Sunday, January 8, 2006

If My Head was Not Screwed to My Neck ...



Have you ever gotten out to a farm and realized you were short a piece of gear? That's what happened wth me when I got out to the first farm to pull the raccoon that I found in denning in the feed bunker last weekend -- I had forgotten to put my pole snare back on my pack after washing it off. Damn. My only hope of moving that raccoon is to snare it as it exits a crack in the side wall.

A bit frustrated, I hit my next farm which has more hedge. We were only about 200 yards down the first hedge when we found a dead fox. It had been shot my a deer hunter. What a waste. I had seen another fox run over near the entrance to another farm I hunt. This is all very bad, as our fox season is short and there's not much time for more fox to find this empty territory.

I crossed a creek and Sailor followed, but Mountain stayed on the othe side and did not cross. I finally put down my pack and tools and crossed back over the creek to locate her. Sure enough, I found her working a hole. I pulled her to see what was inside and sure enough it was red with what looked like a bit of white on the tail.

Yahoo! It was just at that point that my "fox" turned around a bit and I saw what it really was -- a large orange feral cat!

I pulled Mountain off and let it bolt out. It promptly ran about 20 feet and then shot up a tree!

I carried Mountain back across the stream, and looked back just in time to see the cat fall out of the tree she had climbed. So that's how they get down!

We found a possum farther up the top hedgerow, and I dug a short muddy hole down to the dog. The possum was slightly injured, and I terminated it.

My camera ran out of batteries after two shots of the wet possuum, and when I got back to the car I realized I had forgotten my wallet as well as my snare pole. Lucky for me I had plenty of gas and could actually get home, which I decided to do before something else went wrong.

My mother used to say I would forget my head if it was not attached to my neck, so I don't think this is early-stage alzheimer's.

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