A stinky mess

It took 2 days to have the trap in the correct setting, but this morning the evidence was in the trap. The best way to move the critter is to cover the trap before you try to move it to avoid the stinky spray. I picked up an old sheet with a garden hoe and attempted to put it over the trap. The critter sprayed the sheet and when I tried to get the trap completely covered, my right glove got a good coat of the perfume.

For those of you who might think that trapping the skunk and then disposing of it is cruel, you have never smelled one this close and more importantly, Stillwater County is one of 5 counties in the State of Montana that is quarantined for rabid skunks. Therefore, to protect the our livestock as well as our neighbors, we had to disposed of the critter. These are the 2 pictures that I promised when I set the trap.

A hunting we will go . . . . .

after Marty assures me that Ruthie and Martha, our cats, are in the barn, I plan to set the bait for a skunk which the dogs found under the floor in the hay. The hole in the first picture is where I believe the skunk enters its home. The dogs were digging in the hay 2 days ago and just missed getting sprayed, that's how we knew what was hiding there.

The next picture is the live trap with a Clint trick to improve the odds of catching the critter. The bait is cat food which when opened should entice the skunk to enter the cage for dinner and it is wired to the floor of the trap to be sure the skunk must work to get all of the food out of the can, this hopefully assures us that the latch for the door will be tripped by the greedy skunk. . If this venture is successful, the next picture you will see is the skunk in the trap.

Have you ever counted deer with Marty & Clint?

If you have been visiting Montana, you soon discover that there are a lot of deer. Someone asks, how many are there? One answer is that for every person in Montana, there are at least 4 deer. So we're returning to the Circle B Bar T Ranch from a hike or dinner or a parade when we start a competition as to which side of the car are there the most deer. The counting starts and the winner isn't declared until we get fairly close to the driveway. The most deer every counted, both sides of the car, from Fishtail to our mail box is around 100.

I took this picture on our way home from the branding. I counted 33 deer. This does not include the males, as they are not with the ladies at this time of the year.

BE SURE TO DUBBLE CLICK ON THE PICTURE

It was a day of branding

In the two prior blogs you saw that the ranchers had arrived with their pickup trucks and trailers along with some horses. They would round up the cattle and calves first at the Donohoes and then the Redmans, close to 300 cows and 300 calves in total. The cowboys would separate the cows from the calves, and then the ropers would lasso a calf, remove it from the holding pen, and other cowboys and cowgirls would hold the calves while they were branded, the young bull calves were casterated, and they all got an immunization shot. They calves would then rejoin their mothers. At the conclusion of the branding at the Redmans, everyone was invited to enjoy dinner of beef. There was a beer and soda truck available from the start to the finish. Bud Lite was the beer of choice.

Pictured below is the brands being heated, the actual branding of one of the calves, a mother cow watching her calf being branded, the look on her face says, "what are you doing to my calf" while one of the workers heads for another calf to immunize it, and finally this bucket will find its way to the Cowboy Bar and Supper Club for the annual Testicle Festival which is held at the end of the branding season.

Here's another hint, if you haven't figured it out

What are these cowboys and cowgirls doing?

It looks like some of the mother cows are outside the fence and some of the calves are on the inside

and maybe some of these people found a job.

What was happening?

Unless you spoke this past week with Marty or I, you will have to guess where we were and what we were doing. This blog does not tell the entire story, it's just the begining.















This is a hint, we weren't fighting fires even
though this is where the fire started 3 yrs ago
You say, there's no snow, it it spring, there's
cows and calves, got an idea yet.














You've seen the cowboys, is this some kind of
seminar, or maybe a rodeo.


you think you got it, a cattle roping contest.

The snow returned today. When we awoke this morning, I noticed the temperature was 37 degress, it was supposed to be 27. I said to Marty, it's 10 degrees warmer that it was supposed to be. She said, and it didn't rain. Then I looked out the window to see 3 inches of snow, you'll have to wait for the green.