Scratching an itch.

Last week we had three days of rain. We have two inches in the rain gauge which is luxurious considering we only get about fifteen inches of precipitation per year. The birds of summer are starting to arrive. The Shrike stands guard on the fence, the Say's Phoebe takes her place on the front porch while the Kestrel's scream and dive above the elms. These things excite me. The days, being warmer and longer, have me working harder jobs for longer hours, which exhausts me. The low gray clouds of winter lift themselves up off my shoulders and leaven themselves into proper billowing forms and migrate to the east, full of moisture and promise. 

The cows and horses are less interested in coming in every day for their alfalfa bale. The thick heavy fur coats that somehow kept them warm throughout the winter starts to shed, and this must itch beyond belief. The corrals are filled with the rhythmic sounds of horses, cows, and bulls steadily, constantly, and meditatively scratching off their winter coats. Bang clink bang clink bang clink; their eyes glazed over in polyrhythmic bliss.

They wield their sizable bodies like 1,500 pound belt sanders, leaning hard into anything they can find - squeeze chutes, stocktanks, corral panels and barbed wire fences. The sharper the better. They strip away rust and paint. Barbed wire is stretched and the barbs dulled to nubbins. They polish the fence posts until they snap. Tufts of black hair hang everywhere, and the birds collect it to line their nests.

Now, in an effort to mitigate the damage, we plant telephone poles and wrap them with barbed wire. They rub these incessantly to the point that they eventually saw them in half. 

Come to think of it, if it isn't windy today, I better go work on the corrals. I actually enjoy fencing work, and like the cattle, I find, doing hard physical work repairing corrals in the crisp spring sun helps me scratch away the winter itch. And there is surely something that will need fixing.

Comments

[Jeff]

So those hair balls are the natural outcome of the combination of barbed wire and furry, itchy animals. They look like decorations that Ella might have made at school and strewn along the fence.

Man, you get all the cool stuff.