Farm Fresh Blog

Tending sheep outside the confines of good fencing requires some basic tools. Because our property is more than a bit untamed, it really isn't set up for sheep and goats who could be picked off in broad daylight without the dogs. The barnyard pasture is more of a 'sacrifice' area where the small stock can graze and browse in relative safety, but there isn't a lot of nutrition there. They can graze in the large pasture below the house without being monitored, because it's close enough that help is just a rifle away, but everywhere else they must be taken out with dogs and tended closely.

Tending keeps them within the somewhat loose confines of outer fencing and it keeps them out of the sticker burrs, which I will unfortunately already be picking out of some churro lambs.

(No, Halloween has not come early. She is really not black and orange. The red dirt around here turns all my white animals orange or pink.  Thankfully it washes out easily.)

So back to tending:

The basic idea is to roll out with the necessary tools needed to move sheep and goats safely.

Here is a list of tools needed on my belt:

The dogs understand their jobs. The Border Collies have the perimeters tattooed on the foreheads and thus any sheep straying outside the imaginary line is dealt with accordingly. The Livestock Guardian Dogs take this time to poke around the pastures and leave pee-mail for the rival gang of coyotes. Then they scratch out a hole in the shade and watch sheep with the rest of us.

If our browsing takes us close to a pond, everyone goes skinny dipping, except me and The Supervisor. I'm not a big fan of wading through cactus and copperheads in bare feet to swim in muddy water, and she doesn't feel she can let her hair down and play in the water when there is the chance that a single sheep may randomly walk across the arbitrary line she has assigned.  Ah well, we all have a cross to bear.

Others are not so encumbered by the weight of responsibility.

This can be a quiet time to enjoy coffee, a book, and peaceful meditation.

Or it can be a time of great cussing where curses are hurled at sheep who don't care,  Border Collies learn new adjectives,

and Livestock Guardian Dogs don't care one way or the other.

Regardless, the nuts and bolts of tending sheep come down to the dogs, and the generations of breeding that has gone into making them the willing partners of man that they are today.

If you mixed a runway supermodel with a toddler you'd have a dairy goat. If you don't believe it, you've never tried to feed one.

My dairy goats are given a high quality sweet feed, sunflower seeds, cotton seed meal, calf manna, and alfalfa. The goal is to get as many calories as possible into them because milk production takes so much out. Life would be just grand if they'd happily eat everything they are served, but that is not the case. Goats are picky and their tastes change as often as a man with the television remote control. Sheep, on the other hand, eat what is served and gain weight on a diet that would make a dairy goat look like a prisoner of war.

Since we have sheep and goats it is necessary to separate them at meal time. Not only do the sheep not need all those calories, there is too much copper in goat food for sheep, so if the goats are getting a special goat chow, it's imperative that food be completely consumed before sheep have access to the area.

This is what feeding at our house is like:

Pull wagon to hay barn and load with alfalfa. Sheep and goats stagger out of their slumber and began screaming and dragging little tin cups across the prison bars to loudly announce to every coyote in the county that they are awake and are hungry. Drag wagon filled with alfalfa across yard and dump little piles into outside feeders. Release sheep only.

Sheep gallop like thoroughbreds bursting through the gates. There will always be one or two goats with them. These goats will run up to the alfalfa, stand over it in disgust, and demand to be returned to the pen. Every day. Same two stupid goats.

The rest of the goats will wait expectantly near their stall in the pen. I walk through barn and attempt to open sliding door. Cannot open door because goats are hanging on it. Goats knock door off runners. Cuss goats. Cuss door. Use Border Collie to push goats off door. Goats run to their feeders and climb inside. Dump feeders to clear them of any goats or debris. Go back outside and get hay. Goats mug wagon and climb on top.  Toss alfafa into first feeder. Almost fall as goats rush like waves crashing on the beach. They shove each other out of feeder. Toss exact same hay into second feeder. All goats leave first feeder to rush at second feeder like a Black Friday Wal-Mart opening. Toss hay into third feeder. Black Friday shoppers abandon first two stores and race to third store. They climb in feeders and flip them. Ut oh! Hay has now touched dirt. It is no longer good. It is soiled and as such, cannot pass goat supermodel pouty lips.

They run to the next feeder and flip their neighbor's hay onto the ground. Oh, my bad. Looks like neighbor now has soiled hay too. While they are busy ruining $23 per bale alfalfa, I begin to dish out grain mix. This is an electronics sale on Black Friday.

A prison riot food fight breaks out. After the dust settles, the goats decide that this week they do not eat Brand X of sweet feed, but prefer Brand Y which they refused to eat last week because Brand X cost more money. They did not like Brand Y until they saw the sheep eating it, and now it is their favorite and they hate Brand X. But they only want the top 1/3 of the bag, after that it is tainted and cannot be eaten. It must therefore be replaced with Brand Z which costs enough to put a child through college. Brand Z is their new favorite. Buy several bags of Brand Z because they seem to like it. Wrong! They only like the first bag. The next bag is unacceptable.

Leave them with food for two hours. During that time the milkers are pulled out and given the same food in a bucket on the milking stand. There is a fight at the door every time a milker is pulled out. The food in the milk stand bucket must be far superior to the food in the troughs. Because, well, it's in a bucket, and everyone knows that food in a bucket tastes better than food in a trough.

Once done milking Goat #1, take the bucket out of the milking stand and place it on pavement in barn aisle. Pull out next milker and put her on the stand. Goat #1 leaves her bucket to mug the bucket on the stand belonging to Goat #2. Milk Goat #2 while Goat #1 attempts to steal grain from Goat #2 even though it IS THE SAME GRAIN!  When finished, take that bucket and place it on the pavement next to Bucket #1 so they can clean up grain. Pull out Goat #3 and put Bucket #3 on the milking stand. Goat #1 and Goat #2 leave Bucket #2 and attempt to eat out of Bucket #3 while Goat #3 is being milked. Same feed. Different buckets.  Repeat this a 4th time with next goat.

Now this begs the obvious question: "Why don't you just kick Goat #1 back in with everyone else when you pull out Goat #2?"
 

Folks, trying to drag one goat back into a pen when ten more are trying to get out of that same pen is the very definition of insanity. The best I can do is kick her out of the barn with the sheep. By leaving her inside the barn aisle while I milk, I am able to monitor exactly how much food she eats. She will also eat more food if she is fighting with her neighbor. This boggles my mind, but is the very reason why shoppers line up for hours outside Wal-Mart for a Black Friday sale. The merchandise isn't as important as the thrill of the game.

Nevertheless, I'm seriously considering going back to the old method of tying all the milkers up against the wall where they have to wait until their turn. I'm not sure which is less stressful on me. Watching them duke it out, or listening to them scream when they're tied to the wall.

