Snip the Dog

     “Oh yay! Another dog story,” she said, with sarcasm dripping like butter and syrup off a hot stack of pancakes.

      Here it comes!  Yet another dog story.  Snip, the sewer dog.

     This dog’s name was Snip or Snippy.  Snip was always there.  He is among my earliest memories.  The earliest one I can remember, I am standing in the old iron crib, too small to get myself out.  I may have wet the bed.  Mom, dressed in her old red coat, the one she wore for “everyday”, and her bonnet, was chasing Snip with the broom, trying to get him out of the house.

   “Snip!  Get out!”  Snip, tail tucked between legs, tried to duck under the broom and between Mom’s legs. 

      There had been a bad thunderstorm, and Snip was deathly afraid of thunder.  I may have two stories confused, but this may have been the hailstorm when hailstones broke through screen, window glass, hit the living room carpet and bounced up to dent plaster on the ceiling.  If so, I slept through the worst of it.

     Why Mom and I were home alone, I don’t know.  Where were Dad and my two older brothers?  We were home alone.  Mom was running around in near-panic, trying to get Snip out of the house, worrying about me, dealing with the results of the storm.

     I’m guessing it must have been a Monday.  My mother was awakened from her nap by the thunder.  She donned old red coat and bonnet to rescue the wash from the line.  With clothesbasket, she struggled through the porch into the house, and Snip slunk into the house as she opened the door.   

     Snip was not a kid’s dog much.  His bad-weather home was the back porch, where he was allowed to stay.  I tried to get him to move out of my way.  He was rather deaf and irritable in his old age.  I had a set of goggles my dad sometimes used when driving the tractor or perhaps in a blizzard, as they were lined with fluffy wool.  I struck Snippy across the back with the goggles.  He reciprocated by nipping me on my left temple.  After that, I dealt with him much more cautiously.

     He once bit my younger brother, too.  It may have been because my brother was discovered sharing Snip’s Growpup in skim milk.  He was sitting on the step where Snip ate his breakfast, dipping his chubby fingers into the dog’s pan, finding the contents pretty tasty himself.

    Anyway, Dave allowed that when he got to be a dog, he was going to bite Snippy.  We treated Snip with respect.

     Snip was really Dad’s dog.  He was a farm dog, good with cattle, a fierce protector of the place.  One morning, I remember Dad carrying a dead badger by the hind legs.  In those days, we had an open porch on the front of the house, no doors or windows or even screens.

     In the night, there was a ruckus on the front porch (which I slept through).  Dad got up to find that Snip had cornered a badger on the front porch.  Dad grabbed a baseball bat (barefoot and in his skivvies) and finished off the badger.

     In days to come, we all would appreciate Snip’s efforts.  After his demise, we had problems with badgers getting into the chicken house, killing hens and raiding nests.  That didn’t happen with Snip on watch.

     Dad told the story of Snip getting bit by a rattlesnake when he was still emerging from puppyhood.  He laid around for six weeks, mostly in the barn where he could keep his wounded nose in soft moist dirt or mud.  After that, Snip hated snakes and killed everyone he could find.

     Snip was part German shepherd.  He had shaggy coat that never got clipped or groomed.  He always smelled terrible, for a good reason.

       When I was young, we lived in the new house, which had been moved from Papa’s homestead to the farm where it now sits.  Where the old farmhouse sat some fifty yards east of the present one, there was still a large hole, the old basement.  The sewer system for the new house drained from the septic tank into the very bottom of the cellar for the old house.  It was supposed to drain further through a pipe into an old abandoned well fifty feet or so further east.  Sometimes it did, but there was always a small open pond in the bottom of the old cellar. 

     In the summer, the cellar site grew up with horseweeds exceeding six feet tall.  It was like a jungle.  The open sewer pond drew balls, basketball, baseball, any kind of ball, like a magnet.  It was an unpleasant job to find your way through the tall weeds, kneel down and rescue the ball from the effluent.  It was so bad that many times the errant ball ended the game.  It had to be retrieved, cleansed under the tank house faucet and allowed to dry out.  Many an argument ensued over who had to go get the ball.    

     Snip loved that sewer.  In hot weather, he would drop down into the cellar for a drink and a little soak.  He would emerge from the weed jungle dripping and shaking, finding himself quite refreshed.  Needless to say, Snip was not a lap dog.  He was often shunned.

    A family friend, Don, was the only child of a single mom who taught at our school for a year or two.  He liked to hang around with my two older brothers.  After he and his mother moved to the Denver area, he would come out during the summer break and spend a week or two with us.  He loved the farm, but unfortunately, he had hay fever.  When he left, he always had a puffy swollen face with rheumy eyes and runny nose.

     Don nicknamed Snip “Sewer Dog.”  Fitting as the name was, it didn’t really stick.

     One day, Snip didn’t show up for his breakfast.  He didn’t make an appearance for three or four days.  Dad told us at the supper table one night, that he had discovered Snippy. 

     Snip was down beside the sewer pond.  He had dug a bit of a hole beside it and laid down in it.  Dad said it was like Snip had tried to dig his own grave and bury himself.

     Dad finished the job for his old friend.

      After a decent interval, we adopted Queenie, a stray who had tried to adopt the grocer in town.  She would be better known as Ruff, in honor of Dennis the Menace’s dog.

     While Ruff was much more kid friendly and had no attraction to the sewer, she couldn’t replace Snip as farm protector. 

Tractor Driving

     “Teaching isn’t work.” 

      At first, I thought he was joking or trying to get a reaction from some of my peers, standing around at the party.  The speaker, a farmer, was my age and was a friend since high school with one of my closest fellow faculty members.  

      I soon realized it wasn’t just a provocative statement, but a heartfelt belief.  Thankfully, it was not a belief his wife, a member of the school board, shared.  He wasn’t joking.  None of my fellow teachers reacted vociferously.  It was, after all, a party, not the time to start a loud argument.  Besides, we had all heard it before, many times during discussions with the school board. 

      Someone asked the farmer if he had ever tried teaching, say at 4-H (he was a big supporter) or maybe Sunday school.  “No,” he said.

     “Why not?  It’s pretty easy.”   No, it wasn’t something he could do.

     One lady volunteered to contact the Sunday school superintendent of his church, also in attendance at the celebration, and get him a job.  No, no, no, he backed off.  He wasn’t cut out for that sort of thing, he assured us.

     I could only think of one thing to say to the farmer, a quote I attribute to Mark Twain:  “If you want to know how easy a thing is to do, just ask a person who has never done it.”  It didn’t make much of a dent in his armor.

     Many years ago, Mad Magazine indulged in wicked satire.  One sketch I particularly remember was a guy who went through several panels where he was caught dumbfounded by something someone said.  In reaction to each incident, he told his wife, “What I should have said when he said that was. . . .”  Finally, his wife got tired of hearing the same phrase over and over again and angrily told him he was a dummy who could never think of the right thing to say at the proper time.  Once again, he was dumbfounded.  In the last panel, the couple was in bed, the wife blissfully sleeping, the poor guy, bleary-eyed and wide awake lying by her side, is thinking, “When she said that, I should have said. . . .”      

      I thought of something I might have told my doubting farmer-friend too late.  It was an incident from my youth.

     It happened in the early 60’s.  My grandfather, Papa, was living in the nursing home in Limon at the time.  We were having some kind of a celebration at our house that evening.  Papa was in attendance.

     I had spent the day riding a tractor, a John Deere 4010, which was a nearly new tractor at the time.  It had many new creature comforts for the time, a comfortable adjustable seat, super-sensitive power steering, controls located conveniently.  It lacked an air-conditioned cab.  It lacked an effective muffler.

      I arrived home, dirt covering me from head to toe.  My ears were still ringing from eight or nine hours of listening to the 4010’s exhaust.  I was tired.

