First, I find out where prairie oysters come from.
Next, a rancher tells me how much his dog loves eating them at branding.
Now I have a panic attack each time a dog sniffs my crotch.
Refrain from using the hollowpoint .22 shells when plonking gophers in the yard. This results in there being too many pieces of gopher to clean up.
I can tell you that riding horses is not for me. Not only do they not have heaters, but apparently they don’t come with stereos, either. I only discovered the latter after I tried inserting a CD into the only slot I could find that would accomodate one. That’s when the goddamn horse freaked out and tried to kick me.
I’ll stick with my car — it’s safer.
As I’ve mentioned previously, we have a dog. The concept of owning a dog is new to me as I’ve always been an aleurophile through and through. I can’t say I ever really wanted a dog, but my wife felt that having a one might be a good idea out here on the acreage. So now we have a dog.
The mutt’s name is Hercules and I’d be hard pressed to tell you what breed he is. We know he’s got some black lab in him and perhaps a bit of retriever, but we’re not sure what else. Jen calls him a ‘Heinz 57′, meaning a little of everything. He’s not a large dog and not a small dog. I guess I’d have to describe his size as just right.
We met Herc nearly a year ago when we were still living in Edmonton. The lady next door to us, Trish, ran a foster home for the animal rescue society and Hercules wound up as one of her charges. One weekend Trish had to go out of town and she asked my wife to feed the animals for her. Herc had just come out of an abusive situation and was a bit tense around people he didn’t know, like my wife. Their first meeting scared the heck out of her. Once Hercules had figured out that Jen was okay, they got along famously. I remember Jen saying to me, ‘he’d be a great dog to have if we lived in the country.’ But we didn’t live in the country and that was the end of it. Herc was adopted out shortly thereafter.
Along came May of this year and I was laid off from my job. By June we had decided that city life was no longer for us and plans to move back to the country were afoot. It was at this point that Jen started talking about getting a dog for the farm, and we regretted that Herc was no longer available. We felt that having a dog who barked when strangers came into the yard would be a good thing.
Then a strange thing happened.
The girl who had adopted Hercules could no longer keep him. Trish asked if we were still interested in adopting Herc, and we said we were. Thus it was that I found myself piloting a U-Haul truck down the highway with a cat in the back, a bucket of goldfish on the floor, and Hercules himself riding shotgun.
We’ve been out here a few months now and the dog is starting to mellow out. He no longer crouches down and tries to make himself invisible whenever someone picks up a stick. He’s definitely becoming more friendly and playful, and he’s acting less ferocious to guests who visit our yard, although he still barks his fool head off whenever a vehicle drives in. He’s also exhibiting a few interesting quirks.
Hercules has two tail wagging modes. The first is the exuberant but polite and traditional tail wag that goes back and forth. The second mode is more frantic and is Herc speak for “ohboyohboyohboyohboyohboyohboyimgladyourehere!” This isn’t a wag per se, but a high speed propeller-like clockwise rotation of the tail with simultaneous back and forth wagging of the rear hips. (Interestingly, his tail never rotates counter-clockwise.) The second mode is also accompanied by quick leaps where Herc likes to jump up and kiss the hands of whoever he is excited about.
It’s safe to say that the dog is growing on me, even if he doesn’t purr. I just wish he’d learn to stay away from skunks.
Around 7 pm Jen tells me that she can smell skunk. A minute later I smell it too. Upon opening the door I find our dog, Hercules, standing there in all of his stinky glory. That fucking miserable hound just managed to get sprayed for the third time in two weeks.
I grabbed my armaments and quickly went looking for malodorous little bastard who assaulted my dog. As I’m rounding the end of the trailer I notice a puddle that wasn’t there an hour ago. My daughter had just had a bath and the puddle was under the guest washroom so it’s pretty obvious that we’ve got plumbing problems as well.
Freakin’ wonderful.
The evening is getting better and better. My bank account, on the other hand, will be getting smaller and smaller tomorrow once we call in the plumber.
A quick search of the yard for the skunk turned up no results — it had decided that discretion was the better part of survival. I’m thinking that I showed remarkable restraint by not shooting that goddamn stupid dog. It’s not a helluva lot of use as a farm dog if it can’t figure out that it should avoid the business end of a skunk.
Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck.
For the past week we have spotted enemy agents — coyotes — reconnoitering our territory. Given the nature of the enemy, extending our defense perimeter and putting new offensive tactics (backed by new armaments) into place seemed to be the most prudent course of action. This is exactly what we did.
However, within hours of launching ‘Operation Nail the Fuckers’, the enemy modified its tactics as well. While enemy agents continue to monitor our territory, they have fallen back to new patrol positions at least half a mile away from our base camp, placing them out of range of our new offensive capabilities. This despite the fact that there is simply no way they could have known about the solutions put into place on our end. Unless they were told by someone on the inside of our organization, that is.
We’ve been infiltrated.
The primary suspects are my wife, daughter, and our house cat. The dog was removed from the short list when it became apparent that he is simply too stupid to collaborate with the enemy (something with more than two brain cells to rub together wouldn’t get sprayed twice by a skunk inside of a week). While my wife and daughter are more than capable of collaborating with the enemy, they lack motive. The cat, on the other hand, has plenty of motive. We have known for some time that she has had designs on the canned tuna stored in our provisions locker. Getting us out of the way would give her unfettered access to the tuna.
Unfortunately, suspicions don’t equal proof. I need hard evidence to prove that the cat is the traitor in our operation, and I think I know how to get it. I’m putting sodium pentathol in her Tender Vittles this evening. If all goes well, I’ll have my proof by morning. I admit that I have personal feelings for the cat, but I can’t let them get in the way of performing my duty and securing our installation.
Nobody ever said that military life was easy.
I was awakened at 2:30 AM this morning by my wife, who was freaking out. “There’s a mouse in the trailer. I saw it go in behind the dog food and your winter boots by the back door.”
“What do you want me to do about it?”
“Kill it!”
The thing to understand about my wife is that she absolutely can’t stand mice, almost to the point where she has the stereotypical female reaction that so much has been made of over the years. She’s tough as nails in just about every other area (she can easily take me in a fight if we ever have one), so I guess you’d have to think of mice as her Achilles Heel.
I crawled out of bed, put on a minimum of clothes, and investigated the situation. We put towels under the doors around the porch and blocked off the hallway leading to the kitchen with a large board. I also blocked off the heat vent so the mouse couldn’t skitter down there. My wife had the presence of mind to call our dog over (we let him sleep inside at night), and the mouse, sensing his presence, decided that discretion was the better part of survival and stayed hidden behind my boots.
Once everything was blocked off, I started removing objects from the porch that the mouse could hide behind, and passed them to my wife. She took them with one hand while holding a broom with the other, just in case a mouse needed to be whacked. When I cleared enough space I found the mouse. I slammed an empty ice cream pail over it, but only managed to trap it’s front half. I lifted the pail for an instant to try and get the pail over the entire mouse, but it rocketed out of the porch…
…and straight into the jaws of the dog. Ouch. He didn’t bite it hard enough to kill it, but the mouse decided then and there to start playing dead. I slammed the bucket over it again. I slid a piece of cardboard under it, and then fired both, with the mouse, out the back door. No more mouse, for now.
People are welcome to refer to me as The Great White Hunter from now on.
I’m not exactly sure what these ‘cow chip’ things are, but I’ve been told to watch out for them several times now while living out here. The problem is, I don’t know what to watch out for. Are they a brand of chip (e.g. Pringles, Frito-Lay, Hostess, etc.) or a flavour (e.g. dill pickle)? And can someone tell me why I need to watch out for them? Are they high in trans-fats, or something like that?
This whole cow milking business is tricky. When you buy a carton of milk, it has those helpful little arrows on the top that tell you which side to open. Not one of the cows I’ve looked at so far has the helper arrows on them, and I haven’t been able to figure out which end to open because of this.
Even more confusing is the fact that the cows aren’t clearly labelled as to which ones are 1%, which ones are 2%, homogenized, and so on. Even if I could figure out which end of the cow to open, I still might open the wrong cow and get the wrong type of milk.
No wonder farmers prefer to use milking machines.
I heard on the radio this afternoon that four out of five farmers in my area are relying on off-farm income (a job in the oil patch or a spouse with a day job) to stay afloat. Put more bluntly, 80% of farmers in this area are losing money trying to grow produce for your table.
Not good.