After everyone has been milked and most of the goats have announced that Brands X, Y, and Z are no longer acceptable and the next time you're at the feed store, you need to buy Brand Q, with the crimped oats, not the whole oats, and they want chicken soup with stars and the crust cut off their toasted cheese sandwich.

The goats will then wander out to the pasture to eat poison ivy and mesquite trees.

The bucks will be turned into the same pen and they will conduct clean-up duties. Hours later the sheep and dairy goat girls will be returned to that same pen. The dairy goat girls will then fight with the sheep for whatever food the bucks left, forgetting this is the same grain and alfalfa that they wouldn't eat eight hours earlier. If the sheep want it, it must be special. And never forget, if you are feeding goats, every day is Black Friday and you are the Wal-Mart greeter.

Self-confidence can take you a lot of places, but some days it just leads to trouble. Although a misfit in a herd of Nubians, Liam has a high opinion of himself, and together with his best friend, Natty, every day is a wonderful adventure for the little prince - except yesterday.

Liam's day started as usual, I stepped out the kitchen door to feed the animals. All was well in little Liam's world until I noted the two Livestock Guardian Dogs, Briar and Jury were not in the barnyard but were instead, in the pasture with the cows.  This diverted my attention and Liam's breakfast. Since I noted this development after I had fed the bucks but before I had fed Liam and the girls, this resulted in a major upset of his morning.

No problem. He would just slither his ample fat belly underneath the gate and share breakfast with two Nubian buck goats in full rut. Yeah, it wasn't his brightest move. Who breaks into a prison of sex offenders?  Liam.

Much to my disgust, and Liam's horror, he was the cutest fluffy white sex toy they'd ever seen. Liam was actually happy to see the two Border Collies I sent in to rescue him. The bucks will be sending him love letters for weeks.

After breakfast the sheep and goats (minus the bucks) were released into the south pasture to graze. Oh joy! His favorite thing!  Because this area is wild and only partially fenced, I accompanied the stock with Border Collies and Livestock Guardian Dogs. This is a daily occurence and comes as no surprise to Liam.

The stock goes out. They graze and browse until their bellies are full. Then everyone comes back to the safety of the barnyard pasture to drink water and chew their cud. This is repeated as needed or time is available during the day. Liam knows the routine. Follow everyone back inside. The gate closes. Go get water and lie in the shade.

Not on this day.

I somehow failed to note that little Liam was dawdling and failed to make it through the gate in a timely fashion. I place all blame for this on Liam and his bus buddy, Natty, who should raise her hand and announce that her buddy was not on the bus before it left the field trip location. But there you have it, Natty and I both dropped the ball - or Liam.

Several hours later when I stepped outside,  Judge, Dayshift Livestock Guardian Dog On Duty, ambled over to me, and reported,

"Hey, there's something over here you need to see."

Sure enough, poor Liam was bouncing up and down the fence like a little fat white basketball. He was quite hot and most relieved to see me. Once inside he scampered to join Natty, his Bus Buddy, in the shade beside the trough. I was happy the dog stayed close enough to keep him from being pinched by the occasional day-ranging coyote that trots through there.

As if being sexually assaulted and abandoned was not enough for one day, the evening brought humans with a curious new syringe gun. The dosing gun looked suspiciously like a bottle. Not really. But close enough for Liam. He watched as sheep were selected for worming and pushed his busy body self right into the action, determined that if the sheep were getting a bottle, he, Liam the One-Horned Wonder, was gonna get a bottle too! To insure the humans were aware that no sneaky bottle stuff was going to get past him, Liam pushed and climbed his way into every sheep mugging, nibbling on clothing and pulling arms. He made such a pest of himself that his eyes were checked too. Since it could go both ways, and Liam was INSISTING on a trying out this fancy new syringe gun bottle thingee, we gave him some wormer.

And that was it. The ultimate betrayal. His bottle. Liam was ready to move to Australia.

Nevermind that he's weaned. Hasn't seen a bottle in months. And is fatter than a white Halloween pumpkin. That did not end his fascination with the syringe gun but it dialed it back a bit.

The sun finally set on Liam's terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. The buck pen has been reinforced to save Liam from himself, and I shall take better care to make sure he is with his Bus Buddy when the gate is closed. The sun is rising on a new day now and Liam is once again, the Napolean Prince of his barnyard kingdom.

(For those of you who have not read the most delightful children's book, Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day  by Judith Viorst, I highly recommend it. The book is a classic and is a must-have for any child's library.)

Sometimes living out here is like driving on a winding country road, where you cruise along, enjoying the scenery, smelling the fresh air through opened windows, just loving life in general, and as you crest the top of a mountain the grand scenic expanse spreads out in front of you, with rolling hills dotted with mesquite trees under a layered blue sky, and rays of  sunlight burst through painted clouds to fan out on the valley below as if touched by the hand of God, and that's when a bird slams into your windshield.

Yeah, that's pretty much what living out here is like. You get to enjoying the rugged beauty, and bam! Suddenly nature is up close and personal like stray feathers floating through opened windows to land in your lap. Let us examine just one of last week's little adventures.

Because I have several large soap orders to fill, I spent the last few weeks furiously making, cutting, drying, packaging, and shipping soap.  Soaping is not the quaint cottage task that one would imagine from reading Hobby Farm magazine where you can see in your mind's eye a woman in homespun dress making soap like making butter in a stoneware butter churn. Soaping is a chemistry experiment, much like making meth, except you're less likely to blow the house up.

Soaping is Hobby Farms meets Breaking Bad. True cold process soap, like Grandma used to make, involves mixing lye with fats and oils. There are as many recipes as there are soapers but they all come down to mixing a variety of fats, and oils with lye which is a very dangerous chemical and should be treated with the greatest of respect - long sleeves, shoes, goggles, mask.

Yes, you can skip the goggles and the mask, and make your soap in shorts and flip-flops instead. You can. I wouldn't advise it, but you can. You can also find yourself backing away from the sink, coughing and gagging when a whiff of vapor blows your way too. And be careful not to spill it as you recoil across the kitchen with a wet spoon. That stuff burns. No children. No pets. No kidding.

But once mixed, the fats and lye join in holy matrimony, kiss and walk down the aisle, and a new union is formed - soap. It is a glorious marriage, where the properties of the individual are no longer separate, but become one. This new something is born completely different from its parts.  The chemical reaction is complete and the result is a wonderfully safe, wholly decadent bar of sudsy indulgence. But until then, it's like making meth in your kitchen.

When you make a lot of soap, it's easy to get complacent, but for the sake of safety, I observe a few rules. I never talk on the phone. I never get involved in the television. And I never stop in the middle of the recipe.

