*I’m a full-time horse trainer who has written about horses (here) since 2010. My dogs think it’s their turn now.*
Apparently, I’ve started using voles to aerate my farm.
It amazes me how much the wildlife on my farm changes year to year. Some years we were absolutely flooded with rabbits. The last few years I haven’t seen one. There have been herds of twenty deer in the pasture, families of coyotes, dozens of migrating pelicans on the pond.
This year’s invasion is voles. The entire farm has been turned inside out. They’ve stayed out of the horse pens but have tilled the soil on either side of my driveway between the road and the house. From the amount of dirt piled up, the entire farm might implode. Poison isn’t an option. I trapped them as a kid. Not going back there. I decided on solar-powered sonic deterrents. Before I could locate some, the voles crossed the line into the backyard. We found a huge fresh pile of dirt with that faint circle that lets you know someone is close by.
Jolene stepped up. She believes the best defense is a good offense, so she began digging down to confront the vole. That seemed fair. When she had the entry just right, she sat about five feet away and waited. She continues to patiently stand guard.
This is who Jolene is now. She’s a dog that can walk past a pair of Crocs without running outside with one. She walks beside me and has a reliable recall. She is mature enough to take this rodent control job seriously. After so many intense months of relentless puppy play, Jolene is acting her age.
Mister and I look at each other and shrug. We’ve barely seen her all week. She is very serious about these intruders, out there every daylight hour, and it seems to be working. Now Mister and I have uninterrupted noodle time. We excel at sitting around and looking at each other soulfully.
I acted my age this week, too. There’s a long history in this country of women of a certain age taking on community work. As long as I have voted, and I’ve never missed an election, I’ve seen elder women at the polling place doing the necessary work. It still comes as a total surprise to me that I am that age, but I asked to be considered.
I did a bit of research on Colorado voting. It ends up that Colorado’s system is widely acknowledged for getting it right. But if you have doubts, sign up to work. The process has intricate circuits of checks and double checks. We have always been the country of free and fair elections, and seeing the back side of the process made me proud.
There’s some pretty serious training involved. In Colorado, each registered voter automatically receives a mail-in ballot, but they can bring it to a voting place, mail it, or use it at home to mark their choices and then come to a polling place to cast a paper ballot. Voters can register on election day, so we learn that procedure, too.
This process requires bipartisan participation. Whether it’s a red county or a blue county, both sides are equally represented. That’s one of the things that appeals to me: working with people from different parties who believe in the right to vote. There was a sprinkling of men in the group, and a few folks in their 40s. The majority looked like me. Half had worked previous elections, and some recognized each other like old friends.
We met in a government building for training. A full day sitting in a windowless room behind a computer learning how voting is structured. Your backside starts hurting about ten in the morning. We were given a handout of rules and procedures that ran over sixty pages. At first it sounds like gibberish, but once you learn the acronyms, it gets easier. Then we learned to use the secure computer software to search for registrations, check the voter in three places, and finally issue their unique ballot. We practiced each eventuality again and again.
In 1893, Colorado became the second state to grant women’s suffrage. It was 1920 when the Nineteenth Amendment was finally law. What can I say? I’m a politics geek. Recently, some extremists have suggested women should no longer have that right. It sounds far-fetched, but other rights have been revoked. I’ll stand guard here.
I’m convinced the process is solid. No one mentioned the recent attacks on the integrity of the midterm elections. No one needed to. They will have to get by a bunch of gray-haired women to wreak havoc, and one of them will be me.
Meanwhile, there is duck mucking to do. Mister would like you to know their poop is delectable. I think the ducks perpetrate olfactory crimes. I was raking up the unholy-smelling, murky substance that used to be straw. When I do this, the ducks stay in their little house while I shovel the stinky stuff out, leaving the door open to load my bucket. The pen is just the right size that it takes some coordination, especially on ground that is not only muddy but also slimy.
But now the ladies know they get turnout. For the first time, they ran out of their house, screaming and flapping. They didn’t shove me out of the way, but definitely caught me off guard. I was mid-shovel, and at a precarious angle. Not sure if the dogs were outside, I nearly panicked thinking of those long skinny necks and how Mister has behaved in the past around birds. It would have been a bad idea to scream, so I peered out and quietly said, Hey, Mister.
He turned and looked at me calmly. He was standing with the ducks, in a huddle by the fence. He said, I have your ducks here.
My first instinct was to grab him and get him in the house. Mister looked at me a little nervously, like he might be in trouble. I walked over, and he stepped away from the ducks. I started walking them back towards their pen and invited Mister to come beside me. Miraculously, he did. When we got to the door, he flanked them to the side, keeping a slow, deliberate stride. The ducks went in. Jolene sat in a lawn chair all this time, not remotely interested.
Mister is no saint. He still runs and barks at the sheep. He still threatens homicide to the barn cat every time he builds a monument to his poop mere feet outside of Mister’s yard. Being a rescue dog, I don’t know his exact age, but I see his body beginning to slow down. It was the first time he’s been able to hear my voice over his own excitement. It’s bittersweet. Mister looked at me like an aging Cary Grant. Gray around the muzzle but much too charming.
In hindsight, having the duck pen in the yard might have been ill-advised. Mister and the ladies spend a certain amount of time each day nose-to-beak. The ducks are mature now. Maybe they’ve become friends and will soon spend afternoons playing pinochle.
Expectations are too often wrong, and it’s easy to take time for granted. We need to keep up. The thing about aging is that everybody starts trading jobs. Youngsters become adults. Midlife creeps on. Elders look for help from younger folks. Some of us fight the norm, and some of us are content. We take on the tasks that others have done. We pay our good fortune forward. The pendulum of opinion swings one way and then the other. Who winds up with these ducks is hard to say.
We still have a choice about the world we want. Vote your conscience. Please, use your vote.
… #noai #humanart
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Women Aging Cantankerously
wow, I hate voles and how they tear up my property and other properties surrounding me. What a positive attitude to call it aerating! Still, I wasn’t sorry when I had to pull a flattened vole out of my Catahoula’s mouth the other day. And thank you for working the voting booths. I am not ready to sign up myself but I appreciate your patriotism and volunteerism. We certainly need that in our crazy world!
Call it making lemonade. Great breed for hunting voles… I would not shed tears either! Thanks for the kind words.
Thank you for your writings. I save them until I have time to sit, read with intention and feel all the feels.
Music to my ears. Thank you so much, Elizabeth.
Full of surprises, always, aren’t they? I’m sure Ruby would be delighted to share a shift of Vole Watch with Jolene on our next visit.
A vole play day. It doesn’t get better than that. Ruby, we’re expecting you!
SO impressed with Mister’s herding (???) the ducks! Hopefully he will continue to do so – since Jolene seems to have abdicated!
Congrats on helping folks vote! I KNOW I’m registered and we (myself & son) will be voting early a week from tomorrow. I sure hope and pray everyone else who can DOES!
Dont have any opinion on voles – possibly that’s what our neighborhood skunk was hunting the other night.
Mister says thank you, Maggie. And whoever is keeping voles away, is a friend of mine.
Thanks Anna for your civic work – not only does it help the community but it gives one a good feeling to contribute in an important way. In my early 50’s I worked the elections and actually became election warden – I felt like a kid then with all the age 70+ workers. Now I’m in that age brackett myself and funny, I’m not as old as they were! 😉
It was a good feeling being there. Good to be reminded what it’s all about. Thanks, Deirdre. I’m sure I was the youngest old woman there.
Thanks for standing guard of our rights. Too easy for them to slip away these days.
You’re right. Suffragists fought hard and our vote will be lost is we don’t pay attention. Thanks, Shaste
thank you for all you do…and good job Mister! ❤️
Mister says thanks. Me, too.
Such troubling times Anna!
I imagine working with the voting system produces some positive feelings, which are hard to come by at this point in our country’s history. Thank you for your contribution.
On the subject of voles, Bunji our cattle dog is a connoisseur. When we pick up our irrigation pipe at the end of the season, we have to restrict Bunji’s pasture time so she doesn’t OVER consume voles. Voles are to Bunji, as ice cream is to me.
We both need a twelve step program.
I definitely feel heartened by how elections are run, so that’s something.
But hey. Any chance Bunji could come help Jolene for a weekend? Maybe Bunji is better at calling them, and Jolene could get some tips. (You know I love your dog!)
I think hearing is her super power, and she has a highly refined leap and pounce. I’m certain Jolene will sharpen her skills rapidly and possibly surpass Bunji’s practiced skills due to Jolene’s youthful exuberance.
I’ll pass Bungi’s tips along.
Congratulations on your new job! It is such an important one. I am still working full-time, so I can’t do it yet, but I try to do my part by reminding all my 20-something co-workers of their civic responsibilities. Good job with the ducks Mister! Teddy would like you to know he would be happy to help Jolene with vole control, but the commute would be difficult with three-inch legs.
Well, Peggy, if it’s a job, I’ll be on it shorter than a press secretary! (I took time off my real job.) Jolene says her vole job will last longer!
When I filled some newly-self-employed extra time, I signed up for election training. You ain’t kiddin’ about the checks and double-checks! And the electronics. She started out with asking people to plug in the cable with the USB connection, which I did in 2 seconds (I’m a programmer) and watched as the decidedly grey group looked at the end of the cables as if they were a bunch of shoelaces. I helped a few. As we got into “click on the plus sign” kind of instructions, again I had to help everyone around me. It wasn’t encouraging. During a break, the instructor pulled me aside and asked if I wanted a job as an instructor; nope, the drive was almost 2 hours from home. Then she asked if I wanted to be a traveling tech support the day of the election. I investigated that, but I heard some horror stories and it’s a huge liability. And after all that, on election day they had too many people of “my” political party, had to scramble to find the “other” party, and I did nothing that day! I hope you’re able to help out on your election day!
Karen, this is disheartening to read! Sorry it was your experience. We had to have computer experience to be there and folks picked up the new software fairly easily. I am feeling confident, too, because I am in the minority party… all the more reason for me to be there. Hope the day goes well for all of us.
Good for you Anna – nice to hear of the checks and double checks from Karen and you!
Our early voting starts Saturday – my son and I plan to go on Sunday – assuming (hoping) that there will be a large turnout on Saturday!
Yesterday I made a trip to our local shelter and “met” a female Pyrenees mix – I believe she came from what sounds like a hoarding or cruelty case, along with her sister (since adopted) and multiple cats and dogs. She is very shy and, of course, stressed out from being in a kennel with all the noise and turmoil. She is to be spayed – soon, I hope – then I can bring her home, which I know won’t be easy, but with the quiet (relatively) here, she should settle in – in weeks/months.
I adopted Axle and Smurf(cat) from there but only met them in a room alone. Yesterday, went out into the kennels – all those dogs and puppies – too many with a deer in the headlights look – of course lots barking. Really just wanted to take her home then (cant till shes spayed) and next to her, a 9(NINE) year old bulldog mix – just standing there with the look so many of them had. And all those others. Can’t unsee it.
They have an adoption event this weekend to move out as many as possible because there is a shipment of dogs coming in from down South. Actually, that’s where my Suzie dog came from originally.
Sorry to be such a downer, but I doubt folks here are unaware. People who refuse to spay or neuter their dogs and cats, or people who dump them should be forced to “tour” these places, there are so many, and they are so full!
I have to add, this shelter does its job well – everything clean and well taken care of, many volunteers.
But just wish they werent necessary.
Maggie, I’m so happy to hear this. That’s a great mix and I’m sure she will be a good companion. Yes, some time for adjusting is always needed, but I know you will go slow and quietly help her settle. Just so happy for both of you. She’s got my vote!!
Thanks Anna I knew you would react this way.
I was wrong about where she came from, her owner (man) passed away and his girlfriend just couldn’t take care of 3 dogs (2 Pyrenees mix) and 6 cats. I think things must have been tough for a while – Sadie (new name) had to be clipped & de-flead etc. tested positive for Lyme so she’s on Doxy.
And I brought her home yesterday – which was a surprise and hadn’t gotten things together for her. The gal at the shelter had to literally pick her up (62 lbs) and put her in the back of the rav. She needs some pounds and not a big appetite. She has to go back – which won’t be easy – on the 5th for her spay. They have a facility right there at the shelter.
Thanks for your encouragement, Anna
Wow, glad she came home so quickly. And it’s a few good days before she goes back for the spay. She will know you by then. I bet she does great, once it all settles. A few pounds, a few walks with you. Happily ever after, Maggie. Sadie is one lucky pup.
After almost a week with Sadie – changed my mind about taking her back to the shelter to be spayed. Made an appt with my vet for initial exam 12/2 and will have her spayed there probably in January.
November 5th is way too soon to take her back there. So much scares her. Yes, its pricey, but??
So thanks for the encouragement Anna.
Mag
See? I knew it would work out for Sadie, if not your bank account. Thanks for giving her time to process. That’s the most important part of anything with animals. Great job already, Maggie.