Don't Name the Ducks

by Wendy Dudley

  With the community growing nervous, a cougar expert was brought in to explain the cat's behaviour and to give a balanced perspective. Yes, cougar sightings were on the increase, but only because there were more people living in their foothills habitat, an area that happens to have one of the continent's highest cougar densities. We were told that there are fewer than four cougar attacks a year in North America, compared to a whopping 220,000 dog attacks. Personally, I have suffered dog bites three times, but I've never been chomped by a cougar! I was told that, if I were to encounter a cougar, I should make myself appear larger than life by waving a stick in the air and jumping up and down while hooting and hollering. Such a commotion might convince the cat that I was a predator and scare it off. I've also been told that stitching cut-outs of eyes to the back of a hat may deter a cougar attack. Better yet is donning a Hallowe'en mask backwards, as hunters in Asia do when hiking in tiger territory. Now, that would be something for the local gossip circle Mom and I making our daily walks as two-faced ghouls!

  While cougars are built to kill, they too have their problems. Without much of a fight, they will give up their carcasses to wolves and bears. And then, of course, there's us. People. We move into their territory, then clear brush from our fields and leave trees around our house, creating a cougar corridor outside our front doors. As development pushes the big cats into marginal areas where there are no moose, elk, or deer their favourite prey they resort to killing pets and livestock, often slaughtering an entire pen of sheep. A cougar will usually kill and consume one animal, but domestic goats and sheep appear to be the exception. Several neighbours have awakened to a pen of corpses; panicking sheep tend to huddle together, and this may confuse the cougar, triggering a furious rampage. Sheep ranchers living in cougar country often use livestock protection dogs, especially the Akbash, a breed known for its speed, aggression, and unwillingness to back down from cougars, bears, or wolves.

  Most attending the meeting left with less fear, realizing they were at a greater risk of being bitten by the neighbour's dog than of being attacked by a cougar. But there were some who suggested that the only good cougar is a dead cougar, and that conservation officials should consider eradicating them. At one point, it looked like we were headed for a resurrection of the historic range wars, when cattlemen and sheep farmers were at odds over land and water. Said one rancher, "I'll tell you what the problem is. It's all the sheep out here. They don't belong. This is cattle country."

  Several years have passed since that winter when so many cougars roamed our valley. I see their winter tracks, so I know they are still here, but the deer have returned and sheep are grazing next to fields speckled with cattle. If only we could get people to live peacefully next to one another, and accept that the wilderness and its predators are part of the beauty we wake to each day.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Cowboy Trail

  Wouldn't it be grand to retrace some of those old cowboy trails? Years ago, I met an innkeeper who re-rode the Sante Fe Trail. He said it changed his life.

  We are not ranchers, nor are we farmers. Mom and I do not put food on our table by growing grain or selling cattle, horses, chickens, pigs, or sheep—or anything else that eats while we sleep. As for the donkeys, my attempts to breed them have so far been humorous, if not downright pathetic.

  What brought me to the country was my love of open spaces, wilderness, and Old West culture. I like wrapping myself in a quiet evening, taking in the baritones of bellowing cattle and the smell of sweet hay and aging manure, and then falling asleep under a sea of stars, drifting with the likes of Roy Rogers and Will James down some dreamland cattle trail. I like waking up to a rose-coloured morning and seeing my posse of longears traipsing across the fields, their wispy tails fanning their rumps. But none of this makes me a lariat-swinging cowgirl—an armchair wrangler perhaps, but not a woman who makes her living from sowing seeds, herding cows, and viewing the world from the back of a horse.

