Rain Delay

I promised to post last night, but then the most extraordinary thing happened. It rained. Twice! I wanted to get the final rain count before I posted anything.

But first, the prairie dogs. On Sunday we went out to the ranch to check on the prairie dogs.

(For new readers or longtime readers who have forgotten, two years ago (almost exactly two years), we "took in" a colony of prairie dogs who had to be relocated. Taos County was getting ready to build a new administrative and judicial complex on what was a prairie dog town. Rather than kill them, which would have outraged animal lovers and environmentalists, they hired a company that specializes in such relocations. We have 40 acres of land, fondly referred to as Scott Valley Ranch or just The Ranch, that we knew would be perfect for prairie dogs, so we offered our land. For details about the move, click on The Taos News to read the story.)

But back to Sunday. We've been worried about how the prairie dogs were handling the drought, but we know there's nothing we can do about it. We can't take them water (although Ron thought about taking them water-drenched lettuce). When we went out there Sunday, as soon as we turned off the overgrown road onto our property and drove a very short distance, we saw a tiny prairie dog head peeping out of one of the holes. Then he/she came all the way out, turned around, and went back in. It was a baby prairie dog! That was a good sign.

We drove further, got to the spot where we camp, and parked the car and started walking around, inspecting the burrows. We could tell by the pebbled appearance of the dirt that it had rained lightly in the last 24 hours, but there wasn't much sign of activity near the burrows and that concerned us. I saw movement out of the corner of my eye and looked up and saw an adult prairie dog standing up and then running to its hole and diving in. We walked around inspecting various burrows; most of them looked completely inactive and a few looked slightly active. We were pretty depressed about the situation, feeling like we'd brought these poor animals to their doom. As we started to leave, we saw another baby prairie dog.

When we got home, Ron did some research on the Internet and determined that the babies we saw were six weeks old. He also read that often, adult prairie dogs will leave the babies in the old burrows, where the babies are comfortable, and the adults will move to new ones, often several miles away. So that gave us some hope that just because we didn't see evidence of activity meant that they were all dead. But we still worried because of the drought. The grasses out there that they eat are dried up and brown.

Then yesterday the rains came. During the evening news, it started raining so hard it disrupted the satellite signal. The rain was so loud, I wished there were some kind of volume button for the rain so I could turn it down! The back courtyard became a muddy mess, with huge puddles in various places. I kept checking the weather station and reporting the rapidly growing accumulation. When the rain stopped after about half an hour, we had 0.57 inches of rain. That's huge! I looked out back after another half an hour and all the puddles had absorbed into the ground, leaving an almost totally dry yard, just barely damp.

We weren't sure if there had been any rain at The Ranch. We kept looking in the general direction of where it is from here.

A couple of hours later, it began to rain again! This was a slow, steady, soaking rain, the perfect kind. And this time we could tell it was raining at The Ranch. We could tell by looking at the sky and we verified it by looking at the doppler radar on the computer. It was raining more over there than it was here, and we got an additional 0.14 inches of rain for a daily total of 0.71 inches. If we get a few more storms like that, the prairie dogs may survive after all.

With ironic timing, I've just received a summons for jury duty. It will be at the recently-completed judicial complex, built where "our" prairie dogs used to live.

Tales From the Monsoons

The monsoons have finally arrived, albeit with a whimper.

Friday night as I was getting ready to go to work (the hotel night job, 11pm to 7 am three nights a week), Ron and I heard the unfamiliar but unmistakable sound of rain. Fairly hard rain. We cheered. Rain!

I left for work, and even though it's only a ten-minute drive, I was only halfway there when the rain stopped. Ron told me later that it didn't even rain enough to measure one one-hundreth of an inch (0.01) on our weather station. Sigh.

