How not to end a day at the beach

…and here I thought I’d have nothing to write about until the goats came.

Sunday was supposed to rain and be altogether miserable around these parts and since it’s been like that for a few weeks now anyway, there was little to suppose things would change.  It was a pleasant surprise, then, when we found ourselves under a clearing sky on Manitoulin Island, awaiting some friends.

We had planned to meet our friends for the day, most likely for a few hours at a nearby and all but secluded beach and then some lunch.  The day unfolded pretty much as expected and we had a great time.  Lunch was good, too, and, as it always seems to happen, the day had disappeared.  Just like that.  It was time for us to head home: dogs and chickens both need to be fed and the chickens needed to be put away, lest we encourage more unwanted predation.  We said goodbye to our friends at 16h00 and drove from Mindemoya to Little Current and off the Island. 

Hunter walking me through the waves.  I had to hold her hand or they’d have carried her back to shore.

I wonder what she’s looking at?  Maybe it was the big crayfish claw she found on the beach.

Here’s her Glamour Shots pose. 

Of course Gilligan came.  He had a blast with the two other dogs but was unsure how to act: “Do I keep an eye on my family or go have fun with the the dogs.”  In the end, he had fun, but kept glancing over his shoulder, just to check on us.

Around 17h00, as we were nearing the Willisville hill - known locally for some pretty bad accidents - a police officer sped past us with lights on and siren echoing off the rock walls that framed the road.

He was gone over the hill and around the corner so fast that we knew this was more than a case of the last chocolate dipped donut being sold or a shift change.  We drove on, and were relieved to see traffic still coming towards us, even after fifteen minutes after being passed.  No road closed due to an accident.

A quick stop in Espanola for a coffee - we didn’t see the police officer there, by the way - we were back on the road by (and this is important) 17h20.  We reached the Trans Canada Highway (that, too, is important.  The name of the highway, that is) and turned East to go home.  We noticed that the Wendy’s/Tim Horton’s parking lot was suspiciously full and that for a long weekend there were not a lot of vehicles travelling West as we drove East.  And then, around the corner and just past McKerrow, we ran into mile after mile of parked cars, trucks and transports.   There had been an accident.  The highway was closed.

It was pretty evident that things had been at a stand-still for some time: vehicles were turned off and people were out on the highway milling around as though the parade was expected any second.  Jenn saw a family walking toward our car on their way back to their house, presumably, and she stopped them to ask if there was any other way around this line of cars.   We were told and appraised by the man that there was indeed a way around.  The appraisal came when he eyed our little car and said “…they’ll make, eh, hon?” to his wife. 

The way around was an old railbed that had been taken over as a snowmachine trail.  The man said that some cars had already gone that route.   “You may bottom out in some spots.” he advised.  We thanked him and then Jenn volunteered to go check out the trail, just to make sure that bottoming out was all we did.  Half an hour later, Jenn came back and said what I expect we both knew already: “It’s no good.  It looks pretty rough and there are about twenty cars stuck in the swamp.” 

Jenn was able to find out more about the accident while she was surveying the trail, though.  It was an accident between a motorcyclist who was also an off-duty police officer, and what was thought at the time to be a vehicle that left the scene.  The motorcyclist was killed.  At first Jenn had heard that the highway wouldn’t be opened for another four hours.  Up to this point there hadn’t been a report on the radio and nobody but the rumour mill had any comments or information about the accident.  We opted to turn around and go back into Espanola to wait it out.  As we were leaving we met a group of people who had stopped an officer in his car and were asking some questions.  It was then confirmed that the highway wasn’t expected to be opened until 06h00 - it was now close to 18h30, maybe a bit later.  People had been sitting at a standstill since 15h30.

I don’t think I need to explain how packed the motels and hotels in the area were: people stood in lineups at each one just to be told that there was, as the sign said, no vacancy.  The parking lots at the Canadian Tite and grocery store began to fill up with RV’s, vans and buses.  The parking lot out at the highway became full to capacity several times over as people prepared to spend the night in their cars or on the buses. 

