Dogs and Dead Things

A few days ago Shelly was walking the dogs along our gravel road (we never use leashes out here in the county; the dogs respond well to vocal commands when a vehicle is approaching) when they came upon a gruesome sight: someone had dressed out some animals and dumped the bloody remains in the ditch. While it’s disrespectful to those of us who live on the road, and I imagine illegal, dead things don’t last long out here. Rodents, turkey vultures and coyotes (including insects during the warmer months) make short work of most anything lying around outside. Recently I woke up to a note Shelly had left on the kitchen table. It said there might be a dead possum outside. The dogs and I went out to investigate and sure enough there was a possum just off the back porch on our sidewalk, and it was not playing dead. While Marley ran over to investigate, Steve was slinking away in the opposite direction. Marley had not seen it before, while Steve thought he was in trouble. That told me which one had killed it earlier that morning when Shelly had first let them outside. A bag of watermelon rinds sitting on the deck might have been what tempted the poor possum to come so close to the house. A strong rain storm blew through recently on a Sunday night and left the usual mess of branches and limbs from our white willow trees. During the couple of days spent picking them up the corn fields surrounding us were harvested, so we were able to start burning again. We still have brush piles leftover from last winter, so we are looking forward to having as many fall fires as we can before the hard cold sets in.