Hubby Had Competition for Bringing His Deer Home Today

Well, it appears that we have another new addition to the ranch and this time it’s not of the friendly sort. The good news is that DH went out at zero dark thirty this morning for his first morning of hunting and less than an hour into it he had dropped a Sika buck. This was the animal at the top of our list to get this year, so he was pretty happy until he tried to retrieve it and was chased away by bees. Turns out the deer dropped at the base of a tree inhabited by Africanized Bees. This is not something we’ve ever had at the ranch before and we certainly hope they are temporary residents that will be moving on soon.

I called our neighbor for help so there was at least a chance that someone could call 911 if they were swarmed. Long story short, it took them an hour, but the neighbor was finally able to get close enough to get a rope around the antlers. The guys then pulled the deer out with 50 feet of rope with the bees still following the deer for about 20-30 of those feet. DH got stung three times on the ear and neck, the only areas exposed on him, and the neighbor, dressed in shorts and a t-shirt didn’t get stung at all. Given how many times the two of them were run off by the bees, it’s a small miracle that they weren’t stung more times. I’m allergic to insect stings so I wouldn’t have been able to help even if I’d been there. Same goes for the neighbor’s wife. She’s more allergic than I am so she stayed far away.

Normally we take pictures of each animal, but by the time they got the deer out, it had been down for 2 hours and DH still had an hour drive to get it to town to the processor so they just loaded it up and he took off, so I never got to see what the deer even looked like.  As we are sitting here at McDonald’s where I’m posting this from, he tells me that when he walked up our road to get the van prior to retrieving the deer, he ran into the donkeys and they thought he was chasing them. He said the bigger one would turn around and scold him every once in awhile. The poor guy just couldn’t get a break today out at the ranch!

I did get pictures of the donkeys when we made a quick drive through the ranch on Monday. Unlike the bees, they are sort of friendly. They came walking towards the van, but then walked away when I got out to take pictures. We asked the neighbor and he said the donkeys and the llamas showed up a couple of months ago about the same time and no one seems to know where they came from.

When we encountered the donkeys and the llamas the first night, DH joked, “What’s next, a zebra?”

Well guess what? As we were leaving the ranch on Monday, sure enough, we saw a zebra! The ranch across the road from ours apparently has one. It was running with some Blackbuck Antelope. I managed to get one quick picture through the van windshield before they headed off behind the trees. Zoom in for a better look.

Oh, and I got my sewing space set up here and it’s even better than the setup I have at home. I must have expressed my excitement over this a few too many times as an hour or so after I got it all set up, DH stands in the doorway to the room and says “Baby, when I look in this room, it just takes my breath away.” Smart alec.

I do like it though. At home I am only able to set up my sewing machine in my sewing room because it’s actually the guest bedroom. I have to set up the ironing board elsewhere and I have to do my cutting on the kitchen island. The table here is even the correct height. At home I have to stand on phone books and at Dawn’s I have to stand on a step to work on her cutting table. I didn’t even buy the table. It came with the house so bonus for me.

Here’s my setup here at the house in Kerrville: