11/24/08

Firearms Deer Season

It's firearms deer season, so the goats wear blaze orange when they're out of the barn.

Alba adjusts her mom's neckerchief,

and Dodger tries to eat hers.

The chickens fend for themselves without protective clothing. If hunters have consumed so much Old Grandad that they can't tell fowl from cervids, blaze orange won't help the hens anyway.

The biggest event of late autumn for Dodger and Alba is their trip in the Rav Goatmobile

to the Langhorst farm, where they have a romantic rendezvous

with a handsome buck named Wayne

who wined and dined the girls for over a week.

Dream and Niblet get a little extra pampering for being left out of the fun.

An extra treat for Alba is getting her ear tattooed with her registration number.

She looks a little embarrassed to have the tattoo dye smeared all over

but consoles herself with a little more clover hay.

Back home, Dodger and Alba rejoin Dream and Niblet for their daily walks

and treats of corn on the cob.

The colors of autumn

gradually disappear

leaving a subtler palette and interesting atmospheric effects

especially on foggy and cloudy days.


The sunny days are deceptive,

as they're even colder than the cloudy days.

Light snows make walks on Red Oak Lane and Spring Lake Road a bit slippery,endangering Steve's new bionic hip,

but they're not nearly as unpleasant as the odor emanating from a neighbor's hay field, recently treated with

a euphemism for the already euphemistic "biosolids" trucked out from the Western Lake Superior Sanitary District treatment plant.

Spring Lake glazes over on cold nights

and then develops thicker and thicker ice,
as does the pond.

Barb switches to heated water buckets for the goats and chickens.

Not that the hens seem bothered by the approach of winter. They charge out of their coop each morning and prance around in the snow

except when they're down to business.