Railroad Bed Raccoon

The dogs and I hit one of the farms yesterday. It was a beautiful day on a beautiful farm, the dogs in fine fettle, and me with a pulled groin muscle, a pain in my hip, a lower back ache, and a rotator cuff injury. The latter did not trouble me much, but the groin, hip and lower back put a pretty serious hitch in my giddy up.

The dogs ran ahead to the left, and I bolted two big doe deer out of the creek bed. They made quite a racket, as they tried to exit on the other bank, which was about five feet high, and one of them had a pretty difficult time. It was like one of those scenes from National Geographic with the wildebeest making a high-bank river crossing, but without any crocodiles in the water underneath.

The dogs ran a bit far to a small bridge over the creek, and I called them back, but they were having none of it, and when I got up to them I could see why; they had cornered a feral black cat up a small tree, and Mountain was starting to climb the tree.

I grabbed both dogs while still holding the post hole digger and bar. With everything in my hands and a pack on my back I hustled them off the bridge and into the field where I leashed them up. All of this fast action did no favors to my groin or hip, but it was better than starting the day with a cat massacre.

I walked the dogs back the way we had come, and after it was clear they were interested in ground hunting again, I let them go.

They were still pretty amped up from the cat, and ran on ahead of me down the creek to an ox bow a few hundred yards ahead. I paid them no mind; they were likely to find in the ox bow (the ground there is littered with holes), and I would catch up to them. The dogs rarely go too far; no worries.

Long story short, when I got to the ox bow, the dogs were nowhere to be seen. I walked father but there was still no sign. This farm is pretty small, and cut down the middle by a creek that was now running pretty deep. Cattle grazed on the right, but if the dogs had gone up the graze field, I would have seen them. I walked the length of the farm four or five times calling the dogs and stopping to listen. Nothing.

I crossed the creek and thought I heard terriers barking on the other side of the field beyond the railroad tracks. The dogs had never left the farm before, but I humped over the field, over the tracks and into a small subdivision. It was indeed, terriers, but not mine. These were three dogs behind an expensive wrought iron fence. They seemed to be barking at the leaves in the wind.

I crossed back over the creek, and listened. Still nothing. Then I saw a big dog fox bolt out of the creek bed, turn around and look at me, and trot up the grazing field towards the cattle. Ha! That had to be where the dogs were, but when I got to that section of the creek, there was nothing.

For three and half hours I looked for those dog on that small farm and never found them. At around 2:30 the farmer and I took a tour on his John Deere Gator, but the noise of the machine did not get them to come out. Now I was sure they were not on the farm and that they were in a hole on a raccoon somewhere. Mountain will not come off a raccoon, and Gideon will stick to his game as well.

We toured the neighborhood around the farm in my truck, but nothing. I decided to walk the farm again for the fourth or fifth time, very slowly, stopping for long periods to listen. I saw a large groundhog stand up in the field across the creek, and I watched him for a few minutes. I walked farther up the creek, stopping to listen again. Over and over, up the farm. Then, faintly, I thought I heard both dogs very far away on the bitter end of the farm where the fences come together next to the railroad track. I ran up the creek bank, my hip and back both groaning in pain, my feet wet from crossing the creek several times while searching. I stopped and listened again. Yes that was the dogs. I was pretty sure it was not crows or geese.   Hard to tell sometimes, and especially with the wind.  I ran to the end of the creek pasture and climbed the first electric wire fence, and then the second electric wire fence, and then a short bit of barbed wire.

The dogs were in the ground under the railroad bed. They had been there for almost five hours now, with several 100-car trains rolling over the top of them.

Gideon was out of the ground when I arrived, but he was covered in black coal ash, and his eyes were pretty wrecked from the stuff.

I picked him up and walked back the length of the farm to the get the truck and tools. I would have to dig Mountain out.

At the truck, the farmer's boyfriend, Jim, offered to drive me and the tools up with the Gator, and we did that and Jim helped me dig too -- a great help.

Mountain sounded pretty deep. She had entered the railroad bed from the side through a very small slit under a downed tree trunk. There was a lot of downed timber along this edge, and I decided to cut in from the top, at least initially.

The railroad bed was a mixture of rip-rap granite cobbles backed with very fine coal dust and organic matter as fine as potting soil. It was pretty easy digging, but Jim had the brilliant idea to move some of the big timber on the side and simply carve out a trench, which we did. We were getting pretty close to the dog when Jim said "there she is" and I peered in and then saw a flash of white off to the side. It was Mountain sticking her nose out of a small hole. She had been underground for five and half hours, assuming she had been under the whole time (a good assumption with Mountain).

In short order, we had her out just as Hope, the farmer, came up in her truck. I left the trench open for the raccoon to escape, and we loaded the tools and Mountain into the Gator and went back to my truck where I did a preliminary wash out of both dog's eyes. An amazing amount of stuff came out, but I knew there was even more coal grit back in there behind the eyeball orbits. It would have to work its way forward to be washed out again when I got home.

Both dogs were exhausted, and I was pretty tired as well.

When I got home I washed the dogs and the coal dust came off pretty easily, except for a cigarette pack-sized patch on Mountain where it appears she rubbed against tar or creosote. Other than a slash across the top of Mountain's muzzle, and a small slice at the tip of Gideon's ear, both dogs were without injury. 

In the morning, both dogs needed more work done on them to get the remaining coal dust out of their eyes, and I washed their eyes out three more times times during the day and also loaded them up on Ceph as a preventive to eye infection. Right now, the dogs are pretty sore, and I am a little tuckered as well, but I think we will mend up in a day or two.   All's well that ends well.
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