Snakes Alive!

Well, we had an exciting day here on the ranch.  First thing we got was a report that our cattle had busted down a fence into the neighbors, taking down 10 steel posts.  He got most of them out easily because our new cattle are still a little wild while his are feeder trained and so all he had to do was honk his horn and our cattle went running while his came to the truck.  But why?  It takes a lot of force to bust down 10 steel T-posts.  One reason might be the 6 elk hanging out on the mountain.  Another might be lion or bear or even just lightning.  It wasn't very long after that, that Excitement #2 occurred.

We have 4  horses and 1 one them came up missing around lunch when they normally come in for water.  Given the report of stampeded cattle and the possibility of a lion, we were concerned.  B2 jumped on an ATV and went to look in the creek while me and D2 took another ATV and checked the east end of the pasture.  I didn't see anything except a coyote but heading back I saw B2 heading for the house.  I figured it was either snake-bite or some major calamity like stepping into a rock hole or something.  We headed back and sure 'nuff- horse was snake bit and down by the creek.  We went down there and the horse- last week's Reserve Grand Champion in the county fair- was staggering along the fence heading to the house.  She had a badly swollen head and nearly shut eyes, but we slowly got her up to the house and before long our neighbor and horseman Philip showed up.  Not long after that, Mark, the vet arrived.

Head's badly swollen with bloody pus from nose

From the side

Giving her shots and medicine

Mark gave her some penicillin to fight secondary infections, something for swelling, and then DMSO cream for additional swelling.  Philip suggested spraying cool water over her nose and she seemed to like that.  By evening, she was able to drink a little, so that's good.  We're not nearly out of the woods yet, but she should recover.  I've seen snake-bite before, but this was the first the kids have seen it.  I hope they watch their step a bit more now.

In other news, I moved my guitar benches out of the house and into the new building.  I won't get power until tomorrow, but there are a few things I can do that don't require power and it's going to take a few days to get organized in the new shop anyway, so I decided to just go ahead and get moved.

An empty work bench...

...becomes an empty corner and the end of an era in our household.

Out in the shop, I've got 3 benches set up with 2 auxiliary benches.  There are shelves on all of them.  I'm only taking 1/2 of the building for the actual benches.  Another wall has the power tools and the west wall has cases, boxes, and shipping stuff.  Still plenty of room, but I want to do my best to keep it from getting too cluttered.

On the falconry front, the prairie falcon is inside tonight.  She'll get her transmitter pack re-attached in the morning as she chewed it off 2 weeks ago.   She's also doing really well and has tamed down dramatically.  I've cut back on actual flying while I got my shop in shape and I also need to do some re-organizing of the pigeons.  I'm a little short on pigeons and there's no big hurry to get the falcon flying- plenty of time during the winter.  Instead, I'm using the time to train both falcons to tolerate handling better.  Right now, I can enter the prairie's mews and she'll jump up on my fist, take the hood, and is just 100% calmer than she was a month ago.   The peregrine's getting trained to the lure.  He's already tame and all I'm doing with him is making sure he knows what the lure is, and then just doing the same routine of picking up, hooding, and then feeding.  I hope to have my pigeon loft under control and both birds actively flying in the next 2-3 weeks.

That's about it for today!  I'm hoping to get electrified tomorrow and I also need to go check the rest of the north fence.