A change of pace for Feathered Photography today.
Followers of Feathered Photography are already somewhat familiar with the northwest Montana family farm where I grew up. Originally it was actually two adjoining farms owned by my family and by my uncle Floyd’s family so all of us cousins (eight of us) pretty much grew up together and we’re still close today. Cousin Jim Dudley and his wife Sandy own part of the farm and live in the farmhouse.
Jim is the older brother of Ken Dudley, whose gift to me when he passed away allowed me to purchase my first birding lens which changed my life in such a positive way.
I’d describe part of Jim’s role today as being sort of the caretaker of the farm’s wild critters, including but not limited to the beloved Great Horned Owls that have been resident in the farm’s old granaries for many years. This is the mated pair of adults with the larger female on the right.
Recent storms in that area of Montana have really greened everything up, which of course is ideal for wildlife. The small creek that runs through the farm is often only a trickle by midsummer but a few days ago, after 3″ of rain, it was near flood stage.
The creek (we call it “the crick”) was part of the ‘playground’ of all of us cousins when we were young, including what some of us still call “the old swimming hole”, marked by the small red x in the photo. I only remember using the swimming hole once, because when I was a very young kid a family friend visiting the farm threw a dead skunk in the swimming hole. I don’t believe anyone has used it as a swimming hole since.
By the way, as kids we used to sled and toboggan down those sloping bluffs at the upper left. Oh, the frozen toes and the memories!
OK, that sets the stage for a story I just had to tell my readers, all instigated by a photo Jim sent me a couple of days ago. Jim has a Havahart-type trap that he typically uses to trap some of the ubiquitous gophers (Richardson’s Ground Squirrels) that burrow too close to the farmhouse lawn and yard so they can be relocated elsewhere. Recently he’s also been trying to trap a feral cat that has been making a nuisance of itself.
But a few days ago he inadvertently caught a ‘cat impersonator’, a muskrat.
The unintended victim of the trap obviously wasn’t happy with its new circumstances, so being a rodent it tried to chew its way out.
Personally I find this photo extremely interesting because I see muskrats often but I’ve only rarely seen their huge rodent teeth and I don’t remember ever having such a good look at their long digging claws.
Jim, of course, released the muskrat at the edge of the nearly flooded creek. This short video documents the event. Sorry it isn’t centered like the photos are but WordPress keeps giving me a hard time when I try to center it.
OK, now to the photo that Jim sent me that I decided just HAD to be seen by a wider audience.
This is Jim. Can you guess what he’s up to here?
Yup, his next unintended victim was a striped skunk which also had to be released from the trap. As you can imagine, doing so without being sprayed would be a tricky operation, so this is Jim’s “skunk garb” including booties/leggings, plastic gloves, goggles and plastic covering the entire rest of his body. I think Jim’s a pretty good sport to allow this photo to be taken and me to present it to a much wider audience.
And here he is, releasing the skunk within a couple of hundred feet of the house while Sandy was taking documentary photos. I imagine Sandy kept her distance.
When I asked Jim if he was sprayed during the process, this was his response: “I got sprayed but the plastic stuff I was wearing got it and I threw all of that stuff away.”
If you’ve ever been sprayed by a skunk you KNOW why Jim was being so careful.
Ron
Notes:
All photos and video (except for the first photo) copyright Jim Dudley and Sandy Dudley and used by permission.
Correction: I just learned that I got part of the story wrong. Jim actually wasn’t trying to catch the feral cat. They like having it on the farm for mouse control. He did catch it in the trap but only accidentally. Thanks for the correction, Teri Dudley.
There’s another interesting story involving what we see in the last photo. In about 1950 when I was three years old our little house was just behind where Jim is in the photo. The dirt road coming down the hill at upper left led to the two farmhouses and the creek is just out of frame at upper right.
We had an insecure fence around our little house with a nonfunctional gate so with the creek so close mom would use clothesline rope tied to a harness around me to keep me safely in our little yard. Mom was always either in the yard with me or watching me through the kitchen window. But on one occasion her strategy to keep me safe didn’t work and I got out of the harness when she wasn’t looking.
An uncle of Jim’s, Harvey Ehlert, came driving down the hill at upper left, looked down the hill to his left and saw 3 year old me floating face down in the creek. He stopped the grain truck he was driving, raced down the hill and pulled me out of the creek – apparently none the worse for wear. Mom was a registered nurse and after a thorough check of my condition they didn’t even take me to town to the hospital. As far as I can tell there was no resulting brain damage from lack of oxygen. 🙂 At least nothing permanent…
Thank you, Harvey! I’ve enjoyed the additional 72 years that you gave me so far.
Not sure how I missed this post when it came out. The story of your rescue is scary. Many, many children and their parents have been less fortunate. And all your blog-followers are grateful too!
Jim is a beyond a good sport. He’s a hero. We need more like him because he occasionally risks so much to release a less than happy and potentially dangerous (to the nose and other parts) wild creature rather than kill it. We need more people like that!
thank you (and your family) so much for this different excursion.
I am super impressed at the muskrat’s teeth and claws. I loved the skunk wear too. Glad it was effective as well.
As a small child I loved water (still do) and simply walked into any body of it I found (regardless of depth). The family had to watch out for me VERY carefully when water was involved. And other people often got wet.
And before I could walk I crawled into any body of water I came across.
There’s something about water and little kids, isn’t there EC. I was always drawn to it. Still am.
Your skunk story stirred a recent memory for me. Shortly after COVID started, my neighbor said he’d inadvertenly caught a skunk in his gopher trap and due to a physical limitation he couldn’t move the trap to where he wanted to release it — so he asked me to help. The trap was a flat one and Pepe le Pew didn’t want to come out the top when I opened it. So it took a bunch of gentle prodding with a stick. There seemed no way Pepe could turn his artillery towards me, but it happened. The silver lining was that when I went to the store later that day social distancing was not a problem!
Laughed out loud with that one, Kent!
I’ve never been sprayed directly but even getting the mist floating on the breeze on you will stick like glue to you for hours.
My very worst experience was having to clean the innards of a combine out after I ran a skunk through it during harvest when I wasn’t paying enough attention. My dad warned me of the consequences if I let it happen so when it did he made me clean it out.
It never happened again, I can assure you of that.
Thanks for sharing, Ron. Mona shared fond and not so fond memories of the farm life, but home was always Montana to her. I loved the pics and the stories. Thanks.
Larry, I have some not so fond memories of farm life too. But many of them involved being stuck working on the farm when I was a teenager when I’d rather have been in town with my friends. In the end the discipline was exactly what I needed but at the time I sure bitched and moaned about it.
One of Mona’s very favorite things about the farm was what she called, I think for the rest of her life, “Montana clouds”. We can see some of them in the 2nd photo in today’s post.
My hat is off to you and Ken. What a wonderful story. Now in turn you have shared all these photos with other folks, and the gift from Ken lives on.
There is a spiritual philosophy that recons that all our actions act like a wave and have a ripple effect in the universe. All that we say and do just goes out there. It’s up to us if it is for the better or worse. “Spirit in the Sky”, indeed. Thanks for the positive waves.
Ken loved that song, Michael. They even played it at his funeral.
It’s a favorite of mine too.
I loved the story and laughed through many similarities to my own childhood. I loved the reference of Crick! My parents have a “crick” that runs through their yard, I spent a good portion of my childhood in it. I think as a toddler my grandmother who lived with us kept me out of it. I don’t think I ever got tethered to anything but I do remember being given baths in a big metal tub in the garage before I could enter the house. We have many great skunk stories, and sledding with runner sleds down the dairy road. Kids today are really missing out!
“Kids today are really missing out!”
They sure are! I had so many wonderful adventures on the farm as a kid and today, as a semi-adult, they continue whenever I go back.
I thought that could almost be you in the getup. Definitely see a family resemblance.
I would have never guessed what the “uniform” was for. With a little refinement he could patent it. OK, maybe a lot of refinement.
The muskrat photo reminds me of the jabberwock http://www.jabberwocky.com/carroll/jabber/jabberwocky.html
I see what you mean about the family resemblance, Lyle. Out of the 8 cousins only 3 were boys – Jim, Ken and yours truly- and I see it in all 3 of us.
I have to stretch a little further with the jabberwock/muskrat resemblance but I do see it.
Have always enjoyed your going back to the farm and seeing the GH Owls again. When I was 12 years old I used to trap muskrats in semi-rural Pennsylvania. I would go out in the morning to the creek and remove them from the traps. I had a neighbor who trapped them and sold them to Sears Roebuck for the pelts. I think he paid he a couple bucks each for them. In my adult life I would never trap an animal.
Can’t even imagine having to go out a remove a skunk, but those kinds of things are of course part of life on a farm.
Everett, we had a lot of experiences with skunks on the farm, many of them unpleasant, especially when our dogs were involved. Even so, I always liked having them around.
When grandpa passed away, I stayed on at the farm with Ken for quite a long time (maybe a month or three?) after everyone went home from the funeral. There was a skunk who came to visit us every day on the hill by the silos. His antics were so adorable that he soon became a running joke between Ken and I, and after I finally went back home to Washington, there was a card in my mailbox with a handpainted skunk on the front of it (local artist, I believe), thanking me for helping to make the transition to life without Grandpa on the farm 🚜 a little bit easier. I always treasure that card and think of Ken every time I see a skunk. 🤣🤭
Another wonderful, warm and touching skunk tale to start my morning.
