild horses from the Western States that are captured and adopted out by the Bureau of Land Management. They have freeze brands (using cold instead of hot irons) on their necks. To see the brand, one would think that it is some sort of hieroglyphics.


Actually, the brand approximates the year of the horse's birth and gives an assigned registration number. The information is in an "alpha angle code" in which numbers are assigned to different angles, depending on the direction in which they are pointing, a pretty clever way of conveying a lot of information with only one or two different branding irons.


Each State from which the horses are gathered is assigned a range of registration numbers, so you can tell where the horse was captured (for example, 80001-160000 for Arizona, 240001-320000 for Colorado, 0-80000 for Oregon, etc.).

About eight years ago, we took on a rescue mustang mare. She came from someone who was using her as a broodmare, and they had rescued her from a place where she had been living with several cows in a junkyard. She had a history of foundering (where the vascular bed between the hoof wall and the underlying cannon bone becomes tender and inflamed leading to lameness). A horse can founder from being ridden or driven too hard on pavement or hard ground (road founder), but more commonly, it arises from a genetic insensitivity to insulin. When we got this mare, she had been bred and gave birth to a foal after we brought her home. The foal went back to the previous owners, and we never had her bred again.

We named the mare Jules. Before we ventured into mustangs, we spoke with a mustang owner at the Midwest Horse Fair in Madison, Wisconsin, who swore by them. She told us that mustangs are pretty skittish at first, but if you treat them right, they seem almost grateful to have found a new home and become extremely willing and gentle. That seemed to hold true for both of the mustangs that we have had. But then again, all of our horses are as tame as puppies.

Jules was a bay (brown with black mane, tail and socks) with the most beautiful, feminine head and eyes that I have ever seen. What I liked about her was that she had a habit of nickering softly to greet us whenever we came into the barn. She was broken to ride, but we never took her out much because she was tender footed. So she ruled our pastures.

The last two winters her founder returned in full force and she suffered pretty badly in the coldest weather. We religiously have the farrier out every eight weeks to trim all of our horses, and he did his best to correct her feet. This past week for the first time, he told us that he didn't think she would recover this time. Her hoof wall was essentially gone so that she was bearing full weight on her soles.

So yesterday we had the vet come and give his assessment. He concurred that she would probably never recover. So the decision was made to put her to sleep. I don't know whether you have ever witnessed this, but an overdose of barbiturate is injected, and within a matter of seconds, the horse drops and dies. It appears to be rapid and painless, but it is still hard to watch the life flow out of a friend.

I took the tractor out, dug a trench with the front end loader, and buried her out in the back 40 next to the burial site of Roany, Deb's 32 year old gray gelding.

Jules was a good horse and we gave her the best care and life that we could. I am not a spiritual person at all, but every once in a while, life seems to send strangely coincidental omens.

It turns out that we had the opportunity to travel to the Desert Southwest for a week just last month. While there, we visited the mesa-top Sky City Acoma Pueblo.

The Pueblo tribes keep kivas, windowless sacred chambers where religious ceremonies are held. According to most Pueblo legends, the spiritual beings of the world below instructed the people of this world to construct the kiva in the shape of sipapu, the place where humans emerged into the world from their previous existence. Entry to the kiva is from the top, descending a ladder into the kiva, most of which are built into the ground to bring the two worlds closer together.

Because the Acoma Pueblo is built on a mesa top, its only source of water is from the rain. So the kiva ladders were built with pointed skyward ends, and the Acoma three-pole ladder is built with a spacer at the top representing a cloud through which the poles pierce to help bring rain.

I could have sworn that the day we visited Acoma Pueblo, it was a totally cloudless day.
(Is that a horse in the sky?)

The night after I buried Jules, we received a much needed rain.

Rest in Peace, Jules.

Escape/Break-in Artists and More Work

I went out to get our dairy goat the other night only to find all of the goats in our yard decimating my wife's newly planted shrubs and plants. It sure doesn't take them long.


It turns out that Deb had felt sorry for the goats in their grassless paddock and wanted to let them out in our woodlot paddock to graze on all of the tall grass there. Well, they found the weak spot in the fence. I had opened up a portion to transfer firewood to our furnace shed last year, but never got around to building a gate for it. Instead, someone had just salvaged an old piece of plywood from the scrap heap and leaned it in the opening. I guess the grass is always greener on the other side, so they say.


