The Nine-Point Buck

After another unsuccessful stakeout last night, Phil realized this morning that although he still counts 27 chicks, there are so many feathers scattered around their pen, he can't tell if the predator is actually killing. So he moved the chicks to a new pen, and mowed all around it. If there are scattered feathers there, he'll be ready.

These nights spent in the back of the truck, listening to economics lectures and audio books, cannot be very fun. I'm hoping third time's the charm.

After chickens, Phil moved the cows. Well, first he mowed around various sections of the lower pasture. As he was gathering up the electric netting, he came across an unexpected sight: a nine-point buck, caught by the horns, trapped in the plastic threads of the net.

Phil said that for the next half hour or hour, he gradually loosened the buck, touching his horns, his head, and the buck simply lay there, letting him. It touches me, to think of it: the wild animal, helpless; my patient husband, carefully figuring out how to loosen him, strand by strand. (I know how I would have reacted: tears, frustration, panic, desperation. How fortunate for the buck that it was Phil who found him.)

For today, I am happy for that little moment with the buck. There are hunters on every side, so I doubt we will see him again, living.

The cows are in their very temporary paddock, grazing the finger (though they are blocked out of the moon bed, the apple nursery, and the asparagus patch). We all love to have them so close. They are round and red, with happy lines to show they have good minerals. Clover has such a distinctive face, and his forelock is beginning to curl (a sign of good testosterone). When Snowman came to us, his forelock was straight (perhaps not adequately mineralized for some time before he came). It had continued straight for many months, but I noticed today that it is wavy again.

Little Dorothy found the pit where Phil burned the vine, and he viewed it as a jungle gym. While we ate dinner, we laughed and laughed because she would zip down in and back out the other side. Or she'd just vanish into it for a while before jumping out to greet her Mom.

Clover and Charlemagne were doing a little head butting. Not cruelly, just playfully. Various cows would lie down, which is such a peaceful picture of contentedness.

We had a few sprinkles today, right as Phil would be heading out to work on the building. I don't think he was too disappointed not to be able to get more done. He tweaked his wrist, and between lack of sleep and aching muscles (not to mention the stress of hoisting a 200 pound roll of insulation onto a slanted roof over 13' in the air all by himself), sprinkles that forced him to answer emails and spend time with the boys was not the end of the world.

I had mentioned sometime this morning that we were going to do schoolwork soon. I wasn't surprised, then, to find that Jadon had vanished. He wasn't in the RV, so I was fairly certain he had headed up to the metal building. I wasn't highly motivated at that moment to do schoolwork, so I let him be.

Late in the afternoon, Phil called to me from the metal building. "Did you know that Jadon is in here? Did you know that he has not only a pile of books, but his rain coat? And that he dragged a chair up here? And has a bottle of kombucha? He looks like he could camp out here for several days!"

That's Jadon, summed up. Reading his various books for fun and education, working on his math problems, hiding out (as a joke ... mostly) to avoid schoolwork. If I'd called him, he would have come immediately, but as long as I didn't call him, he's content to not rock the boat.