Acting Foxy
I’m not sure what got into Delilah yesterday, but it was Valentine’s Day, after all. She was getting all foxy, pausing to hunt for out-of-sight prey beneath the snow during several of our walks around the property yesterday.
It’s hard for me to tell if she thinks something is lurking beneath the pristine snow cover because she can smell it or hear it. The part that looks so fox-like at the start is how she cocks her head and focuses her ears over the surface, waiting to pounce.
When she thinks the time is right, she pounces and buries her face into the snow.
Either she was getting false signals or the critters under the snow outsmarted her and got away. It wouldn’t be the first time. I’ve watched many little rodents make a mad dash escape out the back while Delilah is digging through the weeds for a prize.
In that photo she is searching at the edge of the wash of snow I had plowed off the driveway a short time earlier. We’ve had a series of 1 to 2 inch snowfalls and several days when wind has packed the snow into hard drifts and I hadn’t plowed for a couple of weeks.
Our driveway looks so nice cleaned up after days of having neglected it. Dare I say, it’s downright foxy!
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Just Me
Starting today and lasting for a little over a week, it’s going to be just me managing the ranch as Cyndie is flying today to visit her mother in Florida. I’ve been through this solo routine many times but instead of that making it easier, I think the last few times have increasingly revealed how connected Cyndie and I have become at this point of our lives.
Throughout the last week, we have been watching the athletic Olympic performances available on NBC together. It won’t be the same all by myself. I have been frustrated over the number of events, especially hockey, we haven’t had access to that have been broadcast on USA network.
I will particularly miss her editing service for these blog posts. She continually provides helpful feedback on my writing that always makes my posts read better.
Tending to the animals is always half as much work when we share the duties. Now I only have Delilah to help me with the horses until Cyndie returns and what Delilah does down at the barn is never really all that helpful. Mostly, she starts barking a lot if she thinks the horses are misbehaving.
Delilah did a great job of alerting us about someone showing up at our front door yesterday. It was one of the local coyote hunters asking if they could cross our land during a hunt. I made sure to get his contact information this time, in case we have future evidence of the pests lurking on our land.
Surprisingly, Delilah didn’t get riled up over the sound of the hunting dogs cutting through our woods. Later, when I took her for an afternoon walk, she was very interested in all the new foot and paw prints in the snow. I heard a couple of gunshots while the hunt was active, but did not receive any word about whether they were successful or not.
It just eventually gets quiet, the pickup trucks disappear from the road, and the horses stop looking all spooked. At that point, I feel safe to take Delilah outside again.
Now it’s going to be quiet around the house for the next nine days.
Not that I’m counting.
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Winter Leaves
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Least Favorite
We are on the back side of one of my least favorite winter snow weather events this morning. Basically, I dislike it for the resulting conditions that make clearing the accumulation so annoying. It doesn’t make for pleasant conditions for animals that have to endure the tribulations of dealing with the wide range of precipitation, either.
It starts like this:
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The temperature climbs well above freezing and a light mist of wetness falls to get everything good and wet. The warm temperature also starts to melt the snow already on the ground.
Next, big snow moves in and falls in gorgeous flakes that make the world look like every favorite winter snowscape scene you’ve ever witnessed.
That puts you in a gleeful state of mind that becomes a set up for the other shoe that is going to drop when it comes time to shovel or plow when the precipitation is over.
The wet snow sticks to every surface and paints trees with a beautiful white accent that makes the forest look like something from a fairy tale.
This is the time when the tide turns and the temperature begins to plummet while the wind kicks up to uncomfortable speeds. The flakes that aren’t already stuck solid to surfaces are whipped up into little missiles that embed themselves into every nook and cranny available to create a stucco concrete finish that would be the envy of many a cement craftsman.
Clearing the front steps is difficult without the aid of chemical assistance and sharpened heavy metal tools.
Alas, there is an excellent antidote for crummy weather conditions that experienced winter-hardened folk who live near destination restaurants can employ to compensate for any angst-inducing hassles of unfavorable snow conditions.
Last night, Cyndie and I had an early Valentine’s Day dinner at the Shady Grove restaurant just two miles from home and dined like royalty, finishing with our highly favored dessert treat that they expertly prepare.
With only seconds to spare before there was nothing left to show for it but a sticky doily, Cyndie snapped a photo of the remains of their salted chocolate caramel tart for posterity. My sugar ratio was definitely knocked way out of balance by the end of the day yesterday.
And that, my faithful readers, is how you go from a least-favorite to a most-favorite in just a few hundred words.
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Comparing Generations
In my random occasions dabbling with research into my family ancestry, I’ve too often limited my focus to a narrow few surnames at the expense of so many others. The case of not finding any evidence of a person I’m seeking should be enough to push me on to other lines of the family, but sometimes I can’t get myself to give up.
