If you can't do the time, don't do the crime

It's not every day a girl gets presented with a mink by her husband!

Outdoor Guy had been matching wits all weekend with this little bugger. The mink had gotten into one of the outside circular raceways and had been munching on Yellowstone cutthroat trout.

Mink are carnivores. A mink will kill its prey by biting it on the back of the neck. They eat muskrats, rabbits, mice, chipmunks, snakes, frogs, birds and fish. And a few hundred fish in a relatively small, enclosed space was simply more temptation than this juvenile mink could stand. I'm pretty sure he stuck his head into the covered circular, saw the swarm of fish and thought "All-you-can-eat buffet here I come!"

Outdoor Guy noticed him swimming with the younger brood fish, and almost managed to catch him in a net. But the mink ducked and dodged and escaped the encounter unscathed. He left a few dead fish in his wake, however. Round one goes to the mink.

The mink doesn't know that my husband is a lean, mean, trapping machine. Outdoor Guy figured out where the mink was getting into the circular and set his trap there. He baited it with one of the dead fish, complete with mink teeth marks and a missing hunk of flesh. Outdoor Guy checked the trap the next morning and no mink. No fish either. It had stolen the bait. Round two goes to the mink.

Not to be outsmarted by a mustelid (member of the weasel family), Ben adjusted the trap and baited it again. Yesterday afternoon as I was gardening, he came up to the house and asked if I wanted to meet his nemesis. There in the trap, the mink seemed pretty innocent. He was just a little over a foot long with sleek, dark brown hair and a bushy tail. I read somewhere that when a mink is happy, it makes a purring sound like a cat. This mink was definitely not happy. And he stunk. Outdoor guy said mink spray like skunks and use their scent to mark territory.

Sure, he's just doing what a mink does, eating fish. Ben pointed out three or four fish with bite marks on their backs swimming in the circular, and that was in addition to several dead fish he'd already removed. No matter how cute, critters who eat fish simply aren't tolerated at a fish hatchery. Round three and the match went to Outdoor Guy. As the old saying goes, if you can't do the time, don't do the crime.

Screw you summer...

Was it only six weeks ago that I was bemoaning the spring weather and wishing for summer? Now, I can't do anything but gripe about the heat. The last few weeks in the canyon have been absolute scorchers, with temperatures in the mid 90s a good deal of the time and much more humidity than I can remember from my previous two summers here. It makes for miserable working hours for my husband, and because it's too hot to go play on the badlands, it also makes for three hyper dogs. Ugh.

In desperation to beat the heat and get the dogs some exercise, I took the pound up the mountain. I figured we would find cooler temperatures and a small piece of the Big Horn National Forest in which to frolic to our hearts content. Instead, we found cows or tourists galore in all of our favorite places and some seriously muggy conditions. I finally found a good spot off the old U.S. Highway 16 and let the dogs out of the truck to run off some of that energy. Ten minutes later we were all back in the pickup headed for home. The dogs got too hot before they got any real steam wore off and I tired of defending my succulent flesh from the hordes of hungry mosquitoes. I went to bed with itchy arms and ankles where a few of the dirty buggers had managed to find a place to snack on my skin.

The next morning, I woke up with two large, weepy blister like bumps on my arm and a surrounding patch of my arm that was red and swollen. What I thought were mosquito bites are apparently something else entirely and they itch like the dickens. I can't decide if they are spider bites or if I ran afoul of some hazardous plant while wandering through the foliage up the road. But since I can't shoot silken web from my finger tips, it was probably just a boring old mountain spider and nothing radioactive. Dang...no superhero movie deals in my future.

Now I'm hot and itchy and my allergies are going haywire. I've had it with bugs and sun and out-of-control plants. So I'm making fall my official favorite season. Screw you summer!

Love is In the Air

The alarm rang way too early for my taste, but while love knows no bounds, it does know sunrise, at least for the sage grouse. Outdoor Guy and I were up before dawn to watch one of the most talked about residents of the Wyoming landscape in its annual mating ritual.

Each spring, Wyoming's sage grouse gather on breeding grounds, known as leks, to strut their stuff for a potential mate. In our many adventures, Outdoor Guy and I had seen numerous sage grouse in the badlands between Ten Sleep and Wyoming. I'd heard about their crazy mating ritual, and asked my husband if we could find a lek and watch sometime. Thanks to our Game and Fish connections, we had directions to a lek about 30 minutes from our house. So yesterday, at 5 a.m., we loaded up in the big white pickup and headed for the badlands.

As dawn broke, Outdoor Guy spotted a lone black spot up ahead on a hill. As the sky grew lighter, soon we could make out the tell-tale point tail feathers of a male sage grouse in full strut. He'd strut to the left, puff out his chest and cock his head, listening, I presume, for a response from an interested female. Getting none, he'd strut to the left and repeat the process. Unfortunately for him, no revved up sage grouse hotties could be found.

"Tom said the lek was pretty hot and heavy last week," my husband told me. "Maybe we missed it by a week."

That was disappointing. Seeing sage grouse up close was something I'd wanted to do since last spring. But if all I got to see was this one, lonely male doing his thing, it was better than nothing.

Several minutes later, we decided to drivedown the road a little in hopes that there were more birds over the next ridge. Ben put the pickup in drive and we performed what he lovingly calls the "three-quarter ton sneak" down the BLM road.

"That guy must be lost, because all the others are up ahead. Look up there in the lighter colored grass. All those black lumps are grouse," Ben said, pointing out the windshield.

Jackpot. Ahead of us was the lek, with about two dozen birds of both sexes in various stages of coitus. We watched for the birds for almost an hour.

My favorite moment was when one male took umbrage with another male who was vying for the affection of a particularly pretty hen (at least I'm assuming she's pretty...but I'm no male sage grouse, so what do I know). The males puffed their chests and made their weird noises and chest bumped one another around for several minutes. The bigger male must have been declared the victor, but when he turned to reap the reward of his spoils, the lovely female was nowhere to be found. In his fervor to banish the competition, he took his eyes off the prize, and she got bored and wandered off. The male looked all around, could not locate his true love and deflated like a guy getting shot down at a singles bar. I laughed out loud at his apparent despair.

Sage grouse are dependent on sagebrush-dominated habitats. Sagebrush is a crucial component of their diet year-round, and sage grouse select sagebrush almost exclusively for cover. As people expand their own habitat for residential and energy development into the habitat of the sage grouse, populations have declined from around 16 million birds 100 years ago to about 200,000 birds today. Predators like coyotes, ravens and other raptors also take their toll on sage grouse species. Environmental groups have tried to get the sage grouse placed on the Endangered Species list twice before. In 2010, the Department of the Interior said the sage grouse was "warranted but precluded," essentially putting it on a waiting list behind more critically threatened species in need of federal protection.

I'm no bird biologist and I don't pretend to have the answers for balancing the needs of people with the needs of wildlife. But I do know I got to witness something pretty special that morning on the Washakie badlands, a native species doing an ancient dance of love. Here's hoping we can all work together so the party can go on for generations to come.

Skiing makes me cross

Outdoor Guy and I rented skis in town this weekend and headed up to Willow Park to enjoy a breathtaking afternoon in the Big Horn Mountains and soak up some sun.

Willow Park offers 13 miles of groomed trails and a variety of skill levels. It promises skiers the chance to enjoy loops, hills, ridges and wonderful scenery. The weather was great, the scenery wonderful indeed, the skiing...not so much.

The day started out well enough. We tried one of the easier loops, and the first leg of it was enjoyable. Our house sits at the bottom of a canyon, so from about mid-November to mid-February, we don't get the sun at our house. After two months in the shade, the mountain sun felt great on my face, like putting on a favorite, well-worn sweatshirt after days in a constricting business suit. Our skis easily glided along the trail, making quick work of the first half mile or snow.

Then the turnoff came. The first bit was slow going, requiring us to break trail.

"Want to turn around?" My husband asked. "I think this is just sticky because it's been in the sun."

"Nah, it'll get better further down the trail," I replied. It didn't. We worked our way across the trail segment, walking in our skis instead of actually skiing. Occasionally, I'd have to stop and scrape the sticky, wet snow off the bottoms of my skis. Frequently, my ski would stick, my ankle would roll and I'd topple over to the side. Walk, walk, scrape, wobble, wobble, fall to the left, curse. Walk, walk, scrape, wobble, wobble, fall to the right, curse loudly. Walk, walk, wobble, wobble, fall on my ass.

Ahead on the trail wasn't any better for Ben. He was dealing with the exact same conditions I was, but I never saw him fall once. I threw my hands up in protest and promptly fell back on my butt. Again.

"How's it going back there?" Ben called.

"Never better," I replied. "This is so much fun we should do it every weekend!"

We may have only been married 18 months, but Outdoor Guy knew me well enough to understand the snide cheerfulness. Ben ignored my sarcasm and we continued along the trail. Every so often, he'd point out something he saw along the trail...squirrel or rabbit tracks, owl scat or just a weird looking tree. I'm sure the area was pretty, but by that time I was so wet and frustrated, I wanted to cry. The only good thing about the day was that it was going better than the last time we tried skiing. Then, I'd lost control on a slight downhill slope, panicked and threw myself into a snowbank to stop my momentum lest I crash into a tree. Instead, I bashed my knee on a rock buried in the white drift, tearing my pants and giving me a substantial limp for the next three weeks. Today, I couldn't pick up any real momentum, so my spills were considerably less spectacular.

Finally, we hit the intersection where our trail met another. This trail was a main thoroughfare, so trail had been broken and the going became much easier. In theory.

Ahead, my husband shushed along the luminescent path, pausing every so often to look back over his shoulder at me. My skis would now actually glide on the snow, but the trail was so icy, if I got going too fast, my foot would fly out from under me and I'd wobble, precariously unbalanced. Three times out of five, I wound up on my backside yet again. After one massive yard sale fall that required my husband's assistance to right me, I gave up. I took off the skis and powered my way through the snow the last 200 yards to the parking lot.

God curse this wretched sport, I thought. I'll stick with summer activities from now on. But I didn't want Outdoor Guy to feel bad. I'd suggested skiing, and it wasn't his fault I was a complete and total klutz. I tried to smile and said things about how it would be more fun next time, or that maybe I just needed more practice. My crabbiness must have been etched on my face, however, because my husband wasn't buying any of it.

"Now I know why they call it cross-country skiing," Outdoor Guy said, wrapping me in a bear hug and planting a big kiss on my frowning face. "You are seriously crabby."

Maybe next time, we'll just go bowling.