Each day Deb poses the following question (usually several times a day): "Isn't it about time you ___________?" It's a farm, so it isn't hard to fill in the blank(s).

So, that day it was, "Isn't it about time you built a gate for that gap?"

Sigh. "I guess."

Now to come up with the lumber for the job. A few days earlier, the question had been: "Isn't it about time you replaced those fence boards that the horses have been gnawing on?"

And I replied, "I guess" with a sigh.

I can't be certain, but I have my suspicions that the horses are attending evening seminars presented by our North Woods beavers. They seem to have the gnawing part down pat. Now if they could only learn some engineering from those rascals.


So now in the barn, I had a modest stack of old hemlock fence boards that needed to be repurposed. OK. Now how do I design a goat-proof goat stopper out of old fence boards that lives up to Deb's aesthetic sensibilities?

After some head scratching and chopping and sawing, this is what I came up with:

I'm hoping they won't fit through those holes. So I used my universal stain around the farm: Any surplus, on-sale, discontinued, outdated can of deck stain that I can buy for two or three dollars a gallon tinted with enough lampblack pigment to turn it black.

Me cheap? Only when it comes to buying fancy cameras that are so big and heavy that they won't shake in my hand.

Well, I got 'er mounted in the hole and will have to put 'er to the test as soon as I get around to herding them out of the pasture with the cows.




I have no idea how they got out there this time.

"Oh Debra, dear. Have you by any chance been feeling sorry for the goats again?"

Left Hanging and Needing a Translator

October 10, 02

While I was gone last week, Debra got a phone call from an acquaintance who owns and operates a boarding stable. Someone had purchased a wild mustang filly last spring for their daughter at the Bureau of Land Management Mustang and Burro Adoption. The parents had boarded it at the stable over the summer. Evidently the daughter messed with the mustang for only a few weeks, and found that it was not quite the appreciative, cooperative, cuddly horse that she had envisioned. So the parents decided to sell her (the horse) at auction, and if it went to the killer, so be it. The boarding facility owner thought that the filly had too much potential for that, so she called us and said that we could have it if we wanted it. Deb went to see it, fell in love, and agreed to pick it up.

Translation: "agreed to pick it up" -- get Graig to figure out how to load a young, wary, nearly wild mustang into a trailer, so that it can be hauled home.

First of all, the BLM does not allow any mustangs to be hauled in regular horse trailers because too often, they have gone totally nuts inside them and ended up hurting themselves and demolishing the trailer. Plain Jane open stock trailers are required, and the horse can't be tied during transport.

So Deb arranged with the owners of the horse to have them transport the horse in their stock trailer as long as I would volunteer to load it. They agreed.

Hmmm. So I was "volunteered". In the past I have had success with training our horses (over time) to load into our horse trailer without major battles, so Deb had every confidence in me. But, just in case, she had our sawyer friend come to help if I needed a hand.

The day came to load her up. Of course it was pouring rain, and the footing in the loading area was eight inches of mud, but the job had to be done. We got there plenty early to mess with the horse some so that its first moments with us would not be spent forcing it to move where it did not want to go. The horse had never been turned out to pasture for fear that it would not be caught, so it had been in its stall all summer. Our own horses act squirrely if we leave them in the stall for more than overnight. We were concerned over what this one would do when we tried to lead it out of the barn. But the filly seemed to be reasonably calm and allowed us to lead it up and down the barn lane while waiting for the trailer to arrive. All seemed to be going well, considering. I was beginning to think that this might be doable.

The woman arrived with her truck and trailer, and our sawyer backed it up to the loading gate for her. Now it was my turn to perform. I tied two lead ropes together so that I could connect it to the horse's halter, then wrap it around an inside post in the front of the trailer, and be able to hold the free end of the lead while standing at the back door of the trailer with the horse. That way I could try to pet and calm it so that it would walk right in. This strategy seemed to work when I trained our horses. I took my time.

