With Ears Like Eyes

Sam - ? - 27 - ND, USA Just an adult meandering through life. I'm an artist and writer, though too anxious to share a lot of it with the world. I also own a few horses. Oscar, 10 yr old QH. Olive, a 2020 Buckskin App (solid) Feel free to chat with me! Warning: I post what I want. I do post gore, horse stuff, vulture culture, art both personal and other, triggering subjects, politics, opinions, and other controversial topics. Sorry in advanced. --- My tag is 'eyes talks'

[proteusolm]

The Ojibwe nailed it. Wawa is exactly the right name for a goose.

[ears-like-eyes]

Went fishing today down at my spot for the first time this year. You know what. Not even mad that all I caught today were Redhorse (aka: suckerheads) and a lot of them at that. My spot is one that is on an oxbow of the river, you have to walk 1/2 mile through thick brush to reach the bank. Once the willows are all leafed out and the underbrush wakes up, it's near impossible to walk out there so I only fish it in the spring. I'm pretty sure I'm the only one that fishes that spot. I have never seen foot prints that weren't my own. It's like my own little hiding spot. I love it. But I got skunked today, but that's okay!

I found this in the river:

Like these boys aren't small in the slightest. The tines on both of them are massive and the picture doesn't do them just. I mean, especially the guy on the left. I would have happily mounted him if I would have tagged him last fall. (And he was an OLD deer. His teeth are nearly completely ground down)

My guess was that they were fighting and ended up drowning last fall. Either fell through the ice or something. The only thing that would have made it cooler is if they were locked up. Who knows. Maybe they were and after some decay, the current got them separated. The bottom jaw of the deer on the left was snapped in half, not at the natural separation in the bone where they come apart, but snapped in half the other way. Like across the jaw. That would take some type of force to do that.

So I may not have brought home supper, but I have some cool skulls to add to the collection. These guys rival a dead head that took out a tractor tire that I have hung in my living room. He was the biggest deer I had on display until now. He has more tines, but both of these guys are bigger overall in spread and tine length.

It was a good day!

[ears-like-eyes]

No clue if any news outside of my tri-state area covered anything the past couple days. But this is what we're dealing with up north right in the Northern Plains. High winds and massive dust storms. Needless to say, I think I'll have an uptick in work next year (I manage a soil conversation district). The amount of comments I was seeing on the highway department's posts telling people to stay home that said things along the lines of "who do I contact to plant shelterbelts?" "Where can I buy trees?" "Is there a service to contact about this?" Ect.

During the worst of it, I was actually on my way to and from the state nursery picking up a load of trees for this season. (I spent roughly 12hrs on the road on Thursday in this stuff).

At one point, I was at a random gas station getting fuel and a guy stopped me, and thanked me for what I do. He must have read my shirt, which had the name of my district on it haha.

Moral of the story. If you own land - plant trees, quit ripping them out, try to practice no till if it's applicable, and plant native grasses at the very bare minimum. Please...

(pictures taken from friends posts and the highway department).

Not pictured is my horse trainer's truck(manual) that the 70mph sustained winds blew into the side of her house.

[ears-like-eyes]

Have you ever had to haul a square baler you bought at auction shear on the other side of the state? That the width on was 89" across, but all you had was a trailer that was 82"?

Not our first time, probably not our last either 😅

We actually got lucky, the lights started working midway through the drive! We only had to stop once to rewire stuff on the side of the road!

Stole this from my partner, this was when we got it loaded. Which required a payloader and two people hanging off the sides of the baler to keep it stable to load. These things aren't evenly weighted by any sense of the word.

[ears-like-eyes]

I was doing chores at the winter pasture after work today, and I misplaced my drink. I was mad about it and figured I left it in the barn. I drive over to where my partner lives so we could go move some rounds off the hay field and bring them down to the winter yard. I asked him if I could run inside and grab something to drink quick and he was like "why? You have your drink right there?"

Yeah ... my half drank fountain pop rode all the way back there. Half of that drive was on gravel, the other half on paved highway and I hit a nasty frost boil on the way over too....I HAVE NO CLUE HOW IT STAYED.

(also I see that my phone autocorrected 'and' to 'as')

The funny part. I guess this is just a habit I have with this truck apparently because there was this instance not too long ago.

I had a meeting for work I had to go to. I took the hitch off before going because I've had one too many hitches stolen. I forgot to put the pin in the cab. That pin rode 350 miles and survived sitting there for 3 days driving around a city before I noticed it.

