Cow eyes and muskrat love

I was busily hanging a potted plant on the patio when I felt as if I was being watched. I turned around, and much to my surprise, there was a cow watching me over the fence. That, by itself, is nothing new. However the location was not the usual. The cow was in MY field. My first thought was "I know we've been talking about getting a calf to raise for meat, but did P go get us a full grown cow from somewhere?" Then I realized that was silly and there must be a hole in the fence, which would mean it was the neighbor's cow. There went my dream of barebqued steak dinners.

So I set out to find the hole in the fence. It was an 80 degree day (rare to be so warm this summer) and I had to don socks, boots and long pants to go bush-whacking. Off I go, the goats following me in curiosity. Or maybe they were scared of the cow and thought I would protect them. The cow really wanted nothing to do with me or the goats so it walked away from me, in what I hoped was the direction of the hole. Next thing I knew, the cow was on the other side of the fence with all her cow friends. I knew the hole had to be close by, and yes, there it was. Someone had cut the wire fence and the barbed wire a long time ago and the cow had just figured it out. Well, it would have to wait until P got home to help.

In the couple of hours between the discovery of the hole and P arriving home, the cow had brought 5 of her closest friends over and there were 6 cows in my field lounging around the chicken coop. The goats were not thrilled and neither were the chickens. My son asked me "why doesn't the rooster attack the cow?" Well the cow is an awful lot bigger than the rooster and he knows better than to mess with her. The cows went home, the fence got fixed and all was quiet....until I walked in the house.

The stench was horrible. Like a cross between fish fertilizer and dead carcass. I'd smelled that before. "Opal!" I called. Dog came running happily from the living room. Stench got stronger. "You smell like death! Get out of the house!" I kicked her out and went to tell P the dog had gotten into something again. He tells me to walk to the ditch and see if it smells like that. I do and run away as quickly as I can saying "That's the smell!" He informs me that is muskrat. Muskrat? We have those here? I've never even seen a muskrat. Now I understand the name. Apparently any place they hang out smells like death.  But how did the dog get into it since it was outside the fence? So we went inside and watched. Sure enough, she comes trotting out a few minutes later. Once we saw which direction she came from it was easy to find the hole. A huge gaping one. It would need to be repaired but we opted to deal with that the next day since it was dusk, kids needed to be put to bed and dog needed a bath.

Dog was NOT happy to have a cold bath in the hose in the dark. I was not happy to be administering said bath. Muskrat stench doesn't just wash out, you know. It takes several shampooings. So a quarter of a bottle of my favorite shampoo later (dog shampoo isn't strong enough for some reason) the stench became faint enough that I was willing to let her in the house. She shook, as dogs do, and then headed for the open door. "Nooooooo!" I cried, knowing that dogs shake more than once after a bath. And sure enough, she went straight to the kitchen and shook, spraying water all over the kitchen floor and counters. At least it only smelled faintly of muskrat.

~T