Sunday Salutations and Sheep Ranch Critters

Tod on the blog this week. Our question this week is: what incredible experiences have you had that unexpected taught you something you didn’t expect? Not something huge – but just a little fact about the world.

We spent this weekend at our friend’s sheep ranch in North Texas. Coincidentally, this is the setting for the next novel we are writing, sort of. It was relaxing and fun. Anna had never visited while everything was green. Normally, we travel up here during the winter, when everything is brown and the trees are bare.

We were greeted by the barn cat, who thinks she’s a bat. She’s super friendly, especially considering she’s an all-outdoors working cat.

She brought her adult kittens to meet us. They’re a lot more standoff-ish than their mother.

But momma cat likes to keep an eye on things, and get all the scritches she can get.

From the cats, working our way further into the ranch, we have a bunch of dragonflies hanging out in the watering hole. I’m going to have to check out my Texas’ dragonfli when we get home, to identify these.

One really awesome event happened at the watering hole. I was on the land bridge between the two halves of the watering hole. Suddenly, from behind, I hear a roaring noise, like a jet fight was flying right behind me.

I turned and a trio of teal ducks were coming in for a landing. They hadn’t seen me. They turned rather than landing on the water, and literally roared away again. I was really impressed by the experience. The noise was such that if you didn’t know better, you might think ducks were jet powered, which might be a new type of alien for our Nano-sapiens universe.

And of course, there are the sheep. I know for many young animals, proper minerals are important for development. But I think adding iron via this method is discouraged. We also went into the pens to see a pair of lambs born last night.

I had another neat experience inside the sheep pen. A small flock of a dozen or so sheep were trotting across the pen nearby. The pounding of their cloven hooves was much louder than you would expect. You could hear and feel them moving. I imagine a herd of cows, larger and heavier, would be intimidating to be in the path of, even if they were just moving to where you wanted them to be.

And right next to the sheep were Anna’s favorites – the puppies. We immediately found the future Jack Russell Terrier manager. He had his arm up and was taking his ease while the other puppies ran about their business.

We also made it in time for lunch for the much younger batch of puppies.

And at the back of the ranch, we have a trio of birds. First a water bird that took over Turtle Rock. In other times of year, the water is higher and turtles can get on top of the rock to sunbath.

Life and death are both part of running a ranch. I got this picture of a turkey vulture flying overhead. The vulture’s red head, from which it gets its name, can just be made out in the picture.

And turkeys are also slowly returning after the big freeze from several years back. We saw a turkey hen at a distance near the back fence.

Finally, it was still cool enough to enjoy the gorgeous sunsets while we were here.