Today I was driving east just north of Red Bridge and saw a thoroughly massacred deer twenty-five yards into a cut bean field. A red tail stood with his back to me, selecting the choicest morsel. He may still be there, looking. That carcass was a deer in size only.
My dog Abbe hasn't been properly introduced, and since she is large and white and spayed, needs no introduction.
She looks like a white Lab, at least that seems to be the assumed consensus, even though most Labs could pass underneath her middle and not trade hairs.
She loves to chase whatever runs away, and freaks when they turn and face her, like, "Don't you know the rules?"
With most of the beans cut and most of the corn standing, there are a lot of deer moving just after sunset. Abbe is a true believer, ordained in faith that deer are on this earth for her to chase. (At this point I will say that I prefer her attitude to that shared by many others, that deer are here to kill. Thanks loads, Bible.) Last evening, in about thirty minutes, we found at least a dozen deer in the dark along a mile and a half stretch just west of Red Bridge. Abbe crashed out the cardoor into the road at full Abbe tilt seven times.
She can make a quarter mile run without panting.
After about four trips, she was really looking for new air.
Abbe is of a herd-guardian breed, so she has gifted vision, but very little scent tracking ability. A reason is she's so tall.
I am much too dim to consider this, but here's what I learned: when you bend your head to the floor and snap back erect quickly, you nearly pass out. Because the blood is rushing to and from your head unimpeded, and your brain is much too delicately balanced to accept this tidal ebb and flow.
So whither the giraffe? A giraffe can be munching leaves eighteen to twenty feet in the air, like at the top of a two-story building, reach down and catch a bug off its foot, and go back to feeding.
With no effects.
Why? The physics are the same. So why doesn't a giraffe blow its head like a melon off a truck when it's dropped immediately twenty feet?
Because a giraffe has a heart the size of a mattress, and it's built like a sponge. The giraffe's heart acts as a regulator, such that blood never moves rapidly through the neck.
Pretty cool, huh?
But Abbe doesn't have a giraffe heart, and when she drops her head to sniff, there are all these snort noises, as the essential air and fluids battle for the same necessary chambers. If she keeps her head down, like when she's on a critical mission to find something really disgusting to roll about in, everything gets where it needs to be and the snorting stops, ten to twenty seconds.
But when she is chasing a bouncing white tail, overdrive, should she attempt even a passing whiff of ground scent, the physics would kill her.
When deer make the woods, they lose her right smartly in the dark, and I think she spends more time looking for a way back out, and the chase is done quickly.
After four trips, she was panting good, and the next three times, she got off well but came back now, the spirit still strong and the body spent.
There are very few mammals in Indiana, less than a tenth of those in a North America guidebook. There are no ground squirrels, only chipmunks. There are only two or three mice.
This should be insignificant, but half of a mammal ID book is devoted to ground squirrels and mice, and we have maybe three.
With a bright moon last night, something went low across the road. Sorry, haven't done my homework, but my guess was a weasel. Even in headlights, I would expect better fur on a mink.
Mississinewa Reservoir is being dropped to winter pool. I've always wondered why fishermen don't pay a little more attention to this.
The exposed mudflats show that people drop anchor in less than two feet of water and sit there all day. Those shallows can be exciting for a bit at daybreak and for the last half hour of the evening, but summer sun heats them to a low boil. It would seem time well spent to take a look when the water's down.
I see a few American Kestrels, and an occasional red tail, but the "here we are" birds, goldfinches, cardinals, bluebirds, and most surely, indigo buntings, seem to have sought more hospitable climate. I did see a blue jay several days ago, only my second of the year. No one else has reported that problem.
It has been brought to my attention I am not on the NRA's Enemies' List.
This is not acceptable.
Here's how you can help, can make a real difference:
The next time you see Wayne LaPierre or Ted Nugent, tell them this blogger (me) claims that Wayne and the Nuge sleep with each other's mothers. When LaPierre lays some lame crap on you, like his mother's dead or some such, tell him that would only make things better for the Nuge.
Happy stalking!