No rain, horse and deer

Thursday's forecast of widespread rain was a bust. We had a few rain showers, but that was it. Not much moisture. I expected rain so I had stayed up late (even for me!) Wednesday night. Late as in 3:45 am. So when Joyce called me at 10 am Thursday morning to ask if I would hike with the group on Friday, I was still asleep.

Thursday I got the barb wire and fence from the family that had the rummage sale and is moving. More wire and fence that I thought. I kept pulling more and more out the tall grass and weeds between the garage and the pole shed. I piled it in the pickup bed as high as the pickup's cab. I also filled a good sized box with apples for the cattle (with a few of the larger ones for me).

The new neighbor lady's horse, a mare, has had an attitude change since they moved here from Helena. The five horses that had been in that pasture are now gone leaving only her horse. The attitude change is that her horse wants nothing to do with her. The previous evening I had seen a pickup driving around their pasture chasing the horse. Apparently they were trying to catch it.

Thursday the horse hung around the SW part of the pasture. The owner would walk in the general direction but not to the horse. Then when she started to get closer, the horse would move to another part of the pasture. Over and over. She came back to the garage and got a bucket of treats. After a long wait the horse came near. More waiting and the horse finally ate from the bucket, but only after she set it down and moved a few feet away.

I don't know if the move to Kalispell upset the horse, or her mare went "boy crazy" being in a pasture with five geldings.

I finished digging the area for my Emerald Arborvitae, then planted them. While I watered them I heard a car slow down on the road to almost a stop then honk its horn. I had fed apples to the cattle a short time earlier and they had now moved to the mid section of the hayfield near where the car was. None of the cattle got through the fence, did they? I couldn't tell, so I jumped on my bicycle and pedaled over there. The car had now gone. The cattle were all in the hayfield and no sign of any animals on the road. This is one of the areas the deer use to cross the road and I suspect it was deer in the road when the car drove there.

After spraying weeds tonight, as I was walking back from the north pasture, a fawn came walking towards me. The fawn surprised me as it was coming from the corral area and not from the river or the neighbor's pasture. After a few steps of walking towards one another we both stopped and checked each other out. We walked slightly counter-clockwise around each other until the fawn got to where I had been, then it went - white tail wagging - to the north/middle pasture fence and slipped under the bottom wire and left. Excuse me for intruding on "your" pasture.