At first the mustang led right up to the back of the trailer. It looked and sniffed around and actually swung a foot up into the trailer, but immediately withdrew it. Then the struggle ensued. She pulled backward, but couldn't go anywhere because of the way that I had her belayed. My strategy is to gently gain an inch of rope, relax the horse, and let it see that the best way to releave the pressure on her pole is to move forward. But no amount of cajoling would get her to relax. There was a good deal of struggling and bucking going on. Finally, I had Deb take the lead rope and called the sawyer over to link arms with me so that we could push the horse forward from the rear while position ourselves on each side to avoid being kicked. We moved her forward, but her front feet remained down. Then the boarding facility owner lifted one foreleg into the trailer, and the filly obliged by lifting the other into the trailer as well, but was still sitting back with stiff legs and would not move in. So the sawyer and I started lifting.

Our sawyer friend is about five feet tall in his boots, but is built like a tank, and we managed to lift the hind end of that horse up about four inches off the ground, but not high enough to get it into the trailer. And there we stood with the horse essentially sitting in our linked arms, feet suspended in mid air, but not high enough to move forward and up into the trailer.

I can't remember what exactly happened next, but everyone watching started to laugh at our suspended dilemma. I think that my partner and I gave each other a look and must have relaxed enough for the horse's feet to touch the ground. The new noise of crowd cackling must have been enough to scare the bejeebers out of the filly and make it jump right up into the trailer to get away. We quickly slammed the door. Now, at least, it was in with Deb, and she unhooked the lead from the halter. She then beat a hasty retreat as we cracked open the rear door.

The ride home was uneventful. The horse did not go wild, and it unloaded into our barn without problem.

Since then, she has proven to be a very mellow girl. Deb, in her usual imaginative way, named her Mustang Sally. Every night we let it out free in the arena to roam and explore, and she comes right up to us to be caught and led back into her stall. She doesn't even mind much when Bob, our Shitzu/Dachshund pup, barks its fool head off at it.

I sure wish that I knew what Bob was saying to that horse. Someday I am going to learn Japanese and find out.

Why Japanese?

No. Not because Shitzu's speak Japanese.

It's because the Japanese have invented a translation machine for dogs. No fooling. It is called the Bowlingual Translator. It is a small transmitter that links to the collar of the dog. When the dog barks, a signal is sent to a hand held translator that interrprets the message. It then shows Japanese language phrases to fit the emotional state, such as "I am sad." "I want to play." "I am super angry, and I am going to explode!" By golly, I'd pop for that one if I only knew how to read Japanese.

What's that? You don't believe me...................again?

Check it out:


My sources say that it is selling through the woof!

The Worm Turns

October 3, 02

I suppose everyone has their moments. This week it was Deb's turn. She's always planning and scheming and wanting to build something. In an attempt to save money, Deb swung a deal with the guy that runs the local sawmill to provide her with a bunch of rough cut construction lumber in exchange for two Clydesdale/Shire foals to be used as a hitch team. The sawyer has had his eye on Dolly (our Clydesdale mare) for years now, wanting to breed her to his neighbor's Shire stallion. Because Clydesdale stallions are few and far between (in fact, nonexistent) in the North Woods, I consented. So he loaded Dolly in the trailer and shipped her up to her neighbor's pasture. This was to be a natural, hands-off breeding. It was to be Dolly's first blind date.



We got a phone call about a week later, telling us that Dolly must have come into heat and the stallion took an aggressive interest. But before the match could be consummated, Dolly had kicked the stallion square in the head and split his face deep enough to require stitches. But the Shire owner agreed to keep her on for another cycle to give her another chance.

Then Monday night, up drives our sawyer friend pulling a stock trailer with Dolly in it. Evidently she had started jumping fences and wreaking more havoc. The sawyer and Shire owner decided that it was time for her to go.

She unloaded and walked with me on lead just as calm as could be and was happy to be home. She got pretty scratched and bit up in the experience, and I don't know whether she has been bred or not. Maybe she actually picked up on the verbal training that I used to give her while grooming her and messing with her. It was the same talk that I tried to drive home to my daughtrs about what they should do if a similar situation arose on any of their dates. I used to worry about Dolly because once in a while, a neighbor's quarter horse stallion would appear in our pasture. She behaved perrfectly.

Then Deb volunteered to take care of a little mini horse belonging to a neighbor because their daughter was sick and would be in the hospital for weeks. Our neighbor was supposed to lead the pony down to our place on Sunday, while my wife was working. I waited and waited. Finally, the neighbor drove up and said that she had just spent all morning trying to lead that horse down the road and she couldn't get it to budge. She was in tears and beside herself. She told me that I'd have to bring the trailer to get her.

