Ted’s essays

dam + ladder

Beagle Brain, aka: Scooter, our Beagle/Lab cross, the BLAB, inherited the beagle willingness to follow her nose wherever it leads, whenever she can. Our containment fence was not up to the task.

She would challenge it.
I would fix it.
Rinse and Repeat.

FINALLY I shut her exit down while the rented backhoe was available with a dam and its backwater flooding where the fence crossed the creek.

Yay!

Success!

BUT

The tiny dam I rebuild every spring to enable my irrigation to draw from what little bit the upstream irrigators leave in Bunkhouse Creek posed no barrier to the little trout living in the year-round stream. My Scooter dam and culvert, however, did make a barrier… One I was willing to ignore, I thought, because so many things are still on my “Must accomplish before winter” list.

Yet today the fish ladder came up on the guitar. And there it is.

I suppose my sympathy for the fishes exceeded the power of my priority setting program.

Yes, I know fish is both the singular and plural. This is called “artistic license”.