And so I ignored the barking.

Plopped in his recliner, Other Half was Facebooking and watching television, while I was busy trying to finish up Soap Batch #3 of that day. This third batch is where mistakes are most likely to occur because I am tired, it is the third hour on my feet, and I've done the same messy, methodical steps through three hours of daytime television and things are beginning the run together like the same guests on all the morning shows just walking from one studio into another. I continued to ignore the barking outside as I poured liquid soap into flat slab molds.

There is a point in the barking, where it reaches a feverish pitch and moves to the forefront of your attention, kinda like when the optometrist dials and clicks those funny little goggles and the letters of the card in front of you finally come into focus.  Yeah, that's it. That's the spot. Things are clear now. Some serious shit is going on outside.

I set my soap bucket down, walked past the husband in the recliner, picked up a revolver, and stepped outside the kitchen door to stomp off in the direction of the barking. Always the picture of fashion, having exchanged the goggles for the gun, I was wearing yoga pants and cowboy boots. Perhaps that would be why my husband didn't come out with me.

Once outside I marched toward the barking. Somehow poor Briar had managed to get locked in the barn aisle, and so when I opened the gate she shot out of the barn like a loosed arrow, leading me toward the source of Judge's barking. I followed the big white dog through the yard and into the forest. There is a curious point when you are trailing a large dog through the woods in North Texas where you regret your fashion choices. Cowboy boots are not snake boots, and you may as well be naked when wearing yoga pants. While this doesn't seem like a big deal in the air conditioning, when the forest is clawing at your thighs, denim is your friend.

I must say that when I stepped out of the kitchen, I expected that Judge had found a snake. I was prepared to shoot a snake and treat the dog for multiple snake bites. I was not prepared for a hike through cedar and mesquite in a bizarre game of Marco Polo.

I called out "JUDGE!"  (Marco!")

Deep in the forest, he answered, "POLO!"

We continued shouting Marco and Polo at each other for a while until he appeared, panting and exhausted at the base of a cedar tree. I peeked around but saw nothing. He gave me the "Follow Me" look and trotted off into the brush. Lovely. Just blooming lovely. I cursed my fashion decisions again and dove off after him.

And that's when the bird slammed into my windshield.

I expected a snake. Or possibly a raccoon. Or maybe an armadillo. Or a possum even.

What I did not expect to see was a small black feral pig backed up to the base of a cedar tree. Judge informed me that he'd apprehended a trespasser. Since there was a small band of eight piglets in our area, my guess was that they were headed to the pond behind the house when Judge found them and managed to separate this guy from his siblings. Now that he had bayed the pig up, he didn't know what to do with it. That's when Briar burst forward and said,

"You KILL IT!"

And it was on like Donkey Kong.

Right in front of me. Once the decision was made for him, Judge took control, snatched the pig away from Briar, and began shaking it. The piglet weighed somewhere between 25-35 pounds and Judge shook it like a rag. The screams of that piglet echoed through the forest and three thoughts rocked through my head.

#1 - "Awww... poor piggie."
#2 - "Holy shit! That dog is strong."
#3 - "That piglet is calling his momma and I'm standing here in f@#king yoga pants and cowboy boots."

Over the piglet's screams I heard Other Half calling. Apparently he had reached the end of his Facebook scroll feed and was now curious as to where I was, why I needed a gun, and why a pig was squealing.

Just as fast as it started, it was over. Judge stood panting over the dead pig.

Briar stepped forward to sniff it and he informed her that if she didn't get away from his piglet that she would be next.

Alrightie then.

It is a curious fact of life that you can raise a dog from a bumbling puppy to the size of a small Great Dane, and still not fully appreciate their size until you watch them kill a 25 lb pig in front of you. That's when you realize the animal at your feet with the glazed eyes is not a squishy snuggly pup but a predator who demands a whole new level of respect. I called to him,

"Judge???"

He shifted his gaze in my direction and growled.

Okaaaaay.

Forget peace in the Middle East, diplomacy is the art of getting a dog away from something he has just killed. I slowly walked past his pig and called him again. This time the giant dog meekly followed me. Away from the pig, I told him he was a fine dog. He was a brave dog. And piglets come with large, angry, dangerous mothers, and we were wearing yoga pants and cowboy boots and thus  couldn't stay here.

And that's when Briar couldn't resist sneaking a sniff of the dead pig. The squishy Doctor Jekyll at my side mutated into Mr Hyde and roared past me to knock Briar away from his pig with such force that she and I believed he would kill her if she dared to touch it  again. Sigh . . .

The dust settled and I called him away from the pig. Shooting a warning glare at Briar, he reluctantly came and I praised him for that, gave him a pat on the head, and said a prayer that the momma pig was nowhere around as I looked  for the closest tree to climb in case she came bursting through the brush.

The plan was to scream, "He did it!" and climb a tree, hoping to shoot her before she could kill my dogs. I figured Judge had a better shot of getting away from an angry sow because he wasn't wearing yoga pants.

So I stood with the dogs and the dead pig, playing the same Marco Polo game with Other Half, and no enraged mother hog appeared. He drove up in the mule and I was painfully aware of the picture that greeted him, but Friends and neighbors, let me tell you this. Few things get a man's respect more than a woman and a dog standing in the woods over a dead hog. (okay, it was just a pig but it was dead and that impresses men) And nothing quite screams 'crazy' like a woman in yoga pants and cowboy boots, carrying a big-ass revolver loaded with .410 shotgun shells, with a dog the size of a small pony and a dead pig.

He gave us a cautious, quizzical look and I held Judge while he admired the hog. Judge and Briar and I slowly walked back home through the forest while he drove the pig another direction. Since the pig was perfect grilling size, we figured that we may as well enjoy the bounty of Judge's prize and share a little with him, but alas, such was not to be.

What started out as a butchering, turned into a morbidly fascinating necropsy and a new-found respect for the power of a dog. Judge had done so much damage that butchering the piglet for cooking was more trouble than it was worth. It was less than thirty seconds from the time he engaged until the time the piglet was dead. And in that time these are the minimun of injuries the piglet sustained:

Broken neck
Broken back
Rib broken completely off at spine which severed stomach
other broken ribs with punctured lung
abdominal cavity filled with yucky contents we don't want on meat

Was it edible? Yes. Did we want to go to all the trouble? No. Does Other Half have a greater respect for my dog? You betcha. I do too. I still think of him as my squishy bumbling puppy.

But I cannot forget that he has matured into a warrior.

And so that's a slice of life in the country. One minute you're cruising along the highway, happily absorbed in your world of making soap, and the next moment a bird slams into your windshield and you're watching your dog kill a feral hog at your feet.