Well, heck. That horse isn't much bigger than our Golden Retriever. So I took a long lead rope down, caught the pony, and led her home just fine and gently using a butt rope (a rope clipped to her halter, then wrapped around her hind end and up to her head again so that you pull her butt forward instead of tugging on her head).

I put her in with Baaabette and Baaaboo, the Pygmy goat Baaah Family, and she did just fine until my wife wanted to catch her and move her into a stall the next day. She would not be caught, though. So I was assigned the job. But she ran from me now, too.

I had to resort to the strategy that I used to use on a stubborn mule I had to catch one time. The trick is to get down on all fours and start grazing. Seeing you with your head down and hearing the sound of tearing grass seems to have an amazing calming effect on skittish hard-to-catch equines. I was able to move right up to her and eventually halter her without problem.

My only worry now is that the procedure previously outlined for removing grass stains from textiles will also work on teeth and gums. I wonder what banana oil tastes like.

4-H Fair, Wise Men, and Goose Carving

September 26, 02

Last spring, Debra had volunteered to assist the 4-H leader in teaching kids to work with horses and show them at halter. There were seven girls with various levels of previous experience. It all came to fruition last weekend at the Forest County Fair, the last, and probably smallest fair of the year. By Thursday night when I got home, all of the horses had been bathed, manes banded and/or braided, and tails braided and wrapped. Their coats were so slick, a rider would have slid off like water on a duck's back.

Friday morning at the crack of dawn, I was assigned to get up early to claim stalls and transport horses. I had eight horses to transport, so it took four round trips. All went without a glitch. Deb wanted to fulfill her lifelong dream of camping out with her animals at the fair, so I swept out the horse trailer as thoroughly as any man should be expected to do, and set her up a cot with blankets, sleeping bag, lantern, books, magazines, candy, and a cooler full of soda. When I showed her, she seemed to be truly touched. But the next morning I found that everything had been transferred into the trailer's tack room. Apparently I had neglected to use air freshener when I set her up in the horse compartment.

The show went without problem, and the girls walked away with fistfuls of ribbons and were happy.

This is the one event where you see a lot of local people of similar ilk once a year. Apparently, word had spread about me. I got cornered by the man that has staged the annual Living Nativity in Crandon for many years. I guess that it's quite a show, with markets and soldiers and beggars... the whole scene. Anyway, hemming and hawing did not suffice to get me out of agreeing to be a Wise Man. Evidently they have been searching for years to find one, so I finally agreed for the purpose of authenticating the scene. After all, I would be a natural at it. With quite a bit of fast talking, I was also able to finally convince the guy that I should bring Kookamunga as well. We shook hands on it and parted. I was pretty proud of my negotiating skills.

A few minutes after that, I saw the guy guffawing with my wife, though, and went to join the fun. But I stopped short when I heard Deb say, "See, I told you that strategy would work! I knew you could get that camel for the event." I'd been bamboozled again. Darn that woman.

The good part of the fair for me, though, was being introduced to two new breeds of animals that I had never seen before. One was a miniature Scottish Highland cow. This one was all furry with big eyes, huge ears, a wet nose and a friendly disposition. It looked like a stuffed toy. I think I'll get a couple of those guys. This one was not for sale, though. What was for sale, but back on the guy's farm was a Curly Bashkir. Have you eveer seen a horse with curly hair? These critters are covered top to bottom with curly hair. I haven't had a chance to go buy the horse yet, but pictures of them are interesting. I'm sure that Deb won't mind taking care of a few more critters while I'm off writing.

Then on Sunday, my brother came to visit for a few days for the first time in a couple of years. I took advantage of the situation and had him help me separate out the camel, horses and steers from the heifers. None of our horses are trained cutting horses, so we each had to settle on flapping our hats and whistling and hollering while straddled over broomsticks. After several hours of working up a big sweat and growing hoarse, Kookamunga finally got tired of chasing us around, so the cows stopped chewing their cud, stood up and gladly sauntered into their respective corrals. Who needs cutting horses, anyway?

