A Nice Day on the Creek

No pictures this time, as I gave my ancient digital camera (an eBay cheapo) to my son for his Utah rafting trip. If it dies, it had a good life.

My idea was that I would get a new camera, but I haven't done that yet as I had to order a new computer this weekened as this piece of ... Microsoft ... is about to die. On the upside, I managed to keep Windows ME (that used to stand for "Millenium" back when everything was being named after The Millennium). The new machine should arrive at the end of the week with Microsoft "Vista" on it, and I am sure it will be a total disaster. In the meantime, I am using dial up. Welcome to the 20th Century.

The good new is that out in the field I use the kind of medievel equipment that Jacques de Fouilloux would recognize, and I know how to maintain it.

The first groundhog of the day was almost a "gimme," as there had been two young ones in this sette last weekend, and Mountain nailed one while the other bolted. This time Mountain entered the same eye as before, and Pearl grabbed the remaining little bolter as it exited.

The rest of the day was nice, with another small one accounted for along a fenceline sette, and a larger hog bolted out to ... well, my posthole diggers.

That one was a little odd.

The groundhog bolted, I yelled, Pearl ran ahead of it, and then the groundhog froze on the other side of the fence, right in front of me, not moving a muscle and trying to blend in to the dirt pile. Pearl did not seem to see it, and was nosing around about 15 feet ahead. Mountain was still in the ground.

Thinking quick, I reached over the fence with the posthole digger, and clam-shelled the little bugger up over the fence like it was a piece of Dim Sum caught in giant pair of chopsticks. A quick tap, and it was all over.

The dogs located a fourth groundhog, and it whistled quite a lot underground and then it disappeared. Seriously -- presto, change-o, gone. My guess is that it bolted from an unseen hole, but with groundhogs you never really know; it could have dug away in the soft earth. No problem; we'll be back soon enough.

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