Little goat and the horse tranquilizer

Yesterday ended on a bit of a low note. The male kid, that was injured the other day, still wasn't able to walk or stand on his own. In the afternoon he still hadn't improved and was clearly suffering. His little goat whimpers tugged at the heart strings. The farm manager decided that it was time to put him down, for his own sake. The goat was given a horse tranquilizer. We hoped that he might pass away from the drug, or at least he would be heavily sedated. I volunteered to go with Cale to shoot the goat if he wasn't already dead. When we went to check on him he was still breathing. So we took him outside in the box and Cale loaded the 22. I stood next to him and we both looked away as he shot down at the goat. We brought the goat to the dump and placed him in the woods (circle of life thing, again). While it is never pleasant to put an animal down, it really was the best thing for him. It is inhumane to let anyone suffer.

On a somewhat brighter note, I took revenge on some Amazonian looking poison ivy vines today. I had no idea that poison ivy vines can get up to 3 inches thick. Brian (fellow intern) and I took machetes and loppers (bad ass clippers) and went to town on those vines. For the non-sugar maple trees we just severed the vines at the bottom of the trunk, but for sugar maple trees we tried our best to remove most of the vines. We are planning to tap the sugar maple trees (which is very exciting, being Canadian and all, I am made up of 10% maple syrup) so the nasty bastards had to go.

We finished our Friday down at the local watering hole, Whistling Willies, in Cold Spring. For $2.50 a draft beer and some good conversation, it most certainly was Happy Hour. Even though I really do not like beer, for some reason, working hard makes beer taste better.