In yoga pants and cowboy boots.

Me. Not the dog.

Hair once black is now a lovely shade of sophisticated gray. With tiny brown spots. He is the stuff of fantasy and little girl dreams, wild, yet tame, a unicorn moving through the forest.

He is explosive exhuberance and gentle kisses. The unicorn and the clown.

Our love affair began when Montoya was just a baby with a fuzzy butt that barely reached my chest. We spent hours together, grooming and trusting each other. A playful, curious creature, he immediately took to trick training, delighting both me and himself. While his clever mind and quick wit entertains party guests, it also gets him into more than a little trouble.

The red bobber on the bottom of the automatic waterer has been a lifelong source of amusement for him, leading to many flooded pastures. He does not break out of places, he breaks into places. He is Houdini, who can pick any lock, and if he can't pick it, he will club it to death trying, or just climb over it.

Under saddle, he is warm butter beneath you, easily controlled with just a thought. At the same time, he is quicksilver emotion, with dancing, prancing, happy feet, which he must move as excitement bubbles through him like champagne. Some days you want to ride that emotion, to feel free, and see life from the top of a rainbow. Other days you just want to relax and walk and watch the birds.

I don't ride him much anymore. He's so tall, I can barely climb on him without a step up, and many days, I just don't want to deal with all that energy. On the other hand, few horses want to be with you more than this big gray one. Back before I retired, a friend once guilted/browbeat me into riding one morning by saying,

"You NEED to go riding. I'm coming to pick you up. You don't have do anything. Just grab your saddle and a horse and we'll load them in my trailer."

Since I was already physically and emotionally exhausted from the work week, I wasn't in the mood for Montoya's hot energy, thus I selected a calmer horse from our herd that morning. I went out to get the buckskin paint who saw me coming with a halter, shot me the bird, and trotted off. Montoya saw me with the halter and just assumed it was for him. I could not catch the paint because he kept trotting off and Montoya kept getting in the way, insisting that I really should take him. Then and there I made the mental note to sell the damned horse that didn't want my company and to ride the one that wanted to be ridden.

So I took Montoya instead. And we had a lovely day.

I told myself that when I retired I'd have more time to ride him, but I find that I still don't ride much for pleasure, and  when I do ride, Montoya ends up taking a back seat to a young horse that needs to be ridden, or an older horse who is so dependable that he never needs to be ridden. But after this week, that will change.

Montoya is an 1100 pound parrot. And unfortunately it has landed him in a cage.

He is forever sticking his feet into things, either in frustration because he is locked out of some place, or because he feels he has 4wheel drive and he can just motor over things. The result is that his pasterns are crisscrossed with scars.  He has cut his legs so often that we don't even get excited about it anymore.

But this time our soaring eagle has been grounded. The vet was able to stitch it, but he has to wear a cast for a couple of weeks. This horse has never been a good candidate for stall rest. Happy feet. He must move. He wants his windows open and if they swing closed, he sticks his nose out and slams the windows open again. Stall rest in this house is not as bad because we live in the barn, thus the barn is a constant source of activity. This makes his jail cell a bit more bearable and I can just step out the kitchen door to check on him.

Although I hate that he's in pain, it is giving us the chance to be together like we were when he was younger, when time spent was not about riding, but just about enjoying moments together. Slipping back into that bond was like sliding on a favorite jacket when the first cold front of the year blows in. It was warm and familiar. It was right.

He is so happy just to do the Stupid Pet Tricks we played when he was a toddler - bow, hug, give us kiss.

The horse just enjoys spending time with people. I promised him that after his leg healed, we'd start riding again. I have more horses than I can ride, and never seem to reach for him because either a job needs to be done and I don't want to deal with his energy, or a younger horse needs to be ridden, but I'd forgotten how much he really likes it. He believes his saddle is his ticket to adventure. Now that I'm retired, I have the time to punch that ticket, to enjoy life from the top of the rainbow.

After a year into retirement, I finally started that book so many of you have been asking about. This has been good and bad, since on one hand,

"Hey, I finally buckled down and now it's coming together,"

and on the other hand, time spent writing on that has taken me away from the blog, so I thought perhaps I would share some excerpts from time to time. This particular essay was taken from an early part of the book, when I was single and the farm was barely taking shape.

It was a period of heavy rains.  I was ankle deep in mud and my water well had just gone out. God was laughing at me.

Red Wooster

Red Wooster was the meanest sonofabitch in three counties and he should have been killed a lot sooner. With an ego indirectly proportional to his size, Wooster thought he was a ladies' man, and I guess maybe he was handsome if you were okay with skinny legs and beady eyes. Perhaps it was his short stature that led to a fiery temperament which held the entire neighborhood hostage. Regardless, the only reason he was still alive was the fact that my mother was so fond of him.

My mom lives in a little clapboard gingerbread house on a lot that used to be one of my pastures. Our houses shared the same water well at the time, and a portion of the rather large pump house had been converted to a coop for her free-range flock of heritage breed chickens. Although they had plenty of pasture for themselves her birds crossed the field daily to play scratch and sniff with fresh horse poop in my barnyard.

Apparently my name on the deed was too blurry for Wooster's beady little eyes, because he and I had more than a few barn dances with a rake. On this particular morning, however, Wooster was off picking bar fights with someone else while I stood in the pump house staring at the water well man, and tilting my head like a cow looking at a new gate.

Water soaked through a pinhole in the toe of my rubber boots as the water well man explained that I had to take the roof off the pump house before repairs could begin on the well. As he trudged back to his truck and left, I sloshed back to the barn and pondered the puzzle of how to get the sheets of tin off the roof. Wuzband, my ex-husband, had been a pretty accomplished carpenter who tended to plan for emergencies, so it didn't take long to discover that he had screwed the sheets of tin on instead of nailing them. That was a plus because it meant I could just screw them off, but the hitch was that he hadn't left the tools I needed to unscrew the tin. One cannot fault him for this, as in a divorce spouses do tend to overlook the little things like leaving the other person silverware and power tools.

A fruitless search in the barn didn't turn up the doohicky that I need to attach to my drill, but the upside was that it also didn't turn up any rats, so I called it even and went across the street to ask the neighbor. Being a master carpenter, he had the doohickey I needed. With the precious doohickey safely in my pocket, I dragged a ladder through ankle deep mud to the back side of the pump house and started my climb.

If you are a crime scene investigator, you know a thousand ways to die. Nine hundred of these ways will be flirting through your head as you climb any ladder. While falling off the ladder is the most obvious, do not rule out electrocution if you are mixing power tools and water.  This is why I'm a big fan of cordless power tools. The downside to cordless drills is that pesky failing to charge the battery thing.  Nevertheless, in due time, I found myself climbing the ladder with the precious doohickey in my pocket and a drill with enough ass to do the job. I hoped.

