Wed, 27 Jul 2005

From 98° to 63°

Way too busy yesterday to blog - even though there were lots of interesting items to comment on, there wasn't enough time to properly write and post. So today will be a bit overloaded.

Tuesday's have been my regular egg route day since January - but yesterday was the biggest day of them all. Thirty stops in north Indianapolis as well as Boone County, delivering milk, bread and eggs. And the weather was miserable - the air temperature (by the barn lot thermometer) when I left at 9 am was 86°F - by the time I returned at 5 pm it was 98°F. The heat index was over 100°F most of the day. It felt like, well, there's really no analogy to what it felt like, 'cause there's no place on Earth quite like the American Midwest in high summer. Miserable says it best.

Before I left, the server that hosts all my sites had gone down due to a power outage - several customers trying to PayPal me the money for yesterday's run were stymied, and called, taking up more time, which is why it took until 9 to get outta here (I should've been gone by 8). But the server finally came back online, alas, too late for me to post any items here.

When I finally got home and went out to the barn to take care of the livestock, I stumbled over a most distressing sight: one of Kevyn's calves was down, apparently with bloat! This is not a good thing, so having called Kevyn, Kris and I attempted to get the little fella (little here is relative - he was probably up to about 300 lbs.) out of the direct sun in the stall and into some shade. That's when we noticed the stiffness.

It was almost like rigor mortis had set in - his legs would move but his knees wouldn't bend. His tongue would come out but his mouth wouldn't open. This wasn't bloat...

Once Kevyn arrived he immediately diagnosed the situation. When this bull calf had been steered (neutered) the bag had not detached as is normal. There was some flystrike, but worse, an apparent bacterial infection. It was tetanus - fatal. That was a loss I wouldn't have wanted to bear - imagine flushing about $3000 down a commode if you want to know how Kevyn felt when he had to put the steer down. And no salvage, either - we won't even feed our dogs possibly infected meat (even though USDA and FDA say it's OK). Sometimes good stewardship gets expensive.

Right after this was all over the thunderstorm warnings started popping up - which meant that the computers (and the phone network) had to be shut down to protect from lightening strikes. The storms continued most of the night - hence the utter lack of posts.

But I'm not complaining too much, despite my personal promise to myself to make at least one post a day for the month. You see, behind the storms a cold front was lurking - and it's currently 63°F. Relief at last!

So expect a few most posts today then normal - just catching up.

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