Okay, so the news form here. The garden is in, the animals a well and healthy, the dogs are very lazy, the pigs are even lazier, the weather is too hot, the baby goats are all sold (except the two that we are keeping), I am tired of summer already, and Colin cut his finger today and had to get three stitches in it.
One of the less mundane, more exciting events (those that do not occur on a regular basis) is this:
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A couple of days ago Lizzy was over here to help me with some gardening (and watch a funny movie) and we found a large, gray snake in the yard by the milking shed. She watched the snake while I went for the gun. The 22 was handy, having just been used in defense against some bad birdies that needed to go bye-bye, so I grabbed it. Unfortunately it was jambed, and while I struggled to fix it (Liz hurrying me along), the snake disappeared into the (very) tall grass of the goat pen. At first I was not too bothered. It was a bull snake, not dangerous, and it had headed for the woods. Then I started to remember more about it, thinking about how small the head had looked compared to the body. I told Liz that I though it was full of eggs, and that I was glad it was gone because I did NOT want it to lay them under my stacks of hay in the barn (mentally picturing myself walking in one morning to do the milking and seeing snakes everywhere). Alas! I spoke too soon. Later that evening, Colin and I were down by the pig pen talking, as we headed back up, I wasn't paying much attention to where I stepped. I had just passed the exact spot where the snake had been earlier when Colin says, "oh look, there's the snake again". You can imagine my reaction. Standing on top of a pile of 2x4's I asked him what I could do to help him kill it. We got the gun and shot it (okay, HE shot it and I stood in the 2x4's), but the snake was not about to give up. It disappeared again, and we knew that it was in the milking shed. After examining the blood trail, we discovered it (you will never guess), under the pallets that hold the hay. I won't go into the gory details, but I will say that it was very determined to make it all the way under, and we were very determined not to let it. We won. Half an hour later, it was finished of for good, and the multiple eggs that it was carrying were finished too. After thinking about it for a while, Colin decided that it must have been in the barn for several days, because the cats had refused to sleep in there, and would not even come in at milking time to lick up the extra milk. This did not contribute a good feeling to my already disturbed mind. What did help was seeing the corpse thrown over a cliff, and knowing that snakes do not run (or would it be slither) in pairs. Now the cats are back in the barn, and I am carefully checking the floor over before I enter!
Well, time moves on, and so must I. Check back when you get a chance, my life may slow down a bit and I'll try to get some pictures up.
God Bless,
R.
*No, I did not pause in my snake killing to take a picture. This is just one that I got online, that looks like the one we killed.