  I like to think, however, that through my writing I have left a welcome hoofprint in cow country, an invisible signature posted along one of Alberta's most scenic stretches of highway, known as the Cowboy Trail. In writing a newspaper story about the tourism project, I suggested it be called the "trail of the cowboy." Little did I know that the name would stick like flies to honey sauce, and that a year or two later dozens of red and black Cowboy Trail signs, emblazoned with a silhouette of a horse and rider, would be posted along Highways 5, 6, and 22. Approximately 420 miles long, the foothills route follows a corridor of heritage ranchlands from Cardston, near southern Alberta's Waterton Lakes National Park, to Mayerthorpe, northwest of Edmonton. Along the way are some wonderful Wild West ranch names, such as the Lazy M, Ride the Wind, Spirit Walker, Willow Lane, Homeplace, and Mount Sentinel Diamond Willow Beef. Driving past the Cowboy Trail signs, I remind myself that I want a friend to take a photograph of me leaning against one before they are all stolen. Several go missing each year, no doubt taken as a western souvenir to hang above someone's basement pool table.

  When the Cowboy Trail project won a provincial tourism award for innovative marketing, I was invited to attend the ceremony by my friend Rob Miller, then a tourism marketing director for the Calgary area. It was a gesture of thanks for providing the name, he said. I rode tall in the saddle that night, but of course the real heroes are the men and women still working the ranges. Without them, there would be no Cowboy Trail.

  But I confess I'm rather proud of my contribution to cowboy history, since it's about as close as I'll ever get to the Cowboy Hall of Fame. After all, I can't throw the Houlihan, I can't ride a bronc (though as a colt, Lucy sure knew how to round her back for more than eight seconds), I've never butchered my own beef, and I don't even own a horse trailer. I don't have a gun rack in my pickup, and my best field crop is purple thistle.

  I say all this because if there's one thing I've learned, it's never to pass yourself off as something you're not. Rural folk can smell a ripe tale the minute they spot your car coming up the lane, and if the jalopy doesn't give you away, what happens once you step outside the car will.

  I've been bitten by ranch dogs and bluff charged by bulls. Worse yet, I've sat like the village idiot behind the steering wheel of my teensy-weensy car while a rancher fired up his tractor to haul me up his steep lane—not once, but twice. The first time was when I was caught in his coulee during a blizzard, my car not even making it to the first bend in the lane. Two weeks later I visited the same rancher. The snow was gone, but his road was now a speed skater's delight. Out came the tractor and chains, and my promise to stay away until summer.

  I guess I could drive a four-wheel drive like most of my neighbours, but writing from home doesn't exactly leave my banker wanting to hand over a hefty loan. There's my second-hand, trusty and rusty pickup, but it's only rear-wheel drive. Unless it's packed with firewood or wet hay bales, it flops all over the road like a fish out of water.

  Such incidents are embarrassing, like the time I walked backwards while trying to take a picture of a horse-drawn wagon, unaware of the wallow in the deep grass. With no warning from the wagon master, I stepped into the hole, toppling over, feet up in the air, with only the camera visible above the tall grass as I struggled to hold it away from my body. Trying to make light of the moment, I laughed at my awkwardness, but the two wagonmen just sat and stared from their high perches. Not a crack of a smile to be seen for a mile.

  Now, I'm the first to admit that I don't know a lot about cows, though I do know a heifer from a steer and

  a Holstein from a Hereford, but I don't read them well. So I guess it was only a matter of time before I landed in trouble while tagging along on foot beside a cattle drive. Coincidentally, we were moving them along a portion of the Cowboy Trail. Everything was going fine until I circled around out front to take a picture. When the herd came to a standstill, I figured the cattle were just pausing for a quick graze.

  "Get out of there, you xx?!@#*!" I heard the
trail boss yell. But the herd didn't budge. A rider then approached. "Better move along, you're spooking the herd," he said.

  "I thought he was hollering at the cows," I replied. "Nope," he answered. "Cows are OK. You're not."

  I quickly saddled my metal war pony, Toyota Jane, and hit the blacktop, watching the riders and cattle vanish in my rear-view mirror. Fortunately, as the brochures say, you don't need a horse or cow to travel the Cowboy Trail.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Midnight Colic

  I envy those who grew up on farms, accepting death as easily as birth. As I have been told many times: "If you've got livestock, you're going to have dead stock. It's a fact of life."

