by 
It is unusual to get significant moisture this time of year. Anywhere from a light dusting to an inch or two of snow is about all we can expect for January here on Planet SA. And we got that earlier in the month. But starting Saturday it rained and rained, then snowed Sunday night. Saturday the rain gauge accumulated an inch and Sunday it added another inch between raining off and on all day and snowing during the night. The snow was probably four or five inches deep and very wet. People in less arid parts of the country will think this is nothing to get excited about, but here on the High Plains, that much moisture would be noteworthy even in July. Falling in winter it won’t burn off and blow away as it generally does in the summer. The flora will get a good long sip and not have it disappear into thin air through their leaves.
Luckily the temperature never varied more than a degree or two and hovered around 32° so we didn’t have any problem with ice. Some of the trees got a layer of frost but the streets, when we ventured out which wasn’t often, were merely wet. Since it was a wet snow and Li’l r was out of school for MLK day, she built portly snowmen in the pasture after she got tired of snowboarding down the dirt mounds. By late afternoon the snow was gone except in the shady spots and even there is was disappearing rapidly.
There was a female belted kingfisher lurking among the trees around the pond Monday. I don’t remember ever seeing one around before but it was in a good fishing spot. There are lots of minnows in the pond and I’m sure they would make a tasty snack for an old kingfisher. Before sunup Monday morning I saw a fox trotting through the snow. Thursday I walked out of the shop headed for lunch and a fox, probably the same one, was in the enclosure in the area of the blackberry bushes. It seemed to regard me with mild curiosity but no alarm.
After such a charming and beautiful start to the week, things turned ugly on SA Tuesday. It was a cloudless, windless day and I wanted to take advantage of that to spray Roundup on some weeds. When I walked out of the shop with my backpack sprayer on I chanced to glance to my left and saw a couple of dogs getting after chickens on the north end of the pasture. I slipped off the sprayer and took off at full gallop to intervene. There were two medium-sized dogs, one black and one brindle, about the shape of pitbulls. When they saw me coming they took off toward the northeast corner where the black one scaled the fence and disappeared down the alley. The brindle couldn’t climb the fence and took off for the west side after a couple of failed attempts. I raced after it and it was trapped momentarily in the meadow but finally climbed the fence and escaped.
I didn’t have my phone so I went to the house and hollered at Joyce to call animal control while fetching my instructional tool. Then I headed out our gate to see if I could see the brindle dog. It so happened that it was in Quadrille when I passed the driveway into there. It wanted out but, thinking I had it trapped, I brandished my baseball bat and kept it from leaving via the driveway. Animal control took 40 minutes to show up and by that time the dog had found the drain at the back of Quadrille and was able to use it to get under the fence, or so I think.
The dog catcher said she drove through the neighborhood and looked in several yards but didn’t see the culprits. They killed one chicken and our one remaining guinea flew off the place. The DC said she saw a guinea in a tree when she was driving around but we haven’t seen the guinea since and aren’t likely to. It is too stupid to find its way home and wouldn’t last long staying out overnight.
The DC said we had the right to shoot dogs to protect ourselves and our property. She said APD might bark at us for discharging a firearm in the city limits but probably wouldn’t do any more than that. Trouble is, these kinds of things never happen when one has quick access to the appropriate remedies. Animal control isn’t likely to be of much help anymore than the police are if someone is breaking into your house. I don’t know if I would have shot the dogs if I’d had my shotgun handy but the chance I would is not zero. I just hope I put enough of a scare into the dogs that they never come back. If they do, it’s their owner I would really like to have a word with.