• Animal Tracks •

There's no arguing with a cow. Of course if they are standing still you might get away with making your point, but if they're running; Forget about it! I was out getting the giant gourds for Manhattan Plaza this Wednesday and came back to see my new neighbor dragging tires into a pile in the barn yard. Starting to clean up and it is a great thing! Who should appear but Joaquim in a state of agitation explaining that the cows had gotten out. That ended my chat and away we went. He didn't explain though, that the cows had gotten out, from field OFC where I had been staging them through the last rotation for the season into A4 which would have been their final pasture for this year. Now about cows, if they are hungry or thirsty you can lead them just about anywhere if you have some pears or apples or a pail of water. Joaquim kind of panicked and instead of grabbing a bucket of pears and leading the cows back where they were supposed to be, he proceeded to run and string a wire up to keep them in A4 and dragged water to the field on a hand wagon so they would stay there. You can imagine the amount of cajoling it took me to get them back into OFC when I arrived 2 hours later. Why, you may ask did I move them back? Well, the line that Joaquim strung was just that, a single wire wrapped around trees, posts, whatever, and not ready for electric. Also, I"m working in A4 finishing the fence. If the cows would just have waited until Friday I'd have moved them into A4.

Actually,little harm was done other than some chewed up kale and that Joaquim spent the afternoon fussing over the cows when if he had used the old bucket of fruit trick he would have had a much more placid afternoon.

We have been seeing a different variety of insects lately and I'm keeping some specimens to have them identified. It's always impressive to see the insect activity in the colder weather. I found a huge caterpillar with black hairs ringing it's body and the body is brick red. It looks like a bottle brush. I also found a beetle with different markings than I'm accustomed to so that is off for ID.

Nothing particularly spectacular has been happening in an obvious way in the animal population here. The beaver and muskrat are moving as well as other animals as they usually do this time of year. About the most startling thing is that the road kill begins to increase. I was chatting with some other members in the agriculture community here and mentioned that it is obvious to me that because of the waning daylight the time that the animals usually move [according to their daylight clocks] now coincides with the bizarre setting of the human clock that says it's time to commute home from work. Bingo, up goes the body count.

No one is going to reset their clock or work day to match the sun in this country. We just turn on the lights and keep on going.

Hmm, I never thought of the collateral toll in wildlife due to the invention of lighting but that is a research project waiting to happen.

Next newsletter in a couple weeks.

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