     I walked in the door and headed for the bathtub.  Papa asked, “What have you been doing.”

     “Working,” I replied.

     “What kind of work?” he asked.

     “Driving tractor,” I replied.

     “Driving a tractor is not wo-rk!”  He stooped and frowned, looking at me through his bushy eyebrows, to emphasize the seriousness of my error.

      I looked at him.  He wasn’t joking.  I thought about protesting, but what was the use?  I suppose I might have been a lot more tired if I had been following a two-bottom plow pulled by a team of horses, after all.

      I took the bath and joined the celebration, but I was disturbed to know I hadn’t been doing a thing, not anything that could be called work, anyway.

     Sometime after the encounter with the teacher-deprecating farmer, I regretted not thinking fast enough to tell him he reminded me of my grandfather.  Since he spent a lot of time driving a tractor, having the shoe on the other foot would serve him right.      

      He might have asked if Papa ever drove a tractor.  I would have had to reply, “No, but what difference would that make?  You don ‘t have to do a thing to know how easy it is to do.”

      Driving a tractor is not work.  Teaching isn’t work.  It’s a bit humbling to know I have spent a great many of my waking hours in the last fifty-plus years doing things that aren’t work.  

      What a life!

Cottontail Discovery

  Warning:  The following contains material that may not be suitable for all readers.  If you refer to the supporting appendages of a table as its “limbs”, or if you are embarrassed or offended by discussions of bodily functions (not sex), you probably should refrain from reading this.

      This starts out nicely enough with a warm fuzzy:  cottontail rabbits.  But then it deteriorates abruptly.

      In past times, I have cursed cottontails.  I have threatened and raved against them.  I even went so far as to shoot at one who found his way through the web of wire lining the garden enclosure.   The .22 was not sighted in for the distance, about ten feet.  While the sights were carefully aligned on a dot above his nose and between his eyes, the slug passed between his ears, which flickered as the mini missile popped by.  He took off like the proverbial bat and leaped over the chicken wire mesh, and somehow, made it through the spaces in the metal rod panels that make up the fence.

      Another of Peter’s cousins who made his way under a wall into a machine shed wasn’t so lucky.  Though the wound was closer to the right eye than to the left, it was fatal.  I thought to myself as I carried the corpse to its final resting place where the coyotes could find it, this really wasn’t the way I wanted to conduct the war.  His offense probably didn’t qualify as a capital crime.

      I haven’t shot another one.  Not even when, late on a September evening, I came to the farm from Kansas in need of the ’80 Pontiac.  It wouldn’t start.  It had been sitting there since June, under a tree, close to the house. A day or two later, I found out why.  The rabbits had chewed a number of park plug wires in two.  How did I know the furry creatures were to blame, you might ask.  When I pushed the hood up, one jumped off the engine and took off running.

      In Kansas I had a dilemma, three vehicles and a two-car garage.  If I left the pickup out, the packrats chewed off vacuum hoses and injector wires.  If I left the Dynasty out, the rabbits chewed through the wires to the crank sensor.  Usually, they chewed the wire off close enough to the sensor so that I could not splice it.  The sensor cost $54.  I bought three of them.

      I would have gladly executed the offender, if I could have caught him.  I found a surer way of repelling the obnoxious critters—rabbit repellent.  Sprinkling the granules where the engine and transaxle meet, as well as on the ground under the engine compartment, kept them at bay.

     Lately I have discovered one thing that cottontails are good for.  No, not eating.  Tried that once.  Once was enough.

     This where it gets a bit indelicate.  Cottontails eat grass.  I discovered that they can be persuaded to eat a certain grass, a nuisance grass, say the grass growing in the iris patch.  Like many great discoveries, it came about almost accidentally.

     A couple of year ago, I noticed a place where there had been grass for many years.  The grass was gone.  There was even a hollow where the grass grew on the level.  There was no loose dirt as if a dog or other digging animal had dug there.  There was no dirt piled up near the site.  It was smooth earth formed into the shape of a shallow bowl. Whatever dirt had been excavated had been removed from the site.  