Then it was time to go pick up a bull from the neighbor's house. The owner mentioned that we might want to remove the dividing partition in the horse trailer before we move the bull, so we did. However, we failed to measure the length of the bull prior to the project. The owner told us that the bull wasn't mean or anything, but warned us not to get him riled and angry. Neither my brother, nor I had moved a bull before, but could not for the life of us, figure out how to fold a big, long-bodied bull in such a way that he would fit into the trailer without raising its ire. We had no choice, though, and finally, after much prodding and pushing and sailor talk, got him stuffed in and the doors shut.

It was a loud, jolting ride home. I had no idea that a truck with all of that horse power in its engine could be bucked around so much by one squirming, kicking, banging animal trapped in a trailer. Once we got him home it was simply a matter of parking the truck in the pasture with the heifers, both of us climbing up on the roof of the trailer, and having brother hold my legs while I dangled down and unlatched the door. The bull exploded out of the back of the trailer, all steam and rage. It was not unlike opening one of those cans with a spring snake in it. I had no idea how I was going to get him back in that trailer by myself without a cattle chute after its service was performed.

Later that night, it was time to relax, and I started asking my brother about how his duck carving hobby was progressing. This is something that he has been doing for quite some time now, and is getting ribbons for his work. Living in the city, however, he doesn't get a chance to observe the real thing up close and personal. So I decided to go out in the dark and try to catch a goose to bring in the house for his detailed inspection. I was hoping that the geese would be like the chickens setting on their roost at night and easy to catch. No such luck. It was a chase. All squawks and hisses and flapping wings. Fortunately their bellies are white so I could see where they were. Finally, I made a diving tackle and caught one.

I took it into the house tucked under my arm, and after I had someone put the four barking, leaping dogs up behind closed doors, the goose settled down in my lap. There are feather patterns on a goose that I didn't know existed. My brother took close notice of where the folded wing tips ended in relation to the tail, and was pointing out the cape pattern on its back, when all of a sudden the goose let loose with a huge stream of what I can only describe as rank, foul, canned spinach. I have never waited and watched, but I always see pellets in the yard. This is a form that may never have previously been reported. It splashed everything within a seven food radius. Fortunately, Deb was upstairs, but Louise was tucked in for the night in her hospital bed in the living room, and started hollering, "Get that goose out of here. It stinks. You ought to be shot for bringing that thing in the house..." and on and on. So I took it back out, and went through a roll of paper towels cleaning up the mess and a drawer full of candles were lit to calm Louise down. Thank goodness Deb didn't come down through any of this.

The good thing is that next time my brother carves a goose walking across a marshland scene, that's another little detail that he can include.

I'm getting too old for this.

Chicken Stunts

August 1, 02

My wife finally allowed Crazy Ray back on our property. (He was the guy that was with me when I bought the camel.) He and I were standing around among the goats, sheep, geese and chickens admiring Kookamunga, when Ray said, "Ever hypnotize a chicken?"

I had heard that Al Gore could hypnotize a chicken, but put it in the back of my mind when it became obvious that it didn't get him enough votes to win the last election.

"Heck no, but I'm always ready to learn."

So I chased down my favorite rooster, Brewster, which didn't take much effort since I like to hold him on my lap while watching an occasional television program. He seems to like it too. So he allows me to catch and carry him around pretty much at will.

I held Brewster and Ray started twirling his finger around a few inches in front of its beak. That didn't seem to do anything, though.

"Huh! Something's wrong with that chicken. Go catch another one."

No luck with the next one either.

So Ray says, "I don't know what's wrong. My Dad used to take a stick and draw a line on the ground and make the chicken look at it. I could never get it to work, though."

So we got a stick and scratched a line in the gravel of the drive. I put the chicken down on its side placing its beak at the end of the line so that it was staring directly down it going off into the distance. When I let go, the chicken didn't move a muscle for ten or fifteen second. Then it just got up and strolled away. That seemed to sort of work. Enough to intrigue me into going on the Internet to learn more.


I learned that the phenomenon is called "tonic immobility" by animal behaviorists, and it is actually used as a stress test in the poultry industry. If a chicken has been put into a state of fear during handling, the immobility can last hours. The less stressed the happier the chicken. I guess that my chickens are just too happy.

I also learned that you can put the chicken on its back and rub its belly to immobilize it. I tried that one and it seemed to work for as long as I was willing to hold it. I always suspected that a chicken had a lizard brain. It must be true since rubbing bellies is supposed to work on alligators too.