Something that has helped me to appreciate how many people’s blood we share is the display of doubling numbers for each generation above us in our family trees.
- 2 parents
- 4 grandparents
- 8 great grandparents
- 16 great-great grandparents
- 32 great-great-great grandparents
- 64 great-great-great-great grandparents
I’ve got names for all 16 great-great grandparents, but only 25 of 32 third-great grandparents.
It can get confusing sometimes to keep track of generations and relationships, especially when parent and children names can be the same or very similar. Since I was listing out the generations, I decided to make note of the range of birth years for each.
It’s interesting to see how much the range of years increases with each generation, but understandable with the increased number of people involved.
Cyndie and I can serve as an example of how the difference of birth year can be so great within a familial generation. There is a 17-year difference in the birth years of our parents. Cyndie was the first-born child of 20-year-old parents and I was the fifth-born child of 40-year-old parents.
The birth date ranges of my ancestors shows that one of my 3rd-great grandparents was born after one of my 2nd-great grandparents. No wonder I can get confused sometimes about who is who and in which generation they belong.
It’s a mind boggling trip to contemplate being equal parts of 32 or 64 people in a generation.
It would be a shame to neglect any one part of our history when looking at the rest. My next priority on the genealogy puzzle is to identify those seven missing 3rd-great grandparents. From the looks of it, Ancestry.com has hints waiting to be investigated on several of them.
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First Bite
For the first time in my life, I have finally been bitten by a horse. It’s not an occasion people generally keep track of, unless they spend a fair amount of time around horses, I suppose. I have only been around horses for 5 or 6 years.
Our Thoroughbred mare, Mix bit me in the middle of my back yesterday morning. I yelped and cursed and all the horses startled. The other three didn’t know what had happened, but Mix knew. Cyndie responded by making sure Mix knew we were not accepting such behavior. She used her amped up energy and a boundary extension stick to move Mix to and fro around the paddock until the mare finally showed some sign of acquiescence by dropping her head.
In talking it over when we got back in the house, I came up with a possible theory for her behavior.
When the horses first arrived here, Mix, more than the other horses, showed aggressiveness around feeding times. It mostly manifests in her demonstrative body language, taking on stallion-like behaviors of pawing and snaking her neck. She might also chase away or attempt to bite the butts of other horses around her. When we bring out her pan of food, she doesn’t tend to act aggressively toward us.
Lately, when Cyndie or I move around her to scoop poop or hang hay nets while she is gobbling from her feed pan, Mix will sharply swish her tail or pin her ears back and swing her head in our direction to flaunt her command over her food. We have been verbally responding with our disapproval and carrying on with our task at hand to show her she does not direct our activity.
Yesterday, while she was eating and after I completed my scooping, I stood in her vicinity even though I wasn’t working anymore, thinking I might condition her to my unthreatening presence when she has food. When she gestured her displeasure, I calmly held my ground.
This lasted maybe a minute before I moved on to something else. The four horses were finishing the last of the pellets in their feed pans and basically chilling. Maybe moseying down to get a drink or nuzzle a hay net with half interest. I came out to tie up one of the last hay bags. Mix approached and nosed the bag, then lifted her head to inhale the scent of my breath. I tossed the bag over the fence and was tying it to the top board, losing sight of Mix as she moved behind me.
Bam! I felt a wicked pinch on my back and let out a shout. Was she maybe responding to my earlier posturing in her space while she had been eating? It wouldn’t surprise me.
Good thing I was wearing my “space suit” and escaped with nothing more than a tender bruise beneath all the layers.
By the afternoon, we were very pleased to see Mix remained pleasant as I was making two passes around her with the wheelbarrow while she was still eating. We are taking that as a good sign she received the message we were sending earlier that morning.
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Paired Photos
Yesterday morning I was taking extra pictures to chronicle our morning routine for a photo exercise occurring on my virtual community, Brainstorms. Members all over the globe were capturing their lives in images for four days and posting them to provide a simultaneous glimpse of our varied locals and activities.
Of course, mine involved horses and I came up with two sets of images that work best when shown as pairs.
It was a cold morning that was going to become a warm day, so… Blankets on / blankets off.
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I then stepped up beside Light and was taking a picture of her gobbling pellets from a feed pan. She turned to see what I was doing.
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There’s something about a horse’s nose that is just so great up close in a photograph. For all we know, that could be a moose!
Don’t tell her I said that.
