Trego's Mountain Ear

"Serving North Lincoln County"

Tag: adventure

  • Not Made in This Millennium

    I have the habit of looking for low mileage older cars. That’s why my two main rigs weren’t made in the 21st century. The Talon is a 1995 with 65K miles on the odometer. The Suzuki Vitara is a 1999, that has just rolled past 90K. My last trip out with it, in the darkness before 8:00 am, and with bright lights close behind me, I clipped a deer’s right hind leg – cracked the edge of the plastic grill and left a small dent in the right fender. I don’t enjoy denting my cars – particularly when lights from the rear, close to my bumper, are a fellow driver’s way of saying I should speed up in deer country.

    My wife drives the “new” car – it’s a 2009 Chrysler PT Dream Cruiser – built in this century. It has a device to tell when the air pressure in a tire gets low. It reported a lot of low tire pressure – I had to inflate the tires to 40 psi to turn the light off. Then I started researching. For the car to monitor tire pressure, it takes a small battery operated device in each tire. After 16 years the batteries probably are a bit tired. I can get new sending units, with new batteries through Amazon for $16 each. I suspect that to make things work right I probably need four for the summer tires and four more for the winter tires. That’s $128 plus the cost of taking each tire off the rim. For years I’ve made do with a tire pressure gauge. I’m still making do with a tire pressure gauge, but I have an annoying light on the dash – not to mention tires that were ran overinflated until I figured out that it’s another spot where modern technology and I aren’t particularly compatible.

    It got me to realizing – I drive cars that were built in the previous millennium. Not just the previous century, but the previous millennium is just as accurate, and shows that I am definitely driving old cars. The state of Montana thinks that because of my advanced age they only need to give me a drivers license that’s good for four years at a time. The bastards may be correct.

  • The Christmas Goats

    The things I don’t know about goats would fill books. But it has been great watching my community spontaneously move into action, small group by small group to do something about two shaggy goats that moved onto the Ant Flat Ranger Station just in time for the Christmas season.

    In some ways their rescue was a bit of a comedy – first the challenge was finding the owner who had lost them, then the assumption was that they had been abandoned. Then the explanation – they had been wandering on their own for most of the year. Renata and I drove down to see them – the long, shaggy coats testified that they had been on their own for a long while. When I stepped out of the car and walked toward them, they ran around the building – but when I turned back to the car, they followed. However long they’ve been on their own, the pair remembered that humans are good creatures.

    And I watched the informal organization on the Trego, Fortine, Stryker Facebook page. First it was folks searching for an owner, folks bringing goat snacks to the old Ranger Station. Then the annoyance at animals being abandoned – and finally the individuals coming forward with determination, a pickup and horse trailer to rescue the goats.

    The rescue didn’t go smoothly – one goat was captured and hauled to a safe place – which left the other alone. Some of the folks who had been following the goats started to chime in on the errors. Now I wasn’t part of the rescue – or of the critics of the rescuers – but there is a little that I do know about goats:

    First, goats are herd animals. A lone goat is not a happy goat. Same as cows and horses, they are social animals. Second, goats are easier to catch when you let them catch themselves. Third, a goat’s pupils are different than ours – they’re kind of like horizontal rectangles. It makes for absolutely fantastic peripheral vision. The book tells me that, without moving their heads, they can see in 340 of a circle’s 360 degrees. A cat’s vertical pupils help the cat to succeed as an ambush predator. The goat’s horizontal pupils make them downright difficult to ambush or sneak up on.

    Facebook reads like the second goat was captured by a couple of women who brought their own goat along – demonstrating to him that they are trustworthy. The photo shared on Facebook showed some pretty respectable ropes around him after he had been caught.

    But the story isn’t about the goats – the story is about the high quality of our neighbors. These are people who will go the extra mile because a couple of goats don’t have a home. These are the same people who will rescue kittens and elderly dogs – in spades. I live in a good neighborhood with good neighbors. I didn’t see anyone calling on the government to fix the problem – I saw people who observed animals in distress, chose to act, and by the time they were done, two goats have a home for new year. They may have been homeless at Christmas – but my hat’s off to the neighbors who took the initiative to get the goats a home for their future.

  • Merry Christmas to All

    I’m accustomed to white Christmases since I was ten years old. Admittedly, I spent a few Christmases south of a projected Mason-Dixon line – but it was at 6,000 feet elevation. Most of the time, as I recall Colorado, I remember that mountains are neat, but altitude sucks. There, I lived at 6,000 feet and looked out at Fisher’s Peak (9,633 feet). Driving north, I’d see Pike’s Peak (14,115 feet). Here, I live at about 3,200 feet and look at Mount Marston (7,340 feet). Life is good – lower elevations, like Libby and Troy have the flooding. My challenge is that nature leaves me firewood and logs to cut and move.

    This year, with wet soils and high winds, we’ve had a lot of blowdown – which will give me plenty to do next spring and summer. The Douglas fir has generally pushed over at the roots, while the Ponderosa pine have tended to snap 20 or 30 feet in the air. The larch, with their needles dropped for the winter, generally stand undisturbed. The leave tree selection will be larch first, P. pine second, D. Fir third. I think the spruce are pretty much gone, but I will try to save the one remaining aspen.

    This Christmas is above freezing, despite NOAA’s projection of cooler than normal. I see a couple of goats down at the old Ranger station – when I stopped to complete my doubletake, they approached the car – I think the message they were trying to convey was “We’re a pair of really nice, really cute goats, and we’re feeling abandoned.” Empty handed, they left me my space – but I think they would have followed me home if I had a bucket and some oats. I note that someone has rescued one of the pair – hopefully they’ll get the other soon. A single goat is a lonely goat.

    On the 23rd, there was a two vehicle wreck, with injuries up above us on Fortine Creek Road. Like Highway 93, we have a lot more traffic now than years back, and it’s the same road as it was in 1967.

    Anyway, Merry Christmas, and a Happy Easter Bunny to all.