When my mother-in-law found out what we had been up to, she said, "Well, you didn't have to go onto the computer to learn how to hypnotize a chicken. All you do is just tuck its head under its wing and spin it in a circle in front of you about three times, and it will be out."

So I tried that with one of our other roosters. I tucked his head up his armpit and held it there, drew a circle in the air with it three times while saying, "One. Two. Three. Alakazam. Fall asleep, or you're chicken Spam." I then layed him down on the ground and he stayed. And stayed. And stayed. Finally, I pulled his head out from under his wing. His pupils dilated from a constricted state. And he just strollled off calmly as though nothing had happened.

So now I know how to hypnotize a chicken, but the question is what ideas dare I plant in their little minds?

What's next? While doing my internet search, I also found that llamas are supposed to become hypnotized if you gently rub thier upper gums between their split lips. A llama is nothing but a South American camel, and I know that you cam immobilize a difficult horse for shoeing or vaccinating by running a stud chain up under his upper lip.

Well, I've tried and tried. So far, though, Kookamunga just raises his head out of reach every time I stick my finger up his gums. And Crazy Ray wants to know why I am so darned set on brushing the camel's teeth.

I think I'll be working on my Master's of Mesmerism for a while.

Fear Factor

June 27, 02

Something spooked a neighbor's horse just after I got home last week. The owners were gone and one of the kids from a farm down the road asked if I could come help catch it before it got in with the dairy cows.

I just happened to be in the process of pulling the 15th baby skunk out of our rhubarb patch and didn't want to let this one get away. I had just read a news release that Philadelphia was trapping and selling baby skunks for $250 each, and they were selling like hotcakes! On hearing this news I cringed at just having let 14 babies go in the woods.

With dollar signs in my eyes, and a skunk in hand, but a kid needing help with a rampaging horse, I ran to the truck to toss it in the pickup bed only to find that it was full of rolls of new fencing that I had neglected to unload. I knew that if I threw it in there, I'd have a heck of a time getting it out again, so I opened the front of the truck and tossed it in there. Where could it hide in there? Right?

We caught the horse after a small chase, and I went back to retrieve the skunk. I could not find it. Baby skunks don't exactly spray like the adults, but they certainly have a distinct odor that seems to be enhanced in warm confined spaces. The cab of the truck was beginning to reek, but there was no sign of a baby skunk. There are more hiding holes in the cab of a truck than there are in good Wisconsin baby lace Swiss cheese: up under the upholstery of the seats, under the dashboard, behind loose trim, under corners of floor mats, etc. It took three days before I recaptured that skunk and sent it off into the woods. I don't even want to think about the money that could have been had any more.

After that my wife decided that it was a good weekend for me to fix the chain on the manure spreader and clear the barn lot of a winter's worth of stall cleanings. Her hope was that I would replace my lingering rancid skunky stench with a more natural barnyard aroma in the process, I guess.

The timing was unfortunate for me, though. This week there was a huge hatch of "friendly flies". Last year the North Woods experienced an incredible infestation of forest tent caterpillars. According to the Minnesota DNR, in mid- to late- June, adult flies deposit live maggots on tent caterpillar cocoons. The maggots move into the cocoons, bore into the pupae and feed on them, which kills the developing caterpillars. After completing their feeding, the maggots drop to the ground, form their own pupal stages and remain dormant until the next summer.

Friendly flies (Sarcophaga aldrichi) resemble houseflies, but they are larger, slower and distinctly more bristly. They measure 6 to 12 mm long, are gray, have three black stripes on their thoraxes, and their abdomens are checkered. They drone persistently and swarm over everything. They don't bite, but they can soil things with their regurgitations. Unlike other flies, they can't be shoo'd away. They must be brushed off. Imagine one of those Fear Factor segments where a person is covered with spiders or bugs, and you have a pretty fair image of me working on the manure spreader and tractor. Ah, the joys of country life. I think I'd rather brush off snowflakes than flies and mosquitoes. Anyway, the barn lot got cleaned up to the point that the tractor overheated and the spreader chain broke again and wrapped around the drive gear.

And I had to drive the truck to work this week with the windows down so that my wife could have a usable mode of transportation.

