Emil’s gone to school today; it’s only 25 below so the bus was running and he was anxious to go after missing all of last week. He was ready and watching out the window for the bus’s headlights about 10 minutes early.

Last week when I walked out to the garden, there were tracks I couldn’t make sense of. I took a picture of them and described them to Scott. He said it sounded like a coyote had been pouncing after mice that it heard or smelled underneath the snow. That makes sense, because the tracks appear to be far apart, as if the coyote stomped around in one place and searched under the snow, and then leaped again to the next spot.

Scott pointed out where coyote tracks came right up through the bush from the garden, to the edge of the bush about 20 feet from our kitchen window. There was a blizzard over the weekend so yesterday they had been obliterated by snow, but this morning I looked out and saw the exact same sort of tracks, through the bush, that I took the picture of last week in the garden.

I have been in hibernation for a while, going to town only when I have to and not even getting much fresh air. Yesterday it warmed up to 20 below and I bundled up and went out for a while. I gave Chester some attention — he looks really good since Everett took over feeding him; he is twice as thick/deep in front of his hips as he was in the spring — and hated to leave him because he was so excited about having some company. I have put an ad in a paper and we have had several calls but no one has yet thought he would be a perfect addition to their home or yard. I will hate to see him go, but he needs to get off that chain. It’s no life for a dog.

There are newborn calves in the barn so I ducked in there to have a look at them. Several cow/calf pairs and expectant mothers had been put in for the night, so I peered at them from behind the gate that divides the barn in half. Then I met Scott in the driveway, walking home, and we shovelled ours out so that Emil could get to the bus this morning. It had drifted in pretty good over the last couple days.

It was dusk then, around 6:30, and there was no wind. It seemed almost warm after the weather we have had lately. Scott has been constantly outside tending to frozen waterbowls and newborn calves, and feeling sorry for the cattle enduring these extremely low temperatures. There are well over 100 of the bovine beasts out in the corrals, probably closer to 150 or maybe even more, so there is no way they can all be put into the barn. Only the newborns and their mothers get to go in. Fortunately the others are tough, but there isn’t enough shelter from the wind when it blows from a certain direction. Scott said one day the older calves just stood by the barn, trying to get out of the wind as much as possible, and bawled.

He has begun to go out during the wee hours of the morning to help any cow that has birthing difficulties and make sure no calves are born out in the corrals, where they would probably die because of the cold. He is starting to lack adequate sleep, and it will be this way for the next few months. Already over the weekend he was getting a sore throat from getting cold and run down out there.