Saturday night (or more accurately, Sunday morning, about 3:00), I was at work and again heard the sound of rain and smelled the scent of rain. A few minutes later, Chris (the security guard) and I went outside. It was raining very lightly, hardly more than a mist. We stepped out from under the porch overhang to feel the rain. We joked about singing in the rain, and we both spun around a few times (individually), arms outstretched. We knew we were being silly, but he's a nice kid and we were OK with being silly. We were just enjoying the rain for a few minutes.

When I got home in the morning, I checked the weather station and sure enough, it hadn't rained enough to register anything on the station. I wonder if we could adjust it somehow so it would register one one-thousandth of an inch, but maybe that would be too depressing.

Then yesterday we got real rain. Hard rain that lasted about half an hour! Complete with a few rumbles of thunder. It happened late in the afternoon when I was at my other job (psychologist, 2:30 to 4:30 Monday through Friday). I drove home in the pouring rain, reminding myself how to drive in the pouring rain. By the time I got home, the rain had stopped, of course, and I checked the weather station. We'd gotten thirty-six-hundreths of an inch (0.36), which doesn't sound like a lot, but it's actually huge. Prior to that rain yesterday, we'd only gotten 2.15 inches of precipitation since January 1, mostly in the form of snow. So to get 0.36 in half an hour or less is a LOT of rain. It puddled up along the shoulders of the roads, causing some cars to almost hydroplane. The ground was so dry, the rain soaked in quickly, too quick for the dirt courtyard to turn into mud (thank you, rain gods).

I'm writing this in the afternoon and the sky is turning dark and cloudy again, and I'm hoping for more rain. I think everyone in Taos is hoping for more rain (except the tourists, I guess).

The Rain Finally Goes Through the Drain

I apologize for not posting anything in such a long time. It's an odd combination of having so much to do, but none of it was worth blogging about.
It's shedding season and the two wolfdogs are shedding big clumps of wool all over the place, inside and out. We never did get around to shaving them this year, because spring came so late. Sometimes we pull the clumps out of them, the ones that are ready to come out on their own. In just a few minutes there is a pile of wolf fur that's bigger than a whole cat. Other clumps come out without any pulling and there's always a trail of wolf fur all over the place. I try to pick it up daily.

It's also monsoon season, when we get rain nearly every afternoon. Sometimes the showers are strong and brief; other times they're slow, steady soaking rains that last for a couple of hours or more.

Any kind of rain wreaked havoc on the rear courtyard, where the dogs spend their time when they're not indoors. They like to gather by the iron gate so they can see out and watch the goings on. So a low spot developed there and any rain would create a deep and large mud puddle. It would stay there for days because there was no drainage under or through the gate. Four dogs (16 paws) plus mud puddles and/or mud plus light-colored carpet equals disaster!

So last Saturday (a week ago today), I started tackling the problem while Ron tackled the problems with his computer (he installed a new motherboard, new hard drive, and new operating system - Vista), but it was much harder than I thought it would be. I dug dirt out from directly underneath the iron gate, to create a place for the water to go, and hauled a couple of wheelbarrows of dirt to the low spot. Then I ran out of steam.

On Sunday, with his computer working properly again, Ron and I worked together and it only took a couple of hours to finish the job. Ron shoveled dirt from the dirt pile into the wheelbarrow and I rolled the wheelbarrow around and dumped the dirt in the low area. That way each of us could rest while the other worked. After 15 or so loads, we took a well-deserved break, and went inside to cool off and drink Gatorade. Then we went back to work. I smoothed out the fill dirt, creating a slightly mounded area while Ron dug a small trench on either side of the mounded area and going underneath the gate and continuing for a few feet on the other side of the gate.

Then we went inside and sat back, waiting for the regular afternoon rainstorm. Except it didn't come!

Finally it rained overnight, nearly half an inch (which doesn't sound like much, but is a lot for around here) and no mud puddle. Success! We've had more rain since then, of course, and the drainage continues to work! The dirt is muddy for a little while, but quickly dries up since there's no puddle of standing water. And no puddle of standing water also means far fewer mosquitoes.