With each step up the ladder the water in my boot sloshed from heel to toe, draining across the blister on my heel. Now it is a curious fact of life that height is a relative thing. When one is standing on the ground, the top of a pumphouse doesn't look very high, but when one is perched at the top of a ladder in muddy boots, and one must take a leap of faith off the ladder and onto said roof, well then, suddenly the tin appears to be a much farther distance from the ground than originally estimated.

Being the Master Of My Fate, there was no one around to do it but me, so I sucked it up and made that stretch. Muddy boots are not your friend in this situation. Just sayin'. With copious amounts of stretching, sliding, and cussing, I made it onto the roof. With a bit more stretching, sliding, and cussing, I removed several sheets of tin and dropped them to the ground.

Sunlight flooded the pumphouse. My job was done. Well, not really. I still had to get down.

It is another curious fact of life that stepping from a firm surface of height, back onto a ladder which is shifting in the mud, can rival any thrill ride at an amusement park. Not being a fan of such, I vowed that those sheets of tin could just stay right there on the ground because I was not planning on riding that ladder in either direction again.

With the decision made, I started slogging my way back through the mud to the house. Deep in thought, I stepped into deeper trouble because somewhere between the pumphouse and the backyard fence I landed into some sucking mud and my foot came out of the boot. Par for the course of my morning.

I hurled a cuss word out, stepped back into my boot and tried to jerk my foot loose. This resulted in an awkard sliding split which ended with one booted foot pointing east as the other pointed west. Both were an uncomfortable distance apart and creeping dangerously further. 

And that's when the damned rooster attacked me.

Over my years in law enforcement, I can tell you that most murders can be tracked down to one of three motives - sex, money, or drugs. While most killings come down to this trio, with my feet firmly anchored in the mud as that beady-eyed little shit ran at me with his wings spread and beak open, I will glady offer up to you a fourth motive for murder - pure blind rage. 

 
There is no faster route from pacifist to serial killer than being attacked by a chicken in your own yard. Having neither stick nor dog, I reached into the mud, snatched out that boot, and smashed the little bastard in the face as he bore down on me in a feathered fury. Nothing says worthy adversary like being smacked in the face with a muddy boot. Wooster shook his feathers, squinted at me in rage and made another rush. I swung. And missed.

But it was enough to get some respect from Wooster as he landed and ran a few steps before whirling back to have another go at me. I glanced around for any semblance of a weapon and saw a pile of metal t-posts beside the fence. Brandishing my boot low, I started backing through the mud in that direction as the rooster darted in and out with feinting attacks.

Happiness can be a lot of things, friends, but few things in life bring true satisfaction like the feel of a cold steel post in your hands when you've got a nasty rooster.  Wooster felt the power shift as soon as I did. No longer backing up in a crouch, I stood straight like Babe Ruth and let that Louisville Slugger sing.

Wooster saw that first one coming down the pipes when I made the mistake of telegraphing my intentions. Perhaps it was me shouting,

"I'm gonna kill you, you stupid f@#*ing bird!"

He tripped over himself as he ran and flew with fits of flight, dodging the blows I rained down upon him as my rage chased a chicken in bare feet through a muddy pasture. 
 

My anger did not care that he was my mother's bird. I would glady have beaten him to death with a t-post and then handed her his body and a muddy $20 bill. Such is the nature of homicide.

Fortunately for Wooster, his date with death would wait for another day. Handicapped by the mud, my murder attempts were largely unproductive but the message was received. Wooster squawked and taunted me from a safe distance but gave up his attempts at an attack as I squished my way back to the house, dragging my t-post sword at my side. 

Yes, I was the master of my fate, the captain of my soul, but the captain was tired, and now she had to get cleaned up and go to work.

What is zero percent prey drive, and do you really want it?

A recent discussion among Livestock Guardian Dog people has been the idea of producing a dog with "zero percent" prey drive, the argument being that a dog with no prey drive is more trustworthy with poultry and small livestock. Hand in hand with this idea was the argument that saying 'puppies need to be supervised with livestock' is just a cop-out and an excuse that breeders make for a less-than-desirable pup. Their rationale is that if the dog has the correct breeding he will just do it from the beginning. No training needed.

Seriously? After all these years, are we still going there?

This is why so many Livestock Guardian Dog breeds end up dumped at the pound. This is why rescue organizations are often too afraid to adopt LGD breeds out to farm homes. This worn-out argument is like a booger on the end of our finger that we just can't fling off!

Turning a puppy of any breed loose with pen of chickens is like giving a teenage boy the keys to your classic corvette. He might go the grocery store and come home with groceries and your change, or he might just wrap that car around a telephone pole. Genes aren't enough. I guarantee you that Mario Andretti did not hand the keys of his race car to his ten year old son and send him out on the track alone. Education and supervision is paramount.

Let's address the two parts of the argument for the Zero Percent Prey Drive camp, and in order to do that, we must first explain what is prey drive. When your dog stalks, chases, pounces, shakes a toy, rips it apart, carries it around, buries it, or eats it, that is prey drive. These are the behaviors associated with catching and killing prey.

Prey drive is most often brought out by motion, and because lambs bounce, and chickens flap and run, for this reason, proponents of the Zero Prey Drive Camp, believe that if a dog has no prey drive, then it will not chase and kill the very animals it is supposed to protect. Horse Hockey.

I would argue the opposite. I want a hearty prey drive in my Livestock Guardian Dogs. I expect my dog to see the raccoon and the coyote and I want them to chase it and kill it.  Dogs kill predators when in prey drive. A predator is prey to an LGD. A Livestock Guardian Dog that does not chase and kill things is merely a poster of a guard dog. If you have success with a large white lump that lies in the barnyard and occasionally raises its head to bark, that tells me there are not real predatory threats on your farm. That LGD is a poster that smells like a dog.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not trashing these dogs. This is the perfect job for old dogs, lame dogs, and dogs with low drive. What I'm saying is that this behavior should not be held up as the gold standard by which we judge Livestock Guardian Dogs because not only is it unreasonable, it has sent countless dogs on a date with a euthanasia needle. Not only that, you are fooling yourself if you think that dog is capable of addressing serious threats around the ranch. That dog may do fine in an area with a low predator load, but other places will need less Mr Rogers and more Seal Team Six.

And people, Seal Team Six is about prey drive.