Moral of the story: Greed stinks.

Recipe of the Week

June 13, 02

Last week our neighbors were out walking and watched as my favorite quarter horse, Clyde, approached a skunk traveling across the pasture. My horse had his head down, ears perked, and was all innocent curiosity. Then the air around Clyde's face turned blue. He got it square between the eyes. That sent him prancing and bucking with his lips curled back in what they call the flehming response. The neighbors had a good chuckle, but I was none to pleased when I went to mess with him.

We had known for a while that a skunk had taken up quarters under our chicken coop, but live and let live. Right? Then we noticed that one of our geese had lost its eggs in the night. Then the weather turned warm, and my wife started gagging every time she opened the chicken coop door.

OK. It was high time to get rid of the skunks (and for me to make up for some recent acts that my wife had quite arbitrarily deemed as mistakes in judgement on my part). I would catch that skunk and absolve my good name. So I got out the live trap and stuffed some bread in it and set it outside the chicken coop Monday night.

Tuesday morning came and all I could think of was returning to the joys of writing clinical and scientific papers, so I blissfully left home for my office early without giving the trap another thought.

It didn't take long for the phone call to come. My wife discovered that I had successfully trapped the skunk, but far from being pleased, she wanted me to drop what I was doing and come get rid of it. I guess I hadn't thought about that part.

So I asked around the office, and was told that others had tried shooting skunks in live traps, but that didn't stop the skunks from signing their last testaments in their death throes. They said the best thing to do was to throw the trap in the river and drown the critter before taking it out. They didn't say how you were supposed to get close to the trap and get it to the river before the skunk took notice of your presence.

Well, I considered the drowning option, but my daughter in Montanas had just called me that weekend and related to me her story of nearly drowning when her kayak flipped on a squirrely, elevated eddy line in a flooded whitewater gorge in Montana. She had been literally sucked out of her boat and down into "the green room" where there isn't much light. After swimming and swimming, she still couldn't find the surface. She is also a scuba diver, and was trained to hold her breath for long periods in ememrgency situations. She had nearly passed the point of choking back her violent urge to ghasp when she finally broke the surface, got to the rock face of the gorge wall, and scratched herself up to a firm handhold to wait for a rescue. That was too close for comfort, and having been a whitewater boater myself, I could relate all too closely with her experience.

Could I put a poor skunk through the drowning experience? Naw. There must be another way.

By the time I got home, a couple of guys building fence for us had tried to throw a blanket over the trap, and in so doing, gave cause for everyone in the valley to close their windows and light some candles. That was the extent of their attempts. So now I faced a pungent trap half covered with a blanket.

Think. Think. Think.

Then I got it. I went to the barn and got out my old faithful can of tractor engine ether spray starting fluid. I slowly approached the trap and pulled the blanket over the entire thing, lifted a corner and emptied half the can. Then I waited. Then I peeked. The polecat was wide-eyed and looking at me, so I sprayed again and waited. There came a point that I thought that it was surely knocked out or overdosed, at which time I gently, but gingerly, picked up the trap, still covered, and moved it to the truck. I found a spot in some remote woods and slowly lifted the edge of the blanket enough to open the trap door. Well, out he came and "high tailed" it out of there. Unfortunately I was standing in the jet stream. Which brings me to the Recipe of the Week:

Go to th cupboard and find that you have no tomato juice (which never worked in the past anyway).

Then remember your college chemistry. Alkaline hydrogen peroxide (30% water, 6 M NaOH) is used to scrub hydrogen sulfide from waste gas streams in the laboratory, and it also works well for destroying excess thiols in dilute aqueous solutions. Skunk spray is composed mainly of low molecular weight thiols, so try a version of the alkaline hydrogen peroxide reagent:

1 qt 3% hydrogen peroxide
1/4 cup baking soda
1 tsp liquid soap

Use it for a sponge bath; rinse with tap water; and VOILA!

It actually works.

So much for Papa Skunk. Now for the Mama and her babies. Now that she has sen how it is done, I'm trusting that my wife will take care of them while I'm working. I just hope that she goes out and buys some more hydrogen peroxide before she attempts it. (Which reminds me. I left what was left in the jar on the rim of the bathtub. I hope she doesn't think it's shampoo. Oh well. I always wondered what it would be like to be married to a bleached blond).