We did the same, although we opted not for the packed parking lots but rather a staging area for snowmachines down a Crown Land access road I knew of.  We stopped off at a convienience store and bought some snacks, a deck of cards, matches and some marshmallows.  Hunter was pretty eager for her campfire and surprise camping trip.

Our so-called campsite.

Jenn builds a ‘cooking fire.’  By the size of it, I ought to have dragged home a moose or something.

Hunter expounds on the delicacy that is the toasted (or in this case, burnt) marshmallow

 

Gilligan chews his Dentabone, making sure that I won’t take it.

Hunter and Jenn talk by the fire.

We went for a walk with Gilligan, we built a fire, we looked for frogs, and finally, we piled into the back of a Ford Focus wagon with the seats down and taught Hunter how to play “Go Fish.”  She had had a long day and we didn’t get a lot of hands in before she was barely keeping her eyes open.  The three of us decided to get some sleep. 

At around 23h00, I decided to try the Espanola Police Services number to see what the situation was like.  I called (yes, damn it, we have a cell phone) and was told that the highway had been opened to one lane and was letting small vehicles through.  Eager to be on our way, we tried to re-install the car seat in the car for Hunter, re-arrange everything in the dark and buckle Hunter in without waking her.  Then, we drove back out to the highway, only to see a pair of officers and an over-abundance of traffic cones blocking east-bound traffic.  Still.

Since we were at an intersection, Jenn asked one of the officers if the road was still closed.  “Yeah, it is.”  he said.  Talkative, this one. 

“For how long?” Jenn asked.

“At least two more hours and then we have to clear seven miles of cars ahead of you before you can go.” says Gruff cop #1.

“Well, your office said that the highway was open.  We woke up our daughter to come out here.  We need to get home to take care of our animals.” Jenn said.  Still civil.

“Not my problem.” This, again from Espanola’s finest.

I stared.  My eyes wide.  I thought ‘oh, you didn’t just say that, did you?  My god, man, what have you done?’

“NOT MY PROBLEM?!  What you mean to say is that your uniform and badge are largely ceremonial and that you are not important enough to be given any real powers or authority, which is why you are standing here, in the middle of the night, while the real work is being done elsewhere.  You take what little control you do have and put out your cute traffic cones and have a tantrum like a tin pot dictator!” says Jenn.  On the inside.  On the outside, she says: “Of course it isn’t your problem.  What can you do to help, anyway?” I’m pretty sure the sarcasm was lost on him.  Before we were ticketed or otherwise detained, I started to roll ahead. 

We waited another hour and a half before we were allowed back on the road and then we sat in a line of cars for another hour until we achieved something close to steady movement.  We finally got home at 03h30 Monday morning.  

How can police close the only East-West route for eleven hours?  The “Trans Canada Highway” as it’s known.  The two options for us to get around the accident was to go either up to Chapleau and then to Timmins and south or to go back to the Island and try to catch the last Ferry to Owen Sound and then drive home from there.  Either option would have had us home before 03h30, but in both cases it would be an extra six to eight hours of driving.  I understand the need for an investigation, but that doesn’t take eleven hours and if it does, maybe the investigators need to be replaced.  Several years ago, a truck full (honestly a truck-full) of explosives tipped over and blew up.  It put a crater in the same highway big enough to lose several trucks in.  Foundations of homes up to five kilometers away suffered damage.  How long was the highway closed?  Six hours.  On the very same highway, not ten kilometers from this latest accident, people we know were involved in a fatal crash.  Two people in the other car died while the third was in hospital with life threatening injuries.  How long was the highway closed?  Four hours. 

There is no excuse to have a major road with no detours closed for that long.  One lane of traffic should be open.  I don’t say this for selfish reasons, either, because our dogs were fine and so were the chickens - we had made arrangements for them when we knew we wouldn’t be home.  What about the people travelling to Sudbury for medical treatments, or the two trucks full of cattle we saw that were stopped.  They were not even allowed to go when we were.  They still had to wait.

