Bad News, Good News.

Good news.  It rained!!!  We got between 0.25 and 0.5" on the ranch, which is great.  Bad news is that it soaked up like a sponge and we need more of the same to get the grass growing.  But for a few hours there, it was great.

Rain, Oh Rain, Oh, Let It Rain!!

Bad news:  My peregrine pursuit has hit a snag.  One of my nest sites was the victim of a forest fire.  It was crazy really, as the fire started at the base of the nest cliff!  I mean, of all the places in New Mexico to have a fire, why at my falcon site??  The road was closed for several days and I couldn't get in to check on it, but things finally cleared up and I took a trip to the 2 sites I've been watching.  At one, I watched the female on what is probably very young chicks.  It'll be another 2 weeks before I can take one, so I left there and drove to the other place. 

[Previous photo removed]

It's hard to see, but that's my nest cliff and that's smoke on the ridge line.  The fire burned up this slope, then crossed the road and burned north.  It mostly burned understory and some of the pine needles and doesn't really look all that bad.  I watched the site for about 20 minutes and didn't see anything but I couldn't hike the opposite slope because it was still smoldering and the forest is closed.  I'll check back on this in a few weeks just to see what I see.

The good news, though, is that my captive peregrine deal also fell thru.  Why is that good news, you might wonder?  It's good because it means that my 2nd falcon can now be a wild taken prairie falcon and that means that I get to rappel into another aerie!  And prairie falcons are local to me, so I won't have to make 8 hour trips just to get to them.  On Sunday, in fact, we saw a falcon enter a cavity on a nearby rock and Georgia heard a screaming falcon.  We'll check that site ever week and when they're ready, I'm ready.

Back on the ranch, we're getting into the Feed 'n Count groove.  It's still extremely dry here- the driest since 1900, actually- and so we're supplemental feeding.  That costs money, but it also results in very tame cattle and it's much easier to find and count them that way, as they come running to the feeder.  I use an ATV to play "rover" to the feed truck, going out into the pasture corners, down the creeks, and etc, counting cattle the whole way.  It's important to count to verify that the cattle are there and haven't strayed or been rustled.

34.2 mi and I'm not done

 This puts quite a few miles on the ATV.  We started around 4 pm and by 6 pm, I'd already put 34.2 mil on the bike.  I hit 44 before I was done at 7 pm.  Horses are great for a lot of things, but ATV's rule when it comes to covering a lot of country quickly.   ATV's are mostly a good thing except when they break and I have to work on them.  Then they are Bad ATVs.

The bad thing about being on the ATV is the nasty wind.  It was blowing 30 mph today and when you're going 30 mph into it, that's a 60 mph wind.  It's hard on the eyes and hard on the ears.  Today, though, I did something different.  I wrapped my head in a bandana.  I probably look like Mother Hubbard, but who cares?  The bandana kept the wind out of my ears and kept my ear buds in so that I was able to listen to 3 hrs of music while riding around counting cattle.  My count came out good- just 2 short in each pasture.  260 head in one, 175-ish in the other.  I'll keep track of my counts and see if I can't a perfect count next time.

Self Portrait of the Artist as an Upper Middle-Aged Man

After getting my count, I stopped on the edge of the canyon to glass with binos to see if I could pick up any more cattle.  I didn't but I did find 5 mule deer bucks grazing about 200 yards away.  Enlarge the picture and see if you can spot the little reddish streaks- one is just above my boot.  The wind was blowing from them to me and ATV bothered them not one bit, not even when I started it and backed out.  I'm going rifle hunting for deer this year, Lord willing.

Teeny Tiny Little Deer

That's the ranch.  On The Davidic Front, we got a call from the doc's office today with news that some tests had returned from the Mayo Clinic and the doc wants to see us next week.  We did a CBC today and found that David's hemoglobin is only 8.0 in spite of a transfusion 10 days ago.    Even at that low level, he's twice what he normally is.  But on the "kind of alarming" side, his platelets have dropped and are approaching dangerous levels.  Dangerous in that he could actually start spontaneous internal bleeding.  We'll probably do another CBC on Thur and if things are worse, it'll be off to the doc on Friday for a platelet transfusion (which typically only lasts a few days so it's a real stop-gap thing).

I suspect this is kind of like my skid steer.  I had some oil leaks fixed finally.  When I did, the skid steer ran great for about 5 hrs and then started leaking worse than before.  The problem was another blown O-ring and it's likely that the improved pressure from the other repairs caused this one to fail.  As David is infused with good blood, it's possible that his bone marrow- which has been working hard for 10 years- will take a vacation, resulting in low platelets.  Or his spleen might get alarmed at all the fresh blood, work over-time in its misdirected attempt to blow his blood cells up, and get enlarged even further.  It's all just a mess, but hopefully the doc will have some news for us.

Other good news is that I got my hearing aids fixed.  I wear BTE aids and I'm almost totally dependent upon them.  When they don't work well, I can't hear.  I had them adjusted last June by a new doc who finally got them working really, really well.  All was peachy until about Jan/Feb.  When we went on the train trip, I could hear well going to DC, but while there and on the way back, I just wasn't hearing well at all.   I thought that maybe my ears had taken another dip.  At the urging of my dear wife, we finally made the trip to CO Springs.  After some discussion, the doc said "let's reset them to the last good setting and see what happens".  The instant he clicked the Program button, my hearing world came back and I immediately heard people talking in the next room, fans in the room, and the doc's voice.  I had my guitar with me and tested the aids against it.  Wow....it was all there again.  That was Thurs.  Since then, I've been asking my dear wife and beloved children to please quit shouting at me.  I turn the TV down.  I turn all the fans in the house off.  I play my guitars and listen to the harmonics.  It's great.  And now we know that the aids' programing will drift and needs to be reset every 4 months or so.

Well, that's enough for now!