Flood and Escape

Several years ago, I was telecommuting part of the week in my capacity as the Director of a medical writing service located in Central Wisconsin. Shortly after Angel's foal had been born, I received a request for a work-related progress update from my staff via e-mail.

Progress Update? I wish! Let me describe my week by letting you read some communications:


May 3, 02

Subject: Absence
Sent: 5/1/02 7:20 AM

Dear partners,

I may or may not be in this week. Right now I am in a BIG DOG HOUSE. When I was putting up our mare last night, she bolted back through the stall door as soon as I took off her halter. She and her foal ran out of the barn, straight down the driveway, around our perimeter fence and into 500 acres of Consolidated Paper forest/swamp land. Trying to spot a pure white horse and a small black foal in a flooded black forest full of patchy snow cover is no holiday. I don't know how the foal will fare being cold and wet and prime fresh coyote bait. Anyway, I'll be in as soon as I finish pumping out our basement that flooded in the night with a foot of water.

____________

From a staffer:
Subject: Absence
Sent: 5/1/02 9:50 AM

Boy I hope everything works out okay. I know the feeling of having lost animals out there somewhere. You didn't say if the mare came back. I'll try not to bug you because I don't want you getting crabby (I notice men have this tendency when faced with problems such as you are facing).
___________

Subject: Absence
Sent: 5/1/02 10:12 AM

Me? Crabby? @#!^%&"~`!!!!!

This morning, we found a satellite map of the area, and had four people out in the woods and swamp, along with a friend with an airplane topside. For three hours there were many sightings, but the mare and her foal would not be caught. Period. End of story.

We try again in a few hours. This time with a bale of hay and a companion horse in hand.

Grumpus

__________________________________________

From a staffer:

Sent: 5/2/02 9:36 AM

Did you get lost in the swamp land too now?

__________________________________________

Sent: 5/2/02 9:36 AM

I am back working today. The mare and her foal are back in the barn.

We spent all day in the swamp Wednesday. Angel still would not be coaxed with hay or grain. Finally, we took our 35 y.o. gelding, Roany, out to see whether Angel would follow him. In the process, he bolted and was loose, too. Fortunately, he is a real grain hound and was fairly easy to catch again. Finally, my wife, Deb, led Roany out of the swamp and Angel and her foal followed ... for a while.

Just when we were coming up to the access road home, Angel and her foal bolted ahead and turned the wrong way, straight out toward the state highway. At that point I followed the mare and foal. Deb took the gelding home, and called the neighbor to get his deer rifle. The neighbor did as requested.

In the meantime, Deb's mom (a devout Catholic) said three Hail Mary's to St. Anthony, which she is convinced always helps when something is lost. Well, all I have to say is that St. Anthony must be a regular patron of May's Bar on the highway, because it emptied to come help chase the mare.

Shortly thereafter, I had to do some fast talking to our neighbor with the deer rifle that it really wasn't me that Deb wanted shot. I shouted, "Honest, Roy. Deb wants the mare shot before it causes a fatal collision on the highway, not me!"

"I don't know. Deb's animated body language and subtle demeanor seems to suggest otherwise. I could have sworn it was you I was gunning for. Where are the horses anyway?"

Well, by that time the mob had chased the mare and her foal back across the highway and into the swamp again, but for some reason Angel ran back out onto our access road and headed home with everyone following. When they got to our place, Angel turned right into our yard and started grazing. When I finally caught up, Angel let me walk right up and halter her like it was no big deal. Aaaargh! The best thing that I can say is that there were no mosquitoes in the swamp yet.

So yesterday, we turned our attention back to our flooded basement. We rented one pump .... and the water kept rising. Rented a second pump .... and the water kept rising. I guess that we not only brought the mare and foal home, but the swamp, too.

When we re-plumbed the entire house two years ago, the plumber yanked out a brand new sump pump and disconnected it. "Aw, you don't need that. It's just for the gray water from the washing machine. Now the washer runs into the septic field." That original pump was nowhere to be found. So I went out and bought another sump pump. The new pump had the water drained by last night, so I turned it off. This morning the water was as high as ever. I said to heck with it, I'm going to work! So this weekend I face even more fun.

Still Grumpy

_________________

Maybe next week I'll have better writing progress to report.