     It took a while to make the connection.  Not many people will understand this, certainly not most urban dwellers, and for sure, not many females from any jurisdiction. 

     It will take an outdoorsman, certainly most farmers, hunters, fishermen, foresters, maybe cross country skiers, and the like, to understand.  There will be a few of the fairer sex who will understand.  I know this because years ago, I subscribed to a farm magazine that specialized in sharing creative ideas from the readers. 

     One idea featured a picture of a tractor with a toilet seat attached to the side.  It folded up when not being used, and folded down for use.  The picture was submitted by a female tractor driver who found it inconvenient to answer nature’s call during her workday out in the back forty.  She had affixed the toilet seat to the tractor just for such occasions.  She didn’t say, but I bet it included a heated seat, judging from the seat’s close proximity to the tractor’s engine.

      My daughter once worked as a wrangler on a dude ranch where she took dudes on daylong rides with a picnic lunch.  Unfortunately, there was no washroom, no facilities.  Many of her dudes were ladies, who had to answer nature’s call squatting in the bushes.

     I think it was a French lady who mentioned and later sent to her a device designed to allow a lady to relieve herself standing up.  It was cleverly named a “she-he” or something like that.  I am unable to recall what it looked like well enough to describe it, though it was small enough to be easily carried on an outdoor trip such as a horseback ride.  I never tried using one.  Those who tried it swore that it did the job well enough.

      Yes, some ladies will understand, but by now, every reader should understand that what I am referring to is urinating outdoors.

      I don’t know many farmers who will walk twenty or thirty yards to the nearest comfort station, remove muddy or otherwise befouled boots, just to relieve himself.  Not to mention wasting two liters of water to flush a pint of pee.  It’s much faster and easier, more economical to find an out-of-the way place where he can complete his business modestly and be mostly unobserved.  Being creatures of habit, many outdoorsmen will find a favorite place for such activity.

       Now, back to the rabbits.  It was just such a place where the grass and some of the soil was missing, a place I had visited more than once.  The rabbits of course had left their calling cards, too.  It wasn’t rocket science to make the connection of rabbit droppings, chewed and missing grass and soil, and my contribution to the place.

     It was no problem to test the hypothesis.  I found a piece of grass that was out of place and out of sight.  Sure enough, after a few days, that anointed patch of grass was chewed down to soil level.  Telltale droppings were bountiful.  Hypothesis proved.

     Irises are not my favorite flower.  They are pretty and colorful for a week or so in May or June, then they are these blades sticking up in the air for the rest of the summer.  I much prefer tulips.  They come up as early as February when a person longs to see something green.   They bloom in March and April.  By June, they have dried up and gone away.  You can mow over their bed, no weeding necessary.

      I inherited an iris patch.  It is infested with grass that outgrows the iris blades every summer.  Pulling the grass out requires a lot of strength and effort.  I bought an expensive herbicide that is supposed to kill the grass and not harm the irises.  I have had mixed success with that product.  It takes some time to mix the product, spray the irises, clean out the sprayer and put everything away.  The irises are not worth the time and trouble, especially with the mixed results.

      Iris patch, rabbits willing to eat grass.  Hmmm.  Time to try another experiment.  The iris patch is somewhat exposed.  My desire to try further the hypothesis overrode my innate modesty.  I just have to be sure no one is around, not really much of a problem at the farm. 

     Hypothesis confirmed, redundancy, whatever the proper scientific phrase may be.

     Grass growth greatly reduced.  It remains to be seen how the irises react to the treatment.      

     Rabbits can be put to some useful task.  However, I have more than enough for the job.  Therefore, I would gladly entertain anyone who likes rabbit in their diet.  I can spare them.  Let me know and we can arrange a rabbit safari.

     I can certainly understand if anyone is reluctant to harvest these rabbits.  While they are grass fed, they certainly have ingested a supplement.  I’m not sure if they would be considered “organic”.  I doubt I will apply for organic certification.  The inspection could be embarrassing.        

     Caveat emptor applies in this case.   Just let me know when you would like to go hunting.               

The Wheat Conundrum

         This time of year, the wheat all should be looking like this:

         But instead it looks like this:

    The “bare” patches are filling in with weeds, lamb’s quarter, sunflowers, the usual harvest nightmares.  Since any chemical control is out if the organic status is to be maintained, one would have to swath the crop and pick it up with the combine when the green weeds have dried.

     In the past since I began this project of sod busting and being a clodhopper, Neighborly would be here to visit with and say what he might do and what maybe I should do.  But Neighborly took the walk into the next world, leaving me to grapple with farming decisions on my own.

     Visiting with his heir, I find that many of the neighbors have applied for crop insurance.  The insurance adjuster has determined what benefits the current crop deserves and has“released” it.  The farmers are now able to destroy the wheat and plant another crop.  They have destroyed the crop, either by spraying with an herbicide such as Roundup or by plowing it out. 

     Judging from past experience, the country will be filled with Prozo millet.  Further calling upon past experience, that means a huge supply of millet next fall.  That supply means a lousy price for that commodity.

     There are other millets that might not be so abundant, especially in the organic market, but no local buyer.  One would have to have bin room to store the crop until it could be moved to a further distant market.

     Lots of decisions to be made in the next few days.

     Meanwhile life goes on.  This year’s summer fallow is still too wet to disk.  The asparagus got off to an early start.  Usually, I spray it for weeds a week or two before it begins to appear, but it was ahead of me this year.

     Mother Nature to the rescue.  We cut three early batches.  The cold snap hit during the last week of April and froze everything that was above ground.  I cut off all the flaccid spears and sprayed the weeds.  The spears are once again erupting through the topsoil.  They can no longer hide themselves among the weeds.

I guess I had better go mow the lawn while I wait for the summer fallow to dry out.     

         

Conversations with a Three-Year-Old

 3yo:  Look!  A chainsaw!

Mom:  I don’t think so, honey.

3yo:  (approaching the man in his yard)  Is that a chainsaw?

Man:  (looking around from his work)  What?  Oh no, this isn’t a chainsaw (holding up electric     

            hedge clippers).

3yo:  What is it?

Man:  Hedge trimmer, electric clipper.

3yo:  What are you doing?

Man:  I’m clipping this hedge.

3yo:  Why?

Man:  (pausing to think) Well, I have to take out all the old dead stuff.

3yo:  Why?

Man:  So the bush can grow new branches and look pretty.

3yo:  How does that work?

Man:  (not understanding the question)  What?

3yo:  How does the trimmer work?

Man:  (holds up the trimmer, pulls the trigger a time or two)  See, these blades go back and

            forth and cut the branches.

Mom:  We probably ought to keep going.

3yo:  (To the man) Well, you better get back to work.  We’re going to the park.  Have a nice day.

Man:  That kid’s a slave-driver.

     On the way to daycare with the neighbor lady:

3yo:  Do you have any Kids?

Kay:  No.

3yo:  Why not?

 Kay:  I don’t know.

3yo:  I think you should have some.

Kay:  Well, I have you.

3yo:  That’s now.  What about when you go home?

Kay:  Well, I don’t know. 

3yo:  Who will help with the chores?

Kay:  I guess you have a point.

3yo:  I think you should go to the store and pick up one.

          Story-reading time before bedtime:

  

3yo:  You were trying to start the swather, you were trying to get the swather out (of the barn).

Me:  You remember that?

3yo:  Yeah, you were trying to get the swather started so you could drive it out so you could get

            the combine out.

Me:  That’s right, I was.

3yo:   You couldn’t get the swather started.  You should put the swather in (the barn) first.

            (Sniggers from the two females observing the conversation)

Female 1:  Shown up by a three-year old, eh?