The highway was closed for eleven hours because the person killed was another cop.  It is tragic that anyone had to die in the accident, especially in an accident where the passengers in the other vehicle - which didn’t leave the scene, as it turns out - only received minor treatment at the hospital and were then released, but it is irresponsible to delay several hundred, if not a thousand or more, people just because it was “one of their own.”

Jenn and I were mostly understanding about the delay until Officer Ramrod decided to blurt out his “not my problem” line.  I don’t have much respect for the sort of ‘authority’ that condescends to the people it is supposed to serve and protect.  It’s no wonder the status of the cop has been undermined; look at the jerks they have dealing with the public.

Oh, and mister officer sir, if you see a black pick up truck with a white topper on it, keep on going.  It’s not me.

“That’s all.  Bye!”

A fatal case of lead poisoning

MARKSTAY - In a tragic turn of events, a raccoon suffered a fatal dose of lead earlier this week while marauding for chickens.  Sources close to the event say that at about 22h00 Wednesday a raccoon was seen skulking around a chicken coop.  Measures to deter the nocturnal activities were in place, but the animal avoided all such traps and went so far as to mock the trap-setter by stealing bait from one of them, as well as two Chukars.   A patrol of the vicinity noticed the missing bait and un-sprung trap and took appropriate measures, replacing and rebaiting the trap.  A minor injury to the hand of the patrol was suffered when the Conibear 330 was accidentally released, closing on the hand of the person on patrol.   An eye witness to the story reported that approximately an hour later, a solitary dog, known to the locals as Ruby, alerted the night watchman to some nefarious activity and, upon following up on the report, the night watchman confirmed the presence of a raccoon.  With eyes burning orangey-yellow in the beam of the headlamp, the trapped animal growled at the night watchman and it was shortly after this display that it ingested the lead pill.  Unvoluntarily, by all accounts.  Members of the raccoon family are encouraged to stay away from chickens, and to be on the lookout for brass-encased lead pills, often referred to as “.22 shells” or “bullets”.  It is thought that with the culmination of this latest episode, the Chicken Predator gang has had it’s last member accounted for. 

The brass-encased lead in question.  Notice the casing on the right: this is what it looks like after the lead has been taken internally.  On the left, a normal .22 round.

A Conibear 220, (a few inches smaller than a 330) for those unfamiliar with the trap.  Although I also used a different type of trap, which ultimately caught the second raccoon, this was the trap that caught the first.  The 330 is 12″x12″ inches square and hurts a lot when it closes on your hand.  Luckily, only one spring let go, otherwise, I could have ended up with a broken hand or arm.  I’m not kidding, these things do one job and do it well.

“March winds, April showers bring forth… more rain.”  Seriously: can it rain any more?  It rained so hard here on Friday that I had to take pictures of it.  How often is it that rain can be caught on film from inside a house?  I think the missing water from the Great Lakes fell on Markstay last week.  Man!  Dry up already!

Really?  Is that as hard as you can rain?  My grandmother can rain harder than that in her sleep!

Hey, look!  Isn’t that Noah floating by?  What a nice boat he has, and look at all the room for his animals.

Nightmare on our street

Things around here have been much like a really bad horror movie lately.  The chickens have been disappearing in pairs - “C’mon, Susan, let’s go have a look.  Tim and Cindy aren’t back from the creepy, old house across the street yet.  We should go find them.”  And, just when I thought I’d managed to deal with the killer, another three chickens went missing yesterday: so in keeping with the B-movie horror flick analogy, it would seem I’ve only dealt with the minion, not the Master. 