Let me give you a watered down example. Consider the raccoons that have recently been visiting my barnyard. Since Other Half started feeding cattle against the yard fence, at least three raccoons began to come in regularly when he called the cows. The Border Collies were so focused on the cows that they failed to even notice and address the raccoons wandering out in plain sight just across the fence. While Other Half found this boldness cute, I have chickens, so I was less than smitten with our masked visitors.  The raccoons had no fear whatsoever of us, and thought nothing of waddling out to pick up a cattle cube while we stood right beside the fence. Because the Border Collies did not address their impertinence, they soon lost all caution around the dogs who remained focused on the cattle.

This came to a screeching halt however the night I let the Anatolians in the yard. The LGDs immediately acquired target and addressed the issue. The raccoon was sent scurrying into the forest. One dog then hopped into the bed of a pickup truck so that he could get a better vantange point while the other stood tall by the fence like a sentry, scanning the treeline. These dogs did not think to themselves,

"Wow, raccoons kill chickens so we should chase the raccoon away to protect our chickens."

No. More likely they thought to themselves,

"Wow, squishy, furry thing that moves. I wonder if it tastes like chicken!"

They spent the better part of an hour waiting for the raccoon to make another appearance, hoping raccoon tasted like chicken. And guess what? The same raccoons that have visited every evening for three weeks, have not been back. Why? Because raccoon was just scribbled on the menu as today's special. And tomorrow's. And the next day's.

Friends and neighbors, that is prey drive.

For the sake of argument, let us propose that perhaps chasing coyotes and loose dogs is not prey drive, but is territorial behavior instead. This also shoots the Zero Percent Prey Drive argument in the foot because dogs high in a territorial drive also tend to be high in prey drive. It's not an all or nothing behavior. Because of this, my argument is not that you want a Livestock Guardian Dog with low prey drive, but rather, you want a Livestock Guardian Dog with high PACK drive.

Yes, pack drive. When you see dogs licking and grooming sheep, that's pack behavior. Dogs are pack animals. They recognize family units. Livestock Guardian Dog breeds tend to be very open-minded about forming bonds within the family unit. Your job is to TEACH your LGD what animals are part of his family. This is why education is so important. They aren't born knowing they're supposed to protect chickens or goats, or sheep. They are born with a strong sense of family. They LEARN that chickens, goats, and sheep are part of their family.

Will a young dog still wrap the family car around a telephone pole and kill a chicken? Yes, it can happen. And if it does you don't say the dog is from bad breeding, dump this one at the pound and buy another one.  You use it as a learning experience for the dog and YOU. If the dog killed a chicken, he wasn't ready for Prime Time yet. He needs more training. That doesn't mean that next year he won't be the best darned Bird Dawg you'll ever have, but you'll never know if you don't take the time to train him.

If you aren't ready to invest a couple of years into training a Livestock Guardian Dog properly, then you might be better off installing a lot of electric fencing instead of getting a dog. It will take you two years to train a dog that can work for ten more years. That's two years of close supervision. That's two years of worrying about whether or not he climbed over or under the fence. That's two years of wondering if the lambs are too little to be alone with the dog yet. That's two years of not letting him alone with birthing mothers. If your dog is flying solo with birds or lambs before that time, don't freak when mistakes happen. From time to time, they can, and do. You don't send your kid to prison when he wrecks your car. A dog is an investment. Invest the time to train him. It's well worth it.

Gomer Pyle Saved My Life. Well, really it was my mom, but Gomer Pyle was definitely there. I was probably 10 or 11 years old at the time, living in deep rural North Carolina. Our property backed up adjacent to a big timber company's forest and they were logging that year, pushing dinosaurs into close encounters with children who ran with dirty feet through well worn dusty paths in those woods.

Our heads were filled with whatever adventure we'd seen on Sunday night television, be it Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom, or the Wonderful World of Disney. We spent our daylight hours exploring the forest and letting our imaginations run wild with a heavy dose of Disney. These adventures came to a screeching halt, however, at 4 o'clock every weekday afternoon, when 3 kids and a pitbull dog piled into the house for our daily dose of Gomer Pyle, Gilligan's Island, and the Wild, Wild West.

Sprawling on the floor underneath the window unit air conditioner, we filled up on the familiar comfort of favorite television. That particular day was like all the rest except for one thing - my mother was taking advantage of the knowledge that for the next two hours the kids would be cemented to the living room floor. She was in the bathroom. By herself. Something you can't do often if you have three small children. This put her in just the right spot to see it when she looked out the window. A giant root was moving across the yard.

Yes, that's how she described it. A root. Okay, maybe it could have been a tree branch. Nevertheless, it had her attention.  Fixated on the image, she strained to see through the screen and to her horror she realized the root was actually a rattlesnake that was longer than a shovel. And it was crawling underneath our swingset, the very place her three children and one trusty pitbull dog would have been had we not been glued to the television. (Well, I think the pitbull was really more about the air conditioning than Gomer Pyle.)

So thus began a historic event for my family, one that has been told, and retold many times. I recall it vividly because it was the first time in my young life that I experienced real fear. As country kids, we were well versed about snakes. I was familiar with rattlesnakes, and had heard of copperheads, but never seen one. (I think I've seen my quota now though!) Mostly we just had non-poisonous hog-nosed snakes, and the occasional rattlesnake, but this dinosaur heralded what could be called the Summer Of The Giant Rattlesnakes From Hell.

I learned a great deal that summer, but none stuck in my head as strongly as watching the following events unfold. The first thing my mother did was make sure all children and the dog were still inside. Check. She then picked up the phone and attempted to call every man in the neighborhood to come kill this monster. They were all still at work, but my aunt wanted to come see it when mom finally got it killed. (Younger Self Observation: My mom is made of stronger cloth than my aunt. Frankly if my sister-in-law called to say she had a giant freaking snake in the yard, I'd come across the street to help.)

Since she had three small children, none of which may survive a bite from a snake that size, my mom did what any mother would do - she armed herself for battle. She found one of my stepfather's pistols, and she stood on the porch and attempted to shoot the giant snake as he moved through the yard. One by one the shots rang out. One by one they missed their mark. (Younger Self Observation: Learn how to shoot a gun properly.)  In her defense, it was a long shot and the snake was moving. Once out of bullets, she was left with a novelty paperweight in her hand, three fascinated children behind her, and one dog hiding in the living room.

So there was only one thing she could do - get out there with a shovel and kill that bastard the same way she killed all other poisonous snakes, chop off his head. This was easier said than done considering that he was longer than the shovel she was using. We stood on the porch and watched in utter fascination. Warrior Mom definitely trumped Gomer Pyle for our attention. I wasn't really afraid. After all, this was Mom, she could do anything. (except for shoot a gun, she clearly needed remedial marksmanship training in that.)