  I snapped the driving whip against Lucy's buttocks, pleading with her to "get up, get up," but she didn't flinch. She was stretched out in the short-cropped grass, her eyes closed, her lips curled back, and her teeth clenched. The hair from above her bony brow was gone. With each spasm of pain in her belly, she would grind her head into the ground, tearing out tufts of hair. Usually we can walk Lucy out of colic, a bellyache often caused by an impacted intestine or buildup of gas, but five hours had passed since we found her lying in the shade of a spruce tree, the grass flattened from where she had been rolling in an attempt to relieve the painful symptoms. A stomach ache may not sound like such a big deal, but equine colic can be fatal if the animal twists its intestine by thrashing and rolling. Big Ben, the champion Canadian show jumping horse owned by Olympic equestrian Ian Miller, was a colicky horse, succumbing to the ailment in 1999. Everything from bad feed, to change of feed, to too little water can bring on a colic attack.

  In Lucy's case, I suspect it has to do with lack of water. She's a sipper, preferring to swish the water with her lips, stick her tongue in it, swill it around in her mouth, and only if she remembers, actually swallow a mouthful or two. She used to be a bed-eater, the straw and shavings absorbing what little moisture she took in. When we removed her bedding, the colic stopped. We thought we had it beat, but here we were, two years later, with her worst bout ever.

  We waited several hours before calling the horse doctor because, frankly, Lucy is a true redhead, a bit of a "drama queen," as one vet described her. One little gas bubble and she crumples to the ground, yet all she has to do is pass one puff of flatulence and she's right back to her amusing self. There's nothing more frustrating—or expensive—than calling the vet only to have the patient standing bright-eyed when help arrives. But this time, nothing seemed to relieve Lucy's symptoms. We walked her until our soles began to thin, we sat on her sides massaging her belly until our arms ached, and we syringed several grams of phenylbutazone, a painkiller paste, into the sides of her mouth. When she would no longer get up off the ground, we knew it was time to call the vet.

  Lucy loves horses—after all, her mother was a horse—but she couldn't even muster enough energy to properly greet the vet's trailered horse. When the doctor pulled into the lane, the trailer rattling behind, Lucy struggled to her feet, belted out her best bray, and then collapsed. If she wasn't in so much pain, we would have laughed at her grand maiden-in-distress act, but by now she was rolling and flogging her head against the hard ground. Her heart was racing, and the vet's first injection of painkiller had no effect. As the second shot began to dull her agony, she lay on her side, her stomach bloated and her mouth open. Several flies landed on her pale gums. She looked dead.

  "How do you feel about colic surgery?" the vet asked, suspecting a twisted intestine. Her words struck hard, as I knew the surgery could cost as much as $7,000, with no guarantee it would save her life. I didn't answer the question. I couldn't. That would mean admitting that Lucy was in a fight for her life, and I wasn't yet ready to accept she was that far gone.

  Now heavily sedated, Lucy was resting peacefully, her head up and her eyelashes hanging low. It took three of us to roll her onto her feet, encouraging—and begging—her to walk to the barn where we could at least work with some light. She seemed content to stand, though her groggy head drooped to her chest. Listening to her abdomen with a stethoscope, the vet detected only minimal noise. She had been hoping for normal stomach rumbles. We decided to pump her full of mineral oil by passing a plastic tube through her nose and into her stomach. With luck, this would increase her gut activity and loosen an impaction. Holding Lucy's head, I looked into her kind eyes, now dulled by the drugs, and rubbed my hand over her scraped face and nose, stopping to play with her whiskered muzzle. As I leaned my forehead into hers, the tightness in my throat began to thicken. Life without Lucy would be unbearable. She's a habit I can't give up.

  Listening to her sides again, the vet looked sombre. The gurgles had only slightly improved. There was nothing more we could do.

  "It's up to her now," the vet said. "She has to fight this."

  The vet left with instructions to call if Lucy's condition worsened. It was now after eleven o'clock, eight hours since we had rescued her from the field. Carrying two lawn chairs to the barn, Mom and I settled in for what we knew from experience would be a long night.

  All horse owners know that colic usually strikes after the vet's office has closed, their pagers tracking them down at movies, restaurants, and Christmas parties. Knowing Lucy's penchant for dramatics, I had one vet, who was playing basketball, wait three hours before making the hour-long drive. It was thirteen degrees below zero, with twisting, icy roads, and he knew the minute he pulled into the lane she would unload a pile of manure, easing her cramps and pain. Just to prove him wrong, Lucy waited for him to arrive, pull on his winter coat, and don his plastic gloves—then she passed the manure. It was too late. After this trip in the dark, the vet gave her the full works—needles and mineral oil. He wasn't going to risk a call an hour later, and darn it, someone was going to pay for his spoiled evening!

  Yes, our Lucy is a great little actress, her colic scenes attracting neighbours who have helped walk her all night, relieving us when our knees have weakened or when she's accidentally kicked us because of the biting pain in her belly. We have slept in sleeping bags on hay bales, taking turns massaging her sides. Thermoses are filled with tea, then refilled with coffee. On one occasion, the stall became an office as I conducted an interview with actor and musician Tom Jackson over my cell phone. I was researching a story about his Huron Carole Christmas concert, an annual fundraiser for the food bank.

  "Look, Tom, I'm sorry that I didn't make it to your office, but my mule's come down with colic. I'm talking to you from the barn, where I've spent the night." From the other end of the phone came a chuckle of disbelief.

  Some celebrities I have interviewed would have been offended to think of me standing in mucousy manure while I asked them about the personal details of their lives, but not Tom. In fact, he thought it had a special

  Yuletide touch, what with donkeys, straw, and a barn. The only thing missing was the babe in swaddling clothes.

  Such past scenes played in my mind as Mom and I tucked in for our night watch, both of us concerned over Lucy's lack of improvement. Her lower lip was beginning to curl again, and she was starting to paw the ground—signs that she was still in pain. And then her rump began to quiver, the tremors moving up her sides and along her neck until her entire body shivered like a November aspen. Never had I seen her this bad. We draped two woollen afghans across her back, switched on the heat lamps and shut the barn doors. An hour later, she was still shivering, so I called the vet.

  "Just keep her warm. She may just be cold, or it could be a sign she is getting worse. If that's the case, call me back. But remember, sometimes they get worse just before they get better."

  I hung onto her words like someone hanging onto a branch dangling over a precipice. At least Lucy wasn't trying to lie down and roll, and her lip had stopped curling. We began to chat to Lucy in sing-song voices, hoping she would relax her muscles, just like she did when I sang to her as a foal. Rubbing her neck, with the brooding lamps casting a warm glow across her back, we waited another hour
until her tremors stopped. I knew Lucy was feeling better when she turned her head and watched my hand reach into my pocket, where I often keep a stash of green peppermints. I offered her a hank of hay. She took it and looked around for more. This was a great sign. Minutes later, a gale of flatulence filled the stall. Such a sweet sound, after such a sour night. Her ears now perked, Lucy began to show interest in the donkeys waiting outside on the other side of the paddock fence. It was 2 AM. For twelve hours, we hadn't left her side. Mom and I limped back to the house, weary and several hundred dollars poorer. I checked on her one last time before calling it a night. This was one sunrise I really didn't want to see. The next morning, Lucy was back to her comical self, nosing my pockets and tugging at my sweater. We'd do almost anything for Lucy, our resident drama queen, but we do wish she'd drop the horror roles and stick to comedy.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Big Oil

  I would prefer to stare out my window at a windmill. There is poetry in its dance.

  Many people who pack up and move to the country are seeking nirvana, hoping to find a place without problems. But it is naive to equate such a move with the great escape. While the sunrises and sunsets come close to perfection, life anywhere is never perfect. Attend any rural town hall meeting, and you will hear complaints similar to what you hear in a city—barking dogs, increased traffic, potholed roads, fears about water contamination, and concerns about pollution, be it burning brush, noise, or oilfield emissions. Such is the other side of country living, and in our case it involves living in the shadow of a sour gas well.