The latest incident took me by surprise.  Completely.  I had set a trap for, and caught, a chicken killer that turned out to be a raccoon.  That was Sunday night or early Monday morning.  Monday night, as I was putting the little chicks back into their coop from a fenced yard, I saw our remaining two laying hens trot the several dozen feet across our yard from the dog food shed to the house.  I was busy putting the chicks back and planned to lock up the layers for the night when I was done; I had already changed their water and put fresh feed in their tractor.  Not five minutes later, when I went to call them in to their roost for the night, they were nowhere to be found.  I saw nothing and I heard nothing.  We still have not seen them, nor have we seen a pile of feathers, as we had with the previous vanished chickens.  It was still pretty light out.  They couldn’t have been more than twenty feet from the house.  They were taken without a sound.  Not a squawk, not a ruffle, nothing.  At this point, I’m willing to believe that the same aliens that were responsible for all the cattle deaths several years ago have switched focus and are now interested in chickens.

I had planned on returning the trap to the person I borrowed it from, but I am now planning on keeping it for a bit longer.  I think it’s the fox who is doing most of the predation, but I know the raccoon is responsible for some, as well, the theiving bastards.

The death toll around here now, as far as chicks and chickens are concerned is at seventeen: nine chickens and eight pheasants. 

A meat bird (left) and a Chantecler layer (right). 

 

Our Peregrine Falcon-like rooster.  His bunch are Easter Eggers, and they lay coloured eggs.  Not him, though.

A pair of Dominiques.  Also layers.

This past weekend, Jenn, Hunter and I went to the “Warren Tobbacco Appreciation Day and Agricultural Fair.”   That a so-called ‘agricultural fair’ can be held in the spring is another blog post altogether.  I always thought that an agricultural fair was to celebrate the harvest, to gather and see whose corn was the juiciest, whose wheat was the wheatiest or cow the milkiest.  I don’t imagine last year’s corn would show very well at this point.  Let me address the ‘Tobbacco Appreciation Day’ thing, too, lest someone thinks that was an official title.  It could have been, though.

Remember those pictures from the Seventies, like the wedding photos where bride and groom are standing together, in a half-embrace because the other hand is busy holding a cigarette?  Or, maybe the vintage footage of a television talk show, where the ashtray is as big as the ottoman it’s sitting on?  Better still, and closer to the Warren Fair: the shots of sports announcers, doing the play by play and colour commentary and they are hard to understand because they are trying to keep one half of their lips moving while the other half holds a smoke.  Yep.  That’s the Warren Fair.  I wouldn’t have paid it much attention, really, had one of the volunteers not been handing out slide whistles to the kids with her thumb, ring and baby fingers while the other two curled backwards in a poor attempt to keep the cigarette away.  “Here you go little girl.” she said to Hunter, with a voice that could peel rust off of a leaf spring.  It’s true: they sure like a good smoke in Warren.

The main reason for going to the fair in the first place was so that Hunter could enter her favourite chicks in a pet show.  She and Jenn picked out four of them, put them in a small cage and we all drove to the fair.  Jenn registered Hunter and soon enough, the three of us strode out onto a small field, amid the other contestants who all had - wait for it - dogs.  I can understand the coincidence of fifteen people showing up to a “PET show” with dogs.  Even at an agricultural fair.  What I can’t understand is how the judge - a cantankerous woman if there ever was one - can ignore a four-year old kid whose pretty stoked to have her chicks out to a show.  Luckily for Hunter, she couldn’t care less about the attention or inclusion in the mind-numbing ‘tricks’ the dogs had to do: walk around in a circle, jump on a bale of straw, and the clincher: sit in a three-foot square for a count of sixty.  That’s right, a whole minute.  Pull you head out, lady, it’s the Warren Fair for God’s sake, not the Westminister Kennel Club.  Jeez-us!

That’s my kid, on the far left.  She brought chickens to a dog show.

In the end, Hunter’s pets got a left over puppy blanket and some nice lady stopped Hunter on her way by and gave the kid some sort of ribbon.  Hunter was pretty tickled about that.  We made our way back to the truck and went home. 

The ‘judge’ in a white hat.  She’s giving points for how well a Dachshund could sing.  She was tough, too - no free rides at the Warren fair.