[ears-like-eyes]

2011 GMC Sierra 1500 vs 2021 GMC Sierra 1500

Well. I broke down and bought a new truck this weekend. It's been coming, I've spent the last month picking out and researching a vehicle to replace my truck, and funny enough. The perfect match was just a newer version of what I already owned. (Except the new one is a diesel and my old one is a gas).

So I spent my entire weekend driving all over both North Dakota AND Minnesota looking at different variations of this truck. I was really hoping I wasn't going to end up with another white one, but I guess I'm just destined to always own a white truck.

My old truck, Monty, I've owned for 8 years as my daily driver. I have beaten the piss out of him. I've made that poor half ton do the work of a 1 ton more often than not and he's stayed a faithful work horse. So, he's finally going into retirement. At 300,000 miles, he's given me more than his all. He's not going anywhere, just being retired from daily driving and hauling. He's going to spend his days out being the fishing/camping truck. The new one can be the daily work horse.

Am I the only one that gets way too attached to my vehicles? It's bittersweet getting a new one. Not going to lie. I feel like I'm betraying an old friend...

(also maybe an unpopular opinion, but I like the body style of the old trucks way better. The new ones to me are ugly. But what can you do)

[ears-like-eyes]

Tell me you work blue collar without telling me you work blue collar.

This is probably one of the best feelings in the world. Granted, it was my 2nd try, not first this go around. I'll still take the win.

(I cuss like a sailor when I'm working by myself.)

[lannegarrett]

[hamletthedane]

So, I follow this “bad commercial interior design” Facebook page and-

[comicgeekscomicgeek]

[incorrectvillanevequotes]

[charlesoberonn]

[gotouhitori]

What?

[supreme-leader-stoat]

No, What's on second.

[tastylemonbread]

daddy wants to see yall on yall baddest behavior. lend me some sugar. I AM your neighbor.

[thatnoulguyorsomething]

I genuinely cannot tell if this is supposed to be a horny post or House of Leaves inspo. Great job, op.

[tastylemonbread]

secret third option actually. now, don't have me break this thing down for nothing

[galileosballs]

I don't know who needs to hear this, but the idea that you can make a little mistake while doing your taxes and then go to jail for it is mostly not a thing. If you make a mistake on your taxes you'll get a letter in the mail that says 'hey you made a mistake on your taxes' and then you can fix it (source: I have made mistakes on my taxes, international tax treaties are complicated). The only time people typically go to jail for tax stuff is if they commit massive intentional (or negligent, like if they run a business and never consult any expert on how payroll taxes work) fraud over a long period of time.

There's basically no way for a person new to doing taxes - and presumably not handling a lot of money - to accidentally fuck up those taxes in a way that's going to end with that person in jail.

[ears-like-eyes]

So my truck has been at the shop for power steering issues. It's a smaller mechanic shop, so vehicles waiting to be worked on or vehicles done being worked on get parked outside on the street. Which this shop is also on the same street as our hospital. That fact will be relevant in a second.

I got a call from my mechanic this morning, and he was like "So good news! We got your power steering fixed, uh bad news - an ambulance clipped the back of your truck..."

I'm not mad, I actually laughed it off because it was like, really? Of all things to happen to my truck while it's getting worked on. Being hit by an ambulance wasn't remotely on my radar. With my mechanic's pause and 'uh bad news' comment. I was expecting him to tell me they had to replace the whole power steering pump or some other worse than we thought mechanical issue. Not that my truck was taken out by emergency services 😂

It is what it is. Shit happens. I currently don't have a running vehicle (cold snap killed my work truck so I have to deal with that before tomorrow.) So I guess I'll get there when I get there to figure it out.

[moth-belly]

[ears-like-eyes]

You know you live in a redneck place when the other night you smacked a deer in your car. Contemplated long and hard about taking it home to cut up and fill the freezer. But your truck is at the mechanic and the only other vehicle you had in your possession was your gov work truck. Thought long and hard some more, but probably for the best not to use the gov truck to throw a deer in the back of. So you leave it because losing your job for some meat wasn't on the to-do list for the week.

But the following day, the deer is gone off the side of the road and there's a ton of foot prints in the snow of where it was.

Needless to say. I'm relieved that someone else stopped to take the deer home. I don't have to feel like a good animal went to waste now.

Which, this is all a normal occurrence where I'm at, there's times where you have to hurry up and beat someone else to a perfect roadkill deer/elk. But thinking about that, I feel like that is definitely NOT a normal societal thing in most places. Picking up fresh roadkill to bring home to eat 😅

[ears-like-eyes]

I honestly do love where I live. I wouldn't change it for anything. There will always be something peaceful about this for me. It's brutal, but in a beautiful way.