Pour Me a Double, Son . . . and Leave the Bottle.

WARNING: The F-word is used multiple times in the following post!

You know . . . .

Sometimes a girl has done all she can and just NEEDS to say, "You know what? I'll deal with the rest of it tomorrow."

Having said that (I've been sitting here for about 5 minutes since writing that above sentence), I just don't have the energy to continue.

But, I think it will help me process things if I do. Wouldn't be so hard to think if my body didn't hurt from top to bottom, tho.

(Mind you, these things ONLY happen when Tom's gone for the evening with friends.)

Oh, and a word to the wise: read no further if you don't want to see any f-in-heimers flying. I think it's warranted tonight.

So, we're having our March blizzard. I was going to go to Duluth today (3 hours away) - weather prediction and all (MUCH to my parents' dismay/disappointment). I knew I might be kept away from home overnight if I got caught . . . but there are enough friends who I could call on to offer me a couch for the night. So, I wasn't too worried.

But, after packing the car and getting ALL ready this morning (I even had perfume on!), I ran to water the chickens and stoke the furnace last thing before I left. During this process, I always (almost automatically now) go into the garage to make sure all's A-OK with the electrical system. It wasn't. The system was belly-up again.

BUT, that's not even what I'm writing about, and I don't have the energy to explain all of that. Long story short, I couldn't / didn't go to Duluth today. Which is just as well because, had I, I always would have been sooooooooooooo angry with myself for not being home to prevent what happened tonight.

As it was, I was home, and it happened anyway. (But I wouldn't have known that had I gone.)

When I went to close up the chickens tonight, I found a massacre. An absolute fucking massacre.

However, I do now know what reaction any of you (and I - ha!) can expect if I find myself in a completely horrific, uncontrollable situation again. I double over and SCREAM bloody murder. (Actually, I scream the F-word.) Then I say "Oh, my god; Oh, my god" over and over for about 5 minutes. Then I shut up and get to work.

That little, f-ing (sorry, Mom, but I warned you!) pine marten absolutely SLAUGHTERED my chickens. When I said in that earlier post "It's War"? Yeah, well, that's when I thought this was just a cute little wild critter who I would allow to take one chicken or two because s/he was hungry. But there is NO excuse for mindless killing. Not eating. Just killing and leaving them.

I am just . . . I dunno. Done. So, so done. I did not need this. Not right now.

So, at 12:45 AM, I am in from about 3 hours of cleaning up the chicken yard, tending to injured birds, shooting into every hole the pine marten left in the hopes that he's in there, and baiting the trap - yet again. Oh, and did I mention that we're in a blizzard? Temperatures are in the single digits. The snow is over my mukluks. I had to come in twice to change my pants. I didn't count, but about half of my flock is gone. Not eaten - just necks broken. Just for the f-ing sport of it.

The snow's so deep that I even had to put on snowshoes to retrieve Talulah, the goose, and three of the ducks. When I fell through w/o snowshoes on, my entire leg was sunk.

Then, when I was out in the woodshed cutting up one of the dead hens to bait the trap with, one of the (only) two birds I couldn't get to (Pearl in a tree and Bob Marley wayyyy under the chicken house) let out a horrible squawk. I grabbed the .410 and ran through the snow, but it was too late. Bob's neck was broken, and he'd been pulled halfway out from under the chicken house.

Tomorrow, after plowing us out from this blizzard and if the weather is decent (and he's not in the trap I set tonight), I am going to sit in a chair in the chicken yard, .410 in hand . . . and wait. Nobody's going outside again until that thing is d-e-a-d. Sorry, but that's the way it is: he's worn out his welcome.

I never really "got" why ranchers hate coyotes so much. After all, they're so pretty! But now I get it. I totally do. Pine martens are our coyotes.

(P.S. Sorry if I've offended anyone, but sometimes The Simple Life ain't pretty . . . and I didn't feel like sugar-coating it this time.)