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Gravity
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swinging around
startled
then not
normalcy returns
in a privileged life
difficulty happens
and then doesn’t
for most of the days
of the rest of their lives
while holding
the sacred path
outlasting
the gravity
the rest of us
grasp
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Big Between
We have been living in a pretty peaceful time of late at Wintervale, one I tend to label, “the big between.” Whenever we get a significant block of days without a major weather event or an unexpected life disturbance, it becomes the time between the last one and the inevitable next one.
Delilah was her best-behaved self all day on Saturday. She responded surprisingly quickly in obeying a “drop it” command that she normally resists. She had just made a lightning-fast dash and discovery of a recently departed squirrel just over the snowbank of the driveway. We were on our way back from the barn after feeding the horses and Cyndie was just telling me about startling a hawk when she came out of the house at right about that same spot.
Poor bird didn’t get the benefit of its kill. That is, unless it was keeping an eye on where Cyndie tossed the limp tree rodent over the property line into the neighbor’s woods where it will be out of reach of our dog.
Delilah was rewarded with a fully sanctioned dead animal chewy treat that Cyndie purchases, not made out of squirrels.
Heavy napping soon followed.
A couple of days ago, just as the horses were finishing their pans of feed pellets, I was blessed with a precious interaction with Light toward the completion of my manure scooping.
She approached the wheelbarrow, which they often do, and was checking things out as I walked up with a full scoop. She stepped as close as physically possible to impede me from being able to grab both handles. I dumped the contents of the scoop into the nearly filled wheelbarrow and set down the tool to give Light my full attention.
Not yet confident that I am reading the signals from any of these mares, I attempted to see what combination of hand contact, intensity, and location appeared to meet with her satisfaction. Scratches behind her ears? Under her jawline? Massage her neck? Slide my hands under her blanket?
Scratching her forehead and jawline seemed to elicit the best reaction of eyes closing as if in bliss, with ears happily relaxed. The routine I am used to with these four Thoroughbreds is for them to move away rather soon after we put hands on them, but this time Light was more inclined to lean her forehead into my torso with no hint of wanting to be anywhere else.
It is such a treat to be given so much attention from a horse. Surprisingly, I ended up being the one to break the spell. We had been standing together like that for about ten minutes and I really was on my last scoop and ready to dump the wheelbarrow so I could join Cyndie up at the house for breakfast.
I moved toward the far handle of the wheelbarrow and Light read my intention and slowly backed up so she could turn and mosey over for a drink of water.
I’m hoping the time between that session and my next opportunity to receive similar love from any of the mares is not anywhere as long as the number of quiet days we’ve been enjoying around here lately.
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Nighttime Screeching
Two nights in a row now. High pitched snarling, screeching growls in the darkness. We are grateful to be sleeping indoors, even if the sound leaks through our windows and doors enough to be audible. In the cold darkness, it must sound magnitudes more unsettling.
It wasn’t originally obvious what was going on, since we have heard the cries of rabbits being preyed upon, intense yelping from packs of coyotes, and rare screeches from owls in our woods on various occasions. This seemed to hold elements from any and all of those.
When there was no evidence of any carnivore activity to be found on the morning after the first night of terrorizing sounds and the screaming resumed the following night as darkness settled over the land, my suspicions about the source coalesced.
For reasons that completely evade my understanding, both Delilah and Pequenita showed no hint of reaction to the angry creature sounds happening just beyond our walls. They both seem to react to a myriad of other triggering sounds occurring beyond my range of hearing, but this drama that was catching my attention mysteriously meant nothing to them.
I pressed my ear to the glass of the back door to gauge the distance and direction to the source of the creepy screams as I attempted to silently work the latch. As soon as the door cracked open, the sounds stopped. There was no echo, no winding down of conflict, no sounds of movement. Only silence. Instant silence.
Standing motionless outside the door, holding it closed but not latched to avoid making a single sound myself, I hoped to outlast whatever creature it was that was smart enough to respond to my appearance with such immediate disappearance. Was it holding its breath?
I was, mine.
It would have to eventually move. Whatever the screaming was all about couldn’t have just totally ended. If it was some fracas between two animals, the animosity couldn’t have just vanished because I showed up.
They, or it, won. I gave up after a few minutes and went back inside. Undaunted, I headed right to our high beam spotlight flashlight to follow up on my hunch. At the back door again, I switched it on and pointed it toward the high branches of the nearest big tree.
Suspicion confirmed. Two beady raccoon eyes glowed in the light beam.
We had thought the masked bandits weren’t active in the coldest months but research reveals mating can be happening in February and March. Yippy! Up to seven new babies possible in April and May. [sarcasm]
That screaming could be males competing for a single female. Beats me why I only saw one set of eyes in the tree limb when the noise definitely sounded like conflict between two parties.
Time to practice our trapping skills again to see if we can improve on the modest effectiveness we had last summer.
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Relative Something 