Beautiful Fall Day...and A Coyote Hunt....

After my unfortunate illness...being outside has been a breath of fresh air...literally. So yesterday my youngest and I decided that after a morning of school work behind us we would spend the afternoon enjoying the fresh air and sunshine. So we cleaned and washed my jeep....I have neglected it very very badly. The inside looked like a rolling garbage can. I hate that when it happens. And being as they had just weaned calves and we had trucks rolling down the road it was covered in dust. It reminded me of Pig Pen on Charlie Brown...every time it went somewhere dust just poofed off of it. The dust won't stay off of it for very long...but at least it will be clean a day or two.

DS had gone out to burn the trash and he came running up to the house hollering there was a coyote out behind the barn. I hate coyote's. They are just vile creatures. I know that I have most likely offended animal lovers every where, but I have been with DH one to many times and have driven up on a heifer that laid down to calve and has been set upon by coyotes. It is an ugly site which always ends in Dh having to shoot the poor creature to put her out of her misery. So I hate the ugly things.

We knew that there has been one hanging around...probably after my chickens....thats just the way they are..always wanting an easy handout, not willing to work for their food.....hum I see a funny parallel here...but I just won't go there. :) The dogs have been going crazy at night, and DH saw him running across the road a few days ago. But with him gone all day working cattle, and oldest DS not here, nobody has had a chance to hunt him down. DS was convinced that it had to be the most ferocious one that he had every see. According to him he was huge with a white face and very long fangs....... Possibly a slight exaggeration there...but who knows.

He and I came in got the rifle and left on the great coyote hunt. We walked and walked and never saw a sign of him. But decided that he was probably just crouched down watching us....which kind of gave DS the willies.

Coming back to the house DS decided that he would go look at tracks around the overflow and see if he could tell if he had been out there. That lead to googling animal tracks...which lead to printing out 20 pages on coyotes. Which will lead to him knowing all there is to know about coyotes, and If you don't think he will not tell everybody he knows all about coyotes well you are wrong. Sometimes I wonder just what he tells his Sunday school teachers. They always have a funny smile and tell me what a special little man he is when I go and get him after church. I just hope that he does not enlighten the whole class on what coyote manure looks like...I had hear about it and see a picture yesterday.

Home schooled ranch kids are funny. I remember when our oldest J. was in second grade. We had just moved here and everyone convinced us that she just needed to be in " real" school, and what a wonderful little school the small town up the road had. Her public school career was short lived by the way. We crumpled and put her in. One day I saw her teacher in town and she said I just have to tell you what J. wrote in her journal. They were having to write what they had done over the weekend. She said the class was writing away and J. raised her hand. The teacher called on her, and J. said she needed help spelling a word. The teacher asked what.. and J. said "prolapse". The teacher was an old farm woman from way back and she said it was all she could do to keep from laughing out loud. J. had helped her Daddy gather a prolapsed cow, and of course when it came to things like that or pulling a calf the kids were just fascinated and always had to watch the whole thing. So that was what she was writing about. Her teacher said in all her years of school teaching she had to say that that was the only time a kid had written about a prolapsed cow.

Well with that I must say Ta Ta. I have a hungry man on the way and a very short one here that keeps asking me if it is time to eat, so I am off to finish dinner.

God Bless and Happy Trails
Ranch Wife