Hot Dog!

June 12, 2022

Hello again,

Well, we finally solved the mystery surrounding Big R, our male outdoor ranch cat. Unfortunately, he passed and Erin found him in a drainage pipe in between our house and the boss's patio. We last saw him two Fridays ago in distress at our backdoor and then he disappeared on us again a few hours later before dark. We started noticing that all too familiar smell that animal owners get used to after enough years on this earth, and after scouring all the thickest parts of the rose patches and other tights spots, Erin found him about fifteen feet or so inside of the drainage pipe. At this point it became a recovery operation and I left work early and spent the rest of the day trying to get our little buddy out of there. I had to first undo some hogwire that had been screwed in place over the end of the two side-by-side pipes and then had to figure out how in the world I was going to reach in there that far. First, I assembled the stove-cleaning brush, which was long enough to reach him, but only managed to brush some of his hair off with the wire brush on the end. Then, I found a really long piece of PVC pipe, which I ran through a small piece of wood I had drilled a hole in, and then tried to use that to pull him back towards me. Again, it was long enough, but too flexible to move through the pipe well and the wooden piece didn't have enough heft to grab a hold of him. So, I then grabbed the rattlesnake stick and lashed it to a 12' extendable pole that Erin uses to clean the boss's house. I was able to get the grabber end right up to him, but couldn't close it enough to grab his back leg or tail. Then, finally, I Gorilla-taped together a small garden rake to a replacement rake handle to an old fencepost. At this point I had been working on this in the heat from about ten in the morning until four in the afternoon. All week, other than one day stuck in the 70s, we had one blistering day after the next in the mid to upper 90s and the smell that our old friend was creating was really something. We finally found him on Thursday and hadn't seen him since the Friday before, so we're not sure how long he was lying there, but it was a really dispiriting and nauseating day. So, with the last implement I reached him but was not able to maneuver his body back towards me. Finally, after messing around with that for fifteen minutes or so, I added the PVC pipe to the mix and then was able to slowly buy surely move him back a few inches at a time using both tools in tandem until I finally had him out and resting on a towel. I covered him with another towel and left him out all night so that Bootsie and the kittens could pay their respects and then first thing Friday morning I took him up to Boot Hill and laid him to rest.

So, in other news, we are about to have company again for the second time now since we've been out here. Erin's Dad, Ken, and his partner, Astrid, are trekking cross-country from Pennsylvania in an old conversion van with their dog to come and pay us a visit. They left on Friday and we're expecting them to roll in first thing in the morning, tomorrow on Monday. Last we heard a few hours ago, they were all the way to Tulsa, which is only about 8 or 9 hours away from us. So, we're very excited to see them and to show them around here where our new digs are. The boss is also away on a trip and so we have the whole ranch to ourselves for a little bit...just the fifteen cats, ten horses, five dogs and the two of us! Also, on the job front, we're getting ever closer and closer to finishing the boss's house and it's pretty much just down to the various subcontractors that need to come and finish things. Once we get some more flagstone I'll be helping Valentin cut them all down to size so that we can pound out three more patios. In the meantime, we're going to be demolishing a casita in Santa Fe so that we can build something new there and I'm finally getting summoned to come and help with this. The foreman has been threatening since the beginning of the year to send me to the two other jobsites that we have, but between all the delays and add-ons at the ranch here where I'm working and permit delays for the ones in town, nothing has changed until this week finally. So, I rearranged the trunk of my blue car and took out about half the junk that I had in it to lighten its load. I'm averaging 24 mpg in that 40 year-old car and I think I took enough stuff out of it to bump that up another mile or two! Also, Erin got me a little cooler to take my lunches with and I needed to make room so that I could hide it in there along with everything else I have. Everyone's looking for stuff to steal on jobsites in town, I hear, so I'm going to have everything I got hidden in the trunk of a beat-up old jalopy!

OK, now it's time for another batch of pictures from this last week at the ranch. First up, a couple of art pieces that I came up with: first, a shot of my muddy, flip-flopped feet; and, then, a lonely juniper(or cedar, as the locals call them) overlooking the area where I feed the horses. Then, four shots involving the cats: first, Bootsie and some of her kittens out front; then, a series of three shots showing the drainage pipe that I had to retrieve Big R from and the four different tools that I came up with to extract him. Next, here are five shots of the dogs: first, Rui showing us how to relax on a hot day; then, him chomping away on cattail roots in the pond; next, a shot of all three in the pond; then, Ela figuring out how to get a drink out of the horses' water trough; and, finally, all three gathering around it to get a drink while we we're out and it was in the 90s. Then, a shot of one of the chollas that have just started to bloom. Next, a flower that we saw while eating in at the Skillet in Las Vegas on their patio that really captured Erin's attention. Then, the ruins at the back of the boss's house. Next, a shot of me coming back from the north with Wagon Mound up ahead on the horizon. And, finally, my newly invigorated, reorientated and perfectly stocked trunk for my upcoming daily adventures doing construction off of the ranch! That's all for this time.

Be good.