In this year of Summer Olympics, I just want to point out that my mother should have been on the US Track & Field Shot Putting Team, because the next thing she attempted to do was fling a cinder block onto his head to pin it down. Now first, let us all be amazed that my mother could fling a cinder block with any kind of distance and accuracy. A moment of silent reverence, please. Okay. Guess now what happens when a full sized cinder block lands on top of a full sized rattlesnake.

It bounces like a freaking rubber ball. And it pisses off the snake. Yeah. She definitely had his attention. From the snake's point of view, this was a clear-cut case of assault.  There he was, minding his own snakey business, when someone shot at him and then tossed a cinder block on his head. He was having a bad day. It was enough to make him want to crawl into the air conditioning and watch Gomer Pyle.

Since clearly the gun and the cinder block didn't work,  it was back to the shovel. Mom crept up on the snake. The snake waited. She chopped at his head. He sprang back and struck. And hit the shovel.

The sound of his fangs hitting that shovel rang across the yard and deep into my heart. For the first time it occurred to me that this was for keeps. This wasn't a game for our afternoon entertainment. It was Mom or the snake. And for the first time I felt real fear. We'd had it drilled into us. Do not get bitten by a rattlesnake. You will die before we can reach a hospital. This snake was bigger than anything I'd ever seen before. I knew that a snake could strike over twice the length of his body. He was longer than the shovel Mom was trying to kill him with. I could see she was woefully under-armed.

All I saw was a woman with an empty gun and a shovel. What I couldn't see was the weapon of courage that comes from a mother defending her children from a monster. And by the time Gilligan's Island was coming on, Mom had chopped his head off and we were celebrating like castasways who see a boat.

We were very proud of her. I mean, really, what other woman in the neighborhood could claim such an accomplishment? Take a few bows, Mom! So when my stepfather returned home that evening we bounced out to the truck to share the good news. He burst the bubble a tiny bit because in the bed of his truck was a rattlesnake longer than Mom's snake. Holy shit!  (I did not know that term yet, but I'm sure it would have been the perfect response. It might have gotten me popped in the mouth but it definitely would have applied to that situation. Just sayin.')

So after much oohing and ahhing on both sides, my stepfather hoisted Mom's snake into the back of his truck so he could cart both snakes off 'into the country'. In hindsight, considering that we lived in the middle of bumf*@# Egypt anyway, carting the snakes further into the country' seemed overkill. I suppose he just wanted to toss the still very deadly bodies into a place where kids and dogs wouldn't end up playing. Therefor, he drove them down a dirt road to a place called, ironically, Eygpt. During this trip he reportedly ran across yet another giant rattlesnake and a copperhead. Not having a gun with him, he resorted to running the snake over with the pickup and beating him to death with jumper cables.

Yes folks, these are the people who raised me. So while fourteen copperheads in one summer is disconcerting and annoying as hell,  it doesn't really measure on the yardstick of Bad-Ass Snake Adventures in my family.

When we retired, we traded traffic congestion in the 4th largest city in the country to the more rural traffic problems of living in a place with a mile long driveway. No longer are we waiting in frustration while rubberneckers view the latest accident. Now we're waiting for roadrunners to finish taking a dust bath in the dirt. No longer are we passing Cindy's Secret Sex Toy shop, now we have to hide the eyes of the underaged Border Collie while roadrunners have sex on a dirt road as you wait to pass.

Nothing around here gets in a hurry to do anything but eat. Stop and smell the roses takes on a whole new meaning in the country. And if you're a raccoon, it could mean "stop and smell the garbage." Our garbage can is about a mile away, near the main gate. One night we were coming in after dark and I started to step out and open the gate but saw a rather hefty raccoon poking around by the trashcan. I decided that perhaps now wouldn't be a good time to exit the vehicle, so we watched. And waited. And he didn't leave. He was well aware of the truck, not thirty feet from his little black nose, but there he shuffled around in the headlights, unconcerned.

I was in a hurry. I had to pee. He was not in a hurry. He was on Raccoon Time. So I waited some more. And he poked around some more. Eventually my bladder won. Wars could be fought by angry women who have to pee. I got fighting mad. No raccoon was gonna stand between me and my bathroom. I stepped out of the truck and hollered,

"Hey! I see you!!!"

He stood up. "Who? Me?"

"YES, YOU! Leave! Scram!"

If a raccoon can look affronted, he did, but he ambled his fat ass off into the forest anyway, muttering something about calling his Homeowner's Association on me.

 
We are almost guaranteed at least 4 bunnies between the house and the main gravel road out of here. Most of the time, we are the only vehicle they ever see, thus they have little or no fear of us, so we have to wait while they eat gravel, play in the dust, flirt with each other, or just sit in the open waiting for a lucky hawk to fly by. And they don't move.

Each trip to town goes something like this:

Slow down for rabbit in the road. Yell at rabbit to move.
 
"You can't see me. I'm invisible."

"No, you aren't! Get out of the bloody road!"

"I'm invisible."

"No, seriously! Move, you dopey rabbit."

(Honk horn)

"I'm invisible."

(Climb out of truck. Stand on running board and wave arms.)

"I SEE you! Get out of the road!!!"

"Wait? You see me? Seriously?"

"Yes!!! Move!!!"

"Oh crap! This way! No, that way! No, that path is better! Wait! I ran that way this morning. This way!"

(Rabbit is almost off the road, but - )

"No, that direction is better!"

(Rabbit runs all the way across road in opposite direction and stops. Still in the road.)

"Can you see me now?"

Honk horn again.

"Move, you stupid rabbit!"

"OKAY! Geeeeesh... Okay, see you tomorrow, okay? Yeah, but you won't see me because I'll be invisible."

Before we begin, you should listen to the Steve Earle song, "Copperhead Road" and get that earworm tune in the back of your head as we proceed with today's post.

https://youtu.be/xvaEJzoaYZk

You don't need to listen to a whole song about bootleggers, I just figured I'd put the tune in your head as your read because that's what's playing in my head every evening as my eyes follow the beam of the flashlight while I hunt for the little red bastards. Copperheads, not bootleggers. It's a nightly ritual now. We have killed at least 14 copperheads since I started counting at the start of summer.

I know. How horrible of me to kill God's innocent creatures. They're just part of the food chain, doing good on this earth by eating rodents. Without snakes the rodents and bugs would take over. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you have 14 copperheads crawling around your back door and your snake huggin' tendencies will wobble a little too. Hey! I'm a 'live and let live' person, but do not lurk by my doorstep! I have 9 freakin' dogs, 5 cats, and about 30 or so sheep and goats IN THE BARN with me, there is no damned room for snakes in here!

Let me give you just a short excerpt from my summer. Let's slice out this week.

Wednesday:

I try to get all the chores done before dark, leaving me time around 9 pm to potty break the house dogs and get them inside before the copperheads roll out of the forest like zombies lumbering across the yard. On this night, I had the dogs inside and was doing a final roll call for the 3 kittens who still come inside at night. The two adult cats are on their own. One kitten comes inside, but another lingers outside the kitchen door near the picnic tables with one of the adult cats. The adult cat insists on my attention. Noting her empty food bowl on the ground, I stride in that direction. Gray kitten starts to come to the door but turns back and looks toward the picnic table. This should have been a clue.

I chose to ignore said clue and continue toward the empty food bowl. Right into a copperhead.

Apparently he saw me before I saw him and he was beating a hasty retreat so by the time I got the gun out that rascal was at least 20 feet away. Nevertheless, I made sure my cats were clear and started shooting.

Now the funny thing about shooting snakes is that they are easy to hit when they're sitting still, but even a .410 shotgun shell has a hard time hitting a fleeing snake doing a serpentine at that distance. My first shot missed. I was running to gain ground for a better shot when I saw the second copperhead. Yes, the second copperhead.

Funny thing though, I didn't see the cats any more.

So I shot at the second snake who was racing in the opposite direction of the first snake at warp speed. I'm still not sure where the cats beamed to but they were G-O-N-E, gone. I was then left to shoot at two fleeing suspects going two different directions in hopes of at least slowing them down enough that I could get closer.  Until - click.

Nothing. I'd shot all my .410 shells. The gun was empty. It may as well have been a paperweight. So there I was standing in the dark with an empty gun, a waning flashlight, two scared copperheads, two missing cats, and an empty catfood bowl.  Fortunately Other Half was in the barn and the sound of gunfire alerted him that perhaps there might be a problem on the north side of the house. I screamed at him to bring me another gun. Now that, Friends and Neighbors, is something he can do. Screw gun control folks, when you have 14 effin' copperheads you want guns handy where you can grab them at a moment's notice. So he trotted out with my trusty Henry lever action .22 rifle. If you can only have one gun, this is it.

Other Half and I are a pretty good snake hunting team and we soon dispatched Copperheads #10 & #11. As I've said before. Other couples have bonding experiences over Date Night. Around our house we have Snake Night.

Yes, the one on the left is a very large copperhead.

That was Wednesday night. Thursday night we were returning home late. Most of the chores had already been done  before we left, so the only thing I had to do was close the door on the chicken coop and potty break the dogs before bed. We rolled into the yard. Other Half cut the truck engine off and I opened the door and stepped onto the running board to scan the yard with a flashlight.

He ridiculed me for my caution. Being the person holding the gun AND the flashlight, I had all the cards, so I just ignored him. The beam of my light found a copperhead not 12 feet away. After a few cuss words, I shouted at him,

"I WANNA HEAR THE WORDS! NOW! I wanna hear the words!"

"Okay, you were right."

Music to the ears of any woman.

So I shot Copperhead #12 and continued my slow progress to the chicken coop. At the gate of the chicken yard I found another copperhead. Other Half shot Copperhead #13.

We did then did another sweep to clear the yard before we gave the dogs a potty break.

Little known fact: 3 Livestock Guardian Dogs and 1 Border Collie can squeeze themselves together into a small room and not make a sound. Just sayin'.

Fast forward to last night:

Other Half was gone and so I was left to batten down the hatches for nightfall by myself. This practically guarantees a close encounter with a reptile. I got all my chores done and was making my last trip into the barn before I went inside for the night when I glanced at the water spigot, expecting to see my giant toad, Jabba the Hutt, but saw a copperhead instead.

I threw out an F bomb. He ran behind a trash can. I ran for a shovel. He ran along the base of the barn. Like a bull in a china shop, I knocked tools over while madly grabbing with my snake catcher pole. He made it underneath a planter where we both stopped to catch our breath. The only thing more creepy than the copperhead you can see is the copperhead you cannot see, so I climbed on top of the log splitter to both give me the advantage of height, and because I'm a weenie and don't like an unseen copperhead around my ankles. I then began to dismantle the planter in my quest for blood. At this point I began to question my sanity. Who does this shit alone in the dark? I was trying to juggle a flashlight, a gun, a shovel, and a snake catcher pole. I definitely needed the other half of my snake catching team.

Those headlights coming down the driveway were a welcome sight. I think Other Half was just happy that I had not shot up the side of the barn in my solo hunt for the copperhead.  Yes, it would have been easier but there are holes in the other side of the barn already where Other Half shot it up. Sometimes we get lost in the moment.

So Copperhead #14 joined the ranks of his brothers, flung on the other side of the fence for the raccoons.

We have killed more copperheads this summer already than we killed all of last year. This has been a bad year for copperheads. I blame the unusually wet spring, and two mean-ass Border Collies.

Border Collies???

Yes... Border Collies. In particular, these murderous bastards.

I've been told that armadillos eat copperheads. While I'm sure that's not the bulk of their diet, ANYTHING that eats snakes is welcome around here, so I was happy when armadillos moved underneath the cabin. We had a few close encounters where we had to rescue armadillos from Border Collies

but overall it was working. We saw the occasional copperhead but mostly we saw where the armadillos had tilled up the yard at night. It was a trade I could live with.

All was well until the Border Collies and Briar killed the armadillos. Yes, two in one night. I was livid. And guess what?

The close encounters with copperheads began a steady climb.

April 27: copperhead by barn door
May 7: copperhead in sheep pen
June 7: copperhead by kitchen door
June 12: copperhead on road
June 24: copperhead by back gate

June 27: Trace and Cowboy kill 2 armadillos

June 29: copperhead by chicken pen
July 2: copperhead by bedroom window
July 5: copperhead inside barn aisle !!! WTF!!!
July 6: copperhead by bedroow window
July 20: 2 copperheads outside kitchen door
July 21: 2 copperheads outside chicken pen
July 22: copperhead by bedroom window

Do I have absolute proof the death of two armadillos is directly related to our spike in copperhead sightings? No, I don't.Will I allow anyone to ever shoot an armadillo out here? No, I won't. From now on those little buggers get safe passage wherever they want to go. Godspeed, Little Armored Buddy.

And the copperheads?

Well I'm hoping that we thin out the bold ones, leaving only the shy ones that don't come up to the barn alive to reproduce. Hopefully over the years we'll end up with a population of copperheads that stay in the forest. I don't want to eradicate all of them. That would leave the niche open for rattlesnakes and trust me, I'd rather have the copperheads. They aren't as quick to bite. If they were, the dogs and livestock would already have been bitten. Because of that I'm not actively hunting copperheads down in the forest, but if I happen see one, especially around my house, I'm like a chicken chasing a bug, except that this chick carries a gun - and a shovel.