Snapping Turtle

Since moving Owen has seen much more of the turtles here than I have, probably because I usually have two noisy barn dogs or a loud meowing barn cat following me around.  For months I even teased him that the big snapping turtle he claimed to see was his imaginary friend!  Owen claimed to see it from his office window in the pond and in the grass.  We do appear to be living amidst a turtle thoroughfare, as they are frequently walking between ponds and through the pasture.

The dogs and I see plenty of little box turtles on our travels to and from the barn, which are perplexing for the dogs.  Is it a rock?  Is it a ball?  Is it another animal?  So many confusing options.  However, neither the dogs nor I had seen the turkey-platter sized snapping turtle yet.  

Finally when I was getting the truck unloaded from grocery shopping and a run to the feed store I saw the snapping turtle!  Since it was so hot the dogs weren't with me as I didn't want to cook them in the vehicle, which was just as well since the poor turtle looked like someone had been trying to chew on him with some raw and injured parts on the front of his shell.  I ran in the house and got my good camera, and also took a little video with my phone.  

I was impressed with how prehistoric the turtle looked.  It had a very dragon-like physique, with dorsal points on its tail and small leathery protrusions on its legs and neck.  It's certainly the largest turtle I've ever seen in real life!  

Here is the video of the turtle walking down the hill towards the pond.

 

One more video I got recently was of the Fowlers Toads.  They sound like sheep!  The first evening we heard them and honestly thought someone’s sheep had gotten loose and were at our place (a not unlikely occurrence in Colorado!).  We followed the sounds to the pond, then looked them up online and discovered the source was these toads!

Beautiful Evening

 

Good evening from Bit of Honey!  It doesn’t get much more idyllic than this.

Rolling in the Deep

While I was mowing the fields this morning with the tractor Note and Highboy decided that they would enjoy a good roll in the freshly mowed grass.  Highboy is wearing neon orange fly boots to minimize the bites on his legs, which looked extra humorous as he was upside down flailing his legs around in the air enjoying his roll.  

Then it was Note's turn to have a good roll.  These horses sure enjoy their life here!

I've been moving horses around a little bit because of the mowing and needing to rest the pastures, so Miss Pea and Dewey went out into the arena field for the night.  They frolicked and ran and bucked and played....  for about 30 seconds.  Then they settled into grazing after visiting with Raven and Daisy over the fence.

 

 

Green Green Grass

 Dewey looks like he's truly enjoying the afternoon sunshine on his face in his green field. 

 

This was our evening walk, usually I take Rizzo and Pascal out after I'm done feeding the horses.  There's usually a lot of shenanigans, and Rizzo actually walks better on a harness than with the leash attached to her collar.  If I keep one of them on a leash the other sticks pretty close by, they still will wander farther than I'd like if they're both off leash and I'm not on a horse.

Ride with Highboy

 

I'm recovering from covid and finally felt up to riding a little this morning.  I've been really sick for just over two weeks, and only narrowly avoided having to go to the hospital because I was vaccinated and boosted, and I had inhalers and a nebulizer at home to manage my asthma.  Whatever variant I had was no joke!  So far Owen has avoided testing positive but he definitely has been fighting something over the past few days.  He was a rockstar and took care of all the horses for me when I was too sick to even walk to the barn. 

This photo does a good job illustrating how sore my shoulders are.  I'm still a little achey from being sick, and recently learned that I also have nerve impingement in my shoulders.   Looking at the photo you can tell because my shoulders are curled so far forward and lifted up.  Thankfully, Highboy is ignoring this about my posture and is happily stretching at the trot anyway.

After we rode in the arena for a while Highboy and I went for a brief trail ride with the dogs.  I love how the light and focus came out in this shot from my cell phone!

Rizzo always loves a good trailride - here she’s politely asking, “Can we go now?!”

Big Wildlife

 The wildlife here is BIG.  Several weeks ago I saw a very tall and stocky coyote, and discovered that the coyotes here can get to 80lbs.  By comparison the biggest coyotes we saw in CO were around 40 lbs, or the size of Pascal. 

Tonight Owen and I were outside with the horses and Dewey and Miss Pea were very alarmed.  They were honking and snorting and prancing along the fence line while staring towards the pond.  When I looked over from my stance at the barn to see what they were going on about I saw the largest black bear I’ve ever seen in person!  

It was easily half the height of one of my big horses, and very thick built.  The black bears I’ve seen in the west were always just a bit larger than my 70lb dog, but this one made those look minuscule.  After finishing its drink from the pond it casually lumbered off into the nearby woods.  Now that Dewey and Miss Pea have pointed it out I guess I can no longer scoff at Highboy and exclaim “they’re just deer!” when he says there are large predators in the woods.