Pondering Velcro and hog hierarchy.

We've been in Oatmeal, Texas for five days now. Except for the one trip to "town" (Bertram) to use the free wifi at the Hungry Moose, cell service/Internet has been sketchy. I've finished my reading assignments for one of my graduate courses. Written in APA style, the text can be a bit dry. Good thing I can take lots of breaks. It's during these breaks that I ponder some of life's more important questions-like, were grass burrs in dog hair the inspiration for Velcro. Yesterday, mom picked over 30 burrs out of Ruby's nappy white fur. Each time, the removal sounded like somebody ripping open Velcro. When I get back