Trouble in the Woods

Tonight Coconut has left this world, and Ken has three cracked ribs.

There's a big storm coming (so they say). This could be the two-footer again. When it snows, it dumps sometimes. The day before last, that would be Thursday morning at about nine o'clock, Solveig called to say she was having trouble with her little horse, whom she found lying down and cold. With some trouble she got him up, but he wouldn't eat or drink. She took him up to her neighbor Claire's house and Claire brought him right in the kitchen to warm him up.

Solveig called me, and they started to walk him up and down the road like you should with a colicky horse which it looked like he was. I brought "Dog Butt," our animal thermometer, and the box of outdated Banamine, Bute, and Pennicillin with miscellaneous syringes I keep in the fridge. She'd been on the phone with Jennifer, her vet from Ely, getting some instructions on what to do. We rigged up an enema for him twice, the second time deeper than the first, which produced only three small pieces of poop and a string of mucous. Since I have never really tubed a horse, we tried to pour some canola oil down his gullet, of which we could only get him to swallow about a pint. He had a temperature of 101.7, which is very slightly above normal. In between procedures, we offered him water and feed and hay, none of which interested him in the least, and we walked him up and down the road all day long. About dark, we decided to borrow Claire's wonderful two-horse trailer and head for the Twin Ports Equine Clinic, where we had spoken with Dr. Stacy, and she told us it would cost three or four hundred dollars to examine and treat him for colic.

We arrived there about 8:30 and without a word Dr. Stacy began the exam. After listening all over with a stethescope she sedated him and tubed him, pumping most of a three gallon bucket of water down, in stages blowing into the stomach and smelling what was there. Then she put the glove on and palpated inside carefully clear up to her upper bicep, producing one tiny piece of manure. Then she discussed her observations matter-of-factly, asserting that he was severely dehydrated, and should be on I.V. fluids, and that he may be surgical, meaning that there may be a displacement of the intestine, or an obstruction, which could be $2,000-6,000.00 worth of surgery in Anoka or at the University. She offered to try to biopsy stomach fluid, and attempted to do so, producing no fluid at all, which told her that he was so dehydrated that there was no stomach fluid. We asked her if she could set up an I.V. for him, and she did, but the Lactated Ringer's froze in the needle and you could see it freeze up the coiled clear plastic tube toward the five liter bag. She had inserted a catheter into the jugular vein, which had a rubber stopper to receive the needle, but it would have to be flushed with 10cc of saline (I found out later it should have been heparinized) and then the I.V. line needle inserted. Solveig jumped right in to the conversation (as if she hadn't been in the center of it all along) and said, "We can get him into a heated space and do the IV ourselves, right?" "Yeah," said the vet, "You could." So she sent us with the apparatus and the catheter stitched in, and wrapped around his neck with Vetwrap to cover and protect it, and three 5 liter bags of solution. "Good Luck" she said, charged $430-some bucks, which seemed pretty reasonable. It was somewhere between 0 degrees and 10 below, and a little before midnight.

So we loaded him back up on the trailer and headed back for the Shore. That's Jim and Solveig in the pickup and me and Kari in the car. We had some experience, this same exact company, just about ten years ago, in the freezing subzero barn at Lutsen when Solveig and Coconut rolled over, before there was a lot of snow as I recall, caving in a fist-sized section of Coconut's skull around his right eye, not hurting Solveig somehow at all...TO BE CONTINUED...

I'm Blogging Here

I was lucky enough to kill a couple deer in the meantime, and they pretty much flash-froze before I could get them skinned out. So there they hang until I can get them into Betsy's basement and thaw them out one at a time enough to handle them, get them quartered and head on down to Ricky's in Schroeder for the big cuttin' party. That was exciting, especially when I had the second doe in my sights, the fork horn came out and I shot him, but only after I remembered to pull the hammer back, click, then put a shell in the chamber, then shoot the deer, and while he's breathing his last, this bigger buck comes out and does a lap around the stand 35 yards out the whole way around. I was just too amazed to do anything but sit there and watch him. He even stopped on the hill above my stand and looked right at me, then just strolled away. I didn't think about shooting him for Mike or Jim to fill out their tags. Next time for sure.

Thanksgiving tomorrow. To Duluth and back on Friday. Time's running out and I have two more loads of hay to haul before snow comes in a serious way.

Freeze-Up at the Farm

Well, sir, it sure is freezing now. Not even close to zero, except one night when it got down to single digits over a week ago. I almost have my excavations completed for the electric lines underground to the waterer, and the underground fence wire on the other side of Elisa's garden, so I can let the horses in to feed in the garden again. There's still a lot to do before the snow piles up, like move 4-500 little round bales from Bloomquist Ranch, now that the field has set up enough for my bald tires not to get the whole damn deal stuck again. I broke the trailer coupler, dont'cha know, but after looking all over hell for a new cast-iron piece, ol' Farmer Don came along and welded a stainless nut on there where it broke, so after hunting in the morning I'm fixin' to go out to the field and put it back together for some hauling.

Does this Bus go to Duluth?

Trip with Davey to Duluth yesterday. We left the farm at noon. Betsy fed us a great lunch of herring and potatoes and Mike's homemade applesauce, we got the hay out to the horse-asses, and we blasted off in the Stealth Schnaab for shopping for garbage cans and dog food and light bubs and such, where I had hoped to spend a dollar less on each purchase, and maybe save enough to buy gas. I'm a fool, I know. I should have hauled hay instead, because it's raining today. I wanted to burn the burn-piles at the farm today.

Anyhow it was fun bumming around with Dr. Grin. I got a mouse for my laptop. We ate at Arby's in Cloquet near the Farm Store, couldn't find even one wool shirt (that's dumb), tried out some orifice chairs at OfficeMax, and then went into Home Depot twice, because I forgot stuff right there on my list, and then Menard's once for the caulk I forgot on both trips into HD. They even have the Miller Hill Menard's closed for expansion, so we had to go 'way back down to West Duluth. The price of gas was 2.09 in Two Harbors on the way down, 2.07 in Cloquet, 2.29 all over Duluth in the evening, which I paid to fill up, then 2.19 on the way home in Two Harbors.
What the hell?

Dare I divulge David's constant agitation to go to Best Buy (whom I have pledged myself to boycott, onnacounta the bad service Marce got on this puter here) where we finally went anyway, which resulted in him buying a teeny little laptop that has amnesia, but is supposed to work on the internet. I told him not to do it.

We finally made it to Beijing for my favorite General Tso's Chicken with Chinese Vegetables. Washed it all down with a quart of Root Beer from the TH gas station. What a day. We got home after midnight. Now it's raining. It hasn't rained a lot this fall. It never warms up enough, and the days are not long enough to dry out when it does. This is pretty much of a soaker.

Movie Night at Betsy's

We watched a movie on the big screen arranged by Davey with his puter. Bobby brought the DVD to share with a few of us. The movie was called "Why We Fight" and it reviewed the development of the military industrial complex since the Bomb fell on Hiroshima, in spite of Eisenhower's admonishments. It was a very graphic review of the carnage caused by Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld and Ashcroft and Wolfowitz's demonization of their former puppet Saddam Hussein. I got rid of the TV in the cabin shortly after 911, so I had never seen a lot of that video. It made me sick. It made me cry. The military made it happen, because they have to do something, just like Homeland Security, even if it is wrong. And most of it is.

Hey! Rides!

Yesterday Bessie and Julie took some little kids and their folks for a big ol' wagon ride down the Cardinal Road west through some muddy tracks (it was quite bouncy) and came out the North-South road by Surbaugh's driveway, and back on the Pike Lake road. The horses, who have not done much work yet this season, needed about a fifteen minute breather at the top of the hill on the undeveloped part of the Cardinal Road. It was a bit of an adventure. Thanks to Ray for his help all afternoon starting to frame up the wagon benches, and to the lovely Surbaugh family for booking a wagon ride, giving me a deadline to get that up and running for Will's birthday party on Saturday, the day before. Thanks to Don Noyce for the trailer we turned into a wagon, as well as the forecart he framed up for me this spring/early summer.

The Oars Are Here--Yay!

After a pretty long wait--you can't rush an artist--the 9'6" Sitka spruce spoons arrived in Thunder Bay at the DHL terminal. All the folks I talked to on the phone there couldn't have been nicer, more on the ball, or more helpful. But their 800 number and their email communication couldn't have been less helpful, slower to respond or more discombobulated. it took me seven calls over two weeks to get the address and the phone number, one from some dude in Vancouver and one from some chick in Texas...aaarghhh! And then there was the email guy or whatever he or she was--Sumair Ashraf. Write me back after seven days apologizing on behalf of DHL. Paul Bagshaw at least kept me posted on the progress of the oar making.

So Davey and I took the oars out on the big Norse pram, and they are actually about a foot too long for that deal. Hands crossed over, but I really liked the way they pulled. Now I need to get my boat away from its eternal residency at the motor-repair shop, so I can at least row that around a little bit before it gets nasty out. A little fall fishing would be great.