Re: Nature\'s Critters
Von, that's right in many cases. We have lots of coyotes, but you usually only see one at a time and from a distance. They're very spooky since most folks around here shoot every one they get a chance to shoot. But a couple of years ago, in the middle of the afternoon, I was cutting hay and had 5 coyotes eating rats and mice in just one small patch of cut hay.
The funniest thing I've known of happening with "conditioned" animals in years was when a neighbor needed to move about 100 head of cattle about a mile and a half down a dirt road to another pasture about a year ago. There was about a half mile of that stretch of road that had no fence on one side, so he was afraid the cattle would stray off the road there. Now everyone knows that the easiest way to work cattle is on horseback, right? Well, he doesn't have any horses, so he hired two experienced cowboys with well trained horses and dogs to help move that herd. Well, none of us thought about the fact that his herd had never seen a man on horseback. When those guys rode into that pasture, that herd of cows scattered like a covey of quail. Some swam across a creek that they had never attempted to cross before, several ran through 5 strand barbed wire fences. Heck, those drovers on Rawhide have never seen such a stampede. In 10 hours there were 4 men, two horses, and two dogs worn plumb out, and nearly half the herd moved. The remainder took several days to round up from other folks' property, not to mention a few fences that needed mending.
Bird