Gophers, Cattle, and Wind

Friday morning I only counted 20 cattle. Over and over I counted and still came up with 20. Where is my 21st? I went into the north pasture and found that one hidden in corner of pasture and not in the corral with the rest. I don't know why as this herd really stays together.

Also on Friday I set out my gopher traps. My friend Jeff sent me his two pocket gopher traps as the Minnesota pocket gophers are too smart to be caught in them. That makes seven of those traps for me. I set off wandering my hayfield looking for dirt mounds. While they were not as thick as in previous years I easily found seven of them. When I checked later that evening I had caught two pocket gophers.

I have 15 regular gopher traps, about half each of leg hold and of conibear traps. My strategy this time was to "carpet bomb" the gopher town's holes. Instead of targeting a few holes in each town and covering the rest I would set a trap outside each hole. Where I got this idea was the holes in the NW part of the hayfield are open again, and last year it too me a long time trap the gophers from these holes. I was able set traps outside the holes of two or three towns in the middle pasture. No traps were set in the north pasture as the cattle would trigger the traps and knock over the marking poles and milk jugs.

Friday this strategy didn't help much as traps were either ignored, unseen holes used, or new holes dug. I only caught one gopher out of 15 traps, and that was from a non-hayfield town.

Saturday when I checked I caught a large gopher from the hayfield town. I left the trap as the towns often have more than one gopher.

I also found I had caught two more gophers from each of the other two towns. Success finally.

Saturday night the cattle all lined up along the pasture fence to watch me check my traps, and moved along the fence as I moved checking my traps.. Several of them bellowed at me over and over.

"What? The grass in your pasture is a foot high; plenty for you." But no, they wanted the taller and greener grass in the middle pasture. Besides, if I can be there, why not them?

As I returned to home and walked to the corral the herd followed me. Several got worked up and would jump around and I ended up walking backwards a good distance so as not to get bumped or trampled.

The herd all followed me back to the corral. Now why don't they act like that when I want them to go to the corral?

A front came through before sundown. Occasional long lightning strikes could be seen over the SW mountains. Then the wind picked up and blew hard. Real hard! After it began to rain the wind lessened.

We needed the rain. I know we had rain much of June - and snow - but that was over a week ago. The ground was getting dry and dusty.

Initially it seemed the air was too dry for the rain to reach the ground, but it did, and rained nicely, though more would have been appreciated.

Rain! Wouldn't you know it! And here I had washed and vacuumed my car an hour earlier. I drove on our hiking trip Saturday and we later explored the forest roads in that area. The main drag was 17 miles long but we drove more miles as we followed some side roads. When the road wasn't dusty it was wet. Yes, I drove over some snow.

Man, I am tired. I can hards stay awake. I've been up since 6 am and have not slept since then until just now. I hope this post's grammar is good and my words make sense.