My goodness. I made a mistake when I said "my days are simple" in my last post. I tempted fate I suppose. The day after that the yaks, Mary and Elizabeth took off. We are still stumped as to how they escaped, we checked the fence and neighbours checked it. There are no holes but people keep saying that they couldn't have jumped it. Clearly my girls (like so many other women) have been grossly underestimated. They got out.
So let me tell you how things went down.
Sunday 20:00
"It's weird we haven't seen the girls come up to the barn"
We discuss how cute it is that every day at dusk they venture into the barn to settle in for the night, we talk about how they must be doing it later tonight because the days are getting longer.
You know how there are moments you wish you could do over again this is one of them. I should have been more insistent.
"Maybe we should check the pasture"
"No, they didn't just run off, let them be"
Monday- 05:00
"RACHEL, GET UP THE YAKS ARE GONE"
We spend the next six hours searching our property, for tracks, yak poops, any sign of them really. We're mostly on foot but come up empty. Not a single track outside the pasture, its as if they teleported. We drive the roads near us. I post on facebook, we continue searching. I call the SPCA & Conservation. We continue searching.
-
17:00
We find tracks in a neighbours property. It's raining, we're cold, wet, muddy and panicked. By this time we're on the quad, and we've spent more than a few hours getting mud thrown all over us while driving through the marshy areas behind our property. I'm randomly checking facebook, I throw out where the tracks are in hopes that someone has some kind of idea where we are. I don't check facebook again.
- 19:00
"DYLAN I FOUND THE YAKS. SHIT."
"Shit"
We laugh at our absurd selves, we both know that we haven't a single clue what to do now.
You see Dylan and I had spent so many hours just searching we hadn't actually thought about what we'd do if we found them. Sometimes I wear cowboy boots, but I am no cowboy. I don't know how to drive or rope them. But we tried. They were in the bush, so the two of us pushed them out of the bush and into a small trail in between two pastures. We thought maybe we were cowboys.
This is another moment we wish we could do over again.
-20:00
We've got them nearly in the trail. This is an important lesson in communication.
"We should just push them home."
"Yeah, you drive the quad behind, I'll go in front."
We had the trail blocked off on one end and me on the quad behind. We thought we had them.
Had I looked at my facebook messages, I would have seen that we had a plethora of people at the ready to help us drive them home. I didn't. I thought we were on our own. We didn't know what to do, so we tried to catch and rope them in this trail, we are not cowboys and it failed miserably. They ran right through the barbed wire fence into the empty pasture. I called the guy who owns it, he told us to push the yaks into the pasture across from that one because it was smaller, had horses in it and would make it easier to get ropers in.
-22:00
We attempted to drive them from one pasture to another, however because now they know how easy it is for them to push right through barbed wire, they bush up again. We follow for a short time. It's dark, raining and we are exhausted. We leave them for the night.
Tuesday 08:00
We take the quad out and search again for hours, we follow their tracks into the actual woods. Real life wilderness, not the well groomed "woodsy" trails I'm used to. It's not cute, it's not fun, it's not the "getting outdoors having fun" vibe I'm used to. We're trudging through swamps, snow and mud on foot because it's too deep to get the quad through. Neighbours have organized a search party on horseback in the same woods, we're all searching. We all lose the tracks.
20:00
We give up for the night, the neighbours have gone home. We all know the vicinity they're in but they walked into swamps and we can't find their tracks in any direction after the swamp.
Wed 06:00
Dylan returns to work. We've decided to stop the foot searching. I get on the phone to a neighbour with a helicopter. I call one of the Hutterite colonies and hire their tracking hounds and herding dogs. I want them to go with the big group of people that are coming on the weekend to search the woods. I plan to use the helicopter to locate them, and the dogs and people to herd them out of the bush. I've hired ropers as well just in case we can't herd them home. Dylan and I are flipping back and forth between wanting them back and accepting that we aren't capable of handling them.
10:00
I've purchased baby chicks that need to be picked up, farm life rolls on despite my missing yaks. I marvel at the idea that things are still continuing even though I'm in the middle of a farm nightmare. I bring the chicks home, work on their setup and continue with the daily chores.
16:00
I come out of the chicken coop and nearly piss myself. LITERALLY. The girls are home. They're in an empty pasture that is just barbed wire and has had the gate removed. A million things run through my head. How do I herd them by myself. Will the dogs spook them off? What will happen if I get them in their pasture? Will they immediately take off again? Who can I call? WHAT THE FUCK AM I GOING TO DO!!!!!!????? WHY DID DYLAN GO TO WORK?!
I'm shaking and my heart is a thunderstorm in my chest. Then I see two neighbours. They've herded the yaks from their field along side our property. The girls were just hanging out when they got home. They tell me that they've called another neighbour to help herd them into the pasture. She arrives, the four of us easily walk them into the pasture and close the gate. It takes about five minutes. It's super easy and painless making my previous absolute panic seem entirely absurd.
The neighbours walk the fence with me, just to be sure I haven't missed anything. I haven't. They don't think they could have jumped, and they can't find any tracks outside the pasture either.
Present
The yaks have stayed with us overnight, though we're both terribly paranoid about them leaving again. I have to go into town to get fence materials, as we are going to build a bigger fence despite people saying we don't need it. Clearly we do. I'm currently a bit terrified that they will no longer be here when I return.
I've put Walske in the pasture with them, they don't get along particularly well, but I'm hoping they'll be so distracted with hating him that they won't jump out again. I wish I knew yak psychology.
There is a beaver in our dugout making short work of the clearing of cattails chore that I was so regretting so, thankyou little beaver. He's a weird little guy, hes just cutting down the cattails and hauling them into the woods behind the dugout. there is no body of moving or still water there. He's been at it for hours. Little buddy has a stronger work ethic than I do.
Yesterday I found a grouse just hanging out with our chickens in the coop. The chickens we're unconcerned, I at first didn't even notice him. Eventually he flew away. Do things ever just settle down?!
The sheep are very near lambing, we expect it to happen this week. Apparently they don't care that I'm tired from searching for yaks and working on fixing their pasture. So I've been obsessively checking on them every couple hours. I am both excited for lambs and petrified because I haven't a damn clue what to do if things don't go smoothly.
The chicks are doing well, though they are also a lot of work. Terribly high maintenance for such tiny little creatures. They are setup on our dining room table. Farm life is lit fam. Despite all the goings on in the last few days my witch nails are still in good shape, though one has a chip. Not bad overall. Today I find endless joy in my superior nail strength and my returned yaks. I am not Queen of the Farm today, but I'll get there.