I loved that story, Shelley. I’d never heard it.
And knowing Ken’s sense of humor, he’d absolutely love the fact that you think of him every time you see a skunk!
Exactly! 😁🤣
What a great trip down memory lane. And those photos, esp of the skunk gear, are priceless and you did them justice with your flair for telling tales. Best of all though is the closeup of the muskrat teeth and claws. We often see one swimming in the overflow/drainage creek behind the strip mall near here and I have several photos of him but none showing his impressive “tools” that well. Finally, your reference to the emotional attachment to a lens acquired through the demise of a loved one struck home as that is how I acquired my first, last and only “big lens” a Tammy 150-600 after the death of my Mother at 95 in 2014. It too has brought me the kind of life changing joy in retirement that you speak of, though I have yet to develop the kind of expertise you have but the joy lives on with every new photo experience. It is a pleasure to be one of those able share in your special moments.
Thanks very much, Granny Pat. I often wonder what my life would have been like after retirement without Ken’s thoughtful gift.
Thank you for taking me to the farm! I miss being on and working a farm! It was a hard but great life!
You’re very welcome, Sybill. Farm life is like no other and as you say, it’s both hard and wonderful. I’d say more of the latter than the former.
What a fun post! My first guess when I saw Jim’s get-up was something to do with a bee hive. And I agree with Kris that the visitor who ruined your old swimming hole should have been tossed in there after the skunk. 🙂
Cathy, as I recall that visitor was a friend Jim’s age whose family was also very close to both Dudley families. I suspect he caught some grief about what he’d done.
Lovely post, Ron. And thanks to Jim for the educational tips on how to “dress for success” when dealing with skunks! Loved the muskrat close-up.
Thanks, Brett. Jim has always been creative with unusual situations.
Lol @ dress for success! That’s funny!!
Wonderful post ! I really do think that “visitor” should have been tossed into the old swimming hole –after he spoiled it —along with the dead skunk ! Living in this long-standing drought, seeing and hearing the water running so high makes one want to head for your Montana farm, jettisoning clothing along the way..
heading for the CRICK !
Kris, to all of us it will always be “crick”.
When I first started teaching my citified students would always tease me about how I said “creek” so in the classroom I eventually modified how I said it. But after I retired I went back to my old pronunciation.
You can’t take the Montana out of the boy…
What fun to visit the farm currently and go down memory lane! Thx to Jim and Sandy for sharing!
They had a harness for me when I was a kid for when they went down town or any such place. Know some think they’re cruel – not me – better to keep a “take off” kid safe – fortunately you got lucky!
Skunks are no laughing matter. Once Joe was jacking up an old vehicle to shoot one and the dog grabbed it and started shaking between that vehicle one one next too it. Joe hit the ground and pretty much escaped – of course the dog “got it”, dropped it and it lived another day!
We had one barn cat that caught and killed a muskrat many years ago – we were VERY impressed with the claws and teeth and amazed that the cat caught something nearly as large as she was.
“better to keep a “take off” kid safe”
Judy, at about the same age (3) one of my best little friends was Robert Humes of the same age. One day our parents took us up to the mountains right next to Glacier NP for a picnic near a lake. The two of us little kids were throwing rocks into the water while we were harnessed to a tree (I think it was a tree) but it was cold so our parents watched us from the car which was very close to us.
Suddenly a black bear came out of the woods toward little Robert (Robbie) and me so dad and Gordon, Robbie’s dad, rushed out of the car and rescued us – scaring the bear off. I don’t really remember the event but that’s the story I was told for years.
Know the “Crick” thing – it’s still “Wolf Crick Canyon” to me and, use it for Belt Crick and others also…… 🙂
Good thing the adults were paying attention as far as the bear goes!
They were watching us carefully through the windshield, Judy – my mom made damn sure of that. Being a nurse, she was more aware than most of misfortunes that could fall the way of kids that age.
Great post Ron. Creative use of the maligned garbage bags. I think that I will be having nightmares now about muskrats.
And I suggest that anyone with refined musical sensibilities read no further; muskrat love by captain and tenille….sorry…
“I think that I will be having nightmares now about muskrats.”
Those teeth and claws get your attention, don’t they Frances. Rodent teeth are like no other teeth.
Now Ron don’t laugh but when I saw the photo & read your words. What immediately popped into my head was Captain & Teneal’s song “Muskrat Love”. LOL!! Loved your whole post today.
Thanks for the earworm, Jo Ann!
Entertaining post!!! Thank you Jim and Sandy!
Terri, both Jim and Sandy are good people.