Come fair season, I get to indulge in a strange fascination that I have with watching cattle judging. Wayne doesn't share this interest that I picked up while taking classes in agriculture in the 80's; but if he tours the barns and watches a few showings while drinking a cola, he doesn't have to feel guilty checking out tractors or campers later on. I promise you, I am going somewhere with this though we might circle around the proverbial barn a few times getting there.
The farmer's business is death. I didn't come up with that thought, I read it once in a Hoard's Dairyman that my friend slipped into my tote at work. Farmers raise crops to harvest and animals are the same, only they are called livestock. I had a conversation with my daughter Abby about how I was having difficulty watching the COVID-19 stories where they showed exotic animal meat markets in China. I was having particular difficulty with dogs in cages offered for sale. Abby who eats nothing with a face remarked, "you eat lamb don't you? What's the difference?" Abby is never one to take it easy on her mother.
I once watched a necropsy on a ewe at a sheep conference in Grafton. The Veterinarian put the sheep down on an outdoor table. With farmers and people like me crowded around as he began his examination while discussing what he was doing, why he was doing it and what he was finding. When he was pulling out the entrails and holding them up I noticed the crowed had thinned substantially. Before the Vet had finished, I too had moved on to watch the Boarder Collies. It was eighteen years later that I ended the suffering of my first dog at a Vet's office. During the procedure I had to walk away to collect myself while the doctor waited patiently for me to return. She knew that I needed to be there even when at the moment I could not.
This winter the Dummerston Conservation Commission hosted the Vermont state bear biologist. During her presentation she was queried on her feelings over using dogs to hunt bear. It was clear from the framing of the question and their tone, that the person asking was opposed to the practice. The biologist said that she knew hunters who used dogs and that many were good people who cared deeply about conservation. She explained how hunters partnered with the biologists, using their bear dogs to help track the bears that were being studied. She reiterated that fishing and hunting license revenue also supported conservation.
In our neighborhood we have often been blessed with families of fox in the spring. I say blessed, but whomever owned those Rhode Island Reds I kept finding in my yard might have had a differing opinion. My neighbor who is a hunter developed a particular fondness for the family that denned up in the culvert under his driveway. Last summer we found turkey wings and feet, various parts of domestic birds and even a fawn's leg that was left for the kits to eat. This spring I had been keeping an eye out for their return but they didn't seem to be around. I had wondered if the farmer who owned those chickens had taken matters into their own hands. This morning my neighbor asked me if I had heard two gun shots yesterday. He said that another neighbor had called him about a sick fox in their yard. He said that the fox had lost all the hair on its tail and was encrusted around its face. They called the Warden who told them to put it down. He confessed that he was really upset at seeing the fox so sick and having to end its suffering. Here was this hunter who has many times shared his hunting stories with me, telling me about his grief over the loss of his fox family. I understood exactly his grief and so when he changed the subject to that Robin who he fed worms to yesterday only to get pooped on, I wasn't at all surprised. - Norma Manning
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| Pigs on the lamb on Route 5 |
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| Canada Geese frozen in the ice at Lily pond with breast meat removed |
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| Fawns leg left in my yard by the fox |
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| Wayne's dinner in Maine |
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| Rhode Island Red left in the road for her kits |
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