Life on the farm

Aside from roadkill, we have been having lots of animal interaction. The first day we were in New Mexico, I was riding along the farmland and came across a lady on a quad, chasing two bulls. She was doing a mini-roundup. But gingerly. Each time she got close to the bulls and tried to urge them toward the gate, she was quite bold until one of them looked at her or turned toward her. Then she would quickly back off.

As I started to pass, she yelled to me, “Hey, could you open that gate across the street for me?” I looked over, and it was a gate just like at my friend Bronwyn’s house. So I went over and opened it. She yelled thanks and I watched her wrestle with the bulls some more. It looked to me like one side of the road was a giant field with a fence and a gate and the other side of the road was another giant field with a fence and a gate. By “giant,” I mean that you couldn’t see the ends of these fields on any other side.

So I would have left the two bulls where they were, if it were me.

Peter also has been having a lot of cow herding experience. The past week, in Texas and Oklahoma, each time we see a herd of cows at the fence, Peter yells, “Moo” at them. He just moos and moos. The reaction is almost always the same. The cows look at us and look at him for about a minute or less, and then they all turn and run. Then Peter yells, “Did you see that? I caused another stampede!” So, Peter gets to feeling like he’s causing cow movement.

Every day we see lots of dead snakes. Most are squashed flat by trucks, but some look like they’re still alive. Yesterday, Peter swerved to miss one and it jumped into the grass to get away. He swore that it was five feet long. I missed it. BUT, about an hour later, as I was making up a rap version of “Road Garbage Litany,” I saw a small brown snake jump away from my bike. It gives you a thrill.

We also saw our first dead armadillo, which was sad.

Turns out in Oklahoma, you can hunt turtles. The limit is six per day per person, so they must be plentiful.  But you can't shoot them.  Consequently, we've started seeing dead turtles on the road.

Oklahoma is the Windy State.  We don't like wind.  Peter thinks we should vote Oklahoma off the island.  Seems like the wind is one of the reasons we couldn't find many biking routes through the state.

Since leaving Arizona, we haven't seen much effort at recycling.  It seems weird to not be able to find a place to deposit cans and bottles at least, but you can't.   Also, there aren't many places in Oklahoma so far to get an Internet connection.  So, we have to publish our blog updates when we can...

We slept in the ghost town of Elmwood the other night.  It was spooky and there was a dog on the roof of an old broken down building across the street from us.  Alana spotted some kids and went to talk to them.  She asked, "How does the dog get on the roof?"  The boy answered, "Easy.  He goes out the winda on the balcony."  Of course.   His name is Chester.  The dog's, not the boy's.