Digging on the Dogs

A short day digging solo in the field on Sunday. My church has always been outside; the First Church of Field and Stream. Let us prey.

Still a bit hot, but mostly because there was not a scrap of shade on the farm I was on. 82 degrees in the shade is well past 90 when you're in the full force of the sun.

A pretty uneventful day other that a noticeable flocking of birds, which seems only fitting the day before the official start of Fall.

Five or six large skeins of Giant Canada Geese had joined up, and they busted off a field as I drove up the farm road. It was quite a sight, and even more so when you consider this magnificent bird was thought to be virtually extinct as late as 1950.

I walked the fields checking a few holes and was amazed at the ballet of barn swallows going on around me -- hundreds of them zooming low over the field and then wheeling around to nail a bug on the fly.

As the dogs and I hovered at the holes, the birds seemed to follow us, no doubt pinging on the bugs we were knocking up. It is amazing to think that these birds will soon be wintering as far south as Brazil and Venezuela.

It was a pretty glorious day for birds, and no less so when the dogs busted a massive flock of blackbirds that had settled on the forest floor near one of the fields we were working. I am not sure if the birds were feeding on mast or were resting during the day before flying at night when it is cooler (most bird migrations occur at night for this reason). I suspect the later. The tree cover and ground-resting would probably prevent a hawk from nailing them while they were down. The size of the some of the blackbird flocks we see in the Fall around here are truly amazing.

This farm no longer holds as many groundhogs as it once did thanks to a few years of concerted work by the dogs. This is the farm Sailor died on -- jumping from my arms and running down the field terrified from her heart racing in arrhythmia. I suspect the black widow spider bite she received a few months earlier might have damaged some muscle or connective tissue in her heart, but I will never know. I miss that dog; she was not only the best working terrier I have ever had, she was the best working terrier I have ever seen. Prejudiced? Moi? Not a bit. I am as flinty as stone. But I know a good dog, and I know a dog that loved me. And yes, I loved her, and I am not ashamed to say so.

Dave, the farm manager, stopped by and said he had lost a few chickens to a raccoon, and asked if I had found a groundhog in the field sette I had been checking in earlier? He had not known that sette was there, and he hit a high spot and did $1,200 worth of damage to his farm machinery as a consequence. Bruised his posterior too. I had not found anyone home in that sette, but I had noticed it was a big pipe. I said I would check the dry ridge which was about 300 yards away -- maybe we would find it at home up there.

And sure enough, Mountain did find it in the dry ridge. This is very rocky ground -- almost all broken shale and stone, and though the pipes are never deep, getting in is always tough.

None the less, the job got done, and one 13-pound groundhog was accounted for.

I left this groundhog near the dirt pile on the edge of the farm road so Dave would be sure to see it. He would no longer have any more trouble from that one, and the fox would find it before night passed into morning. Everything is recycled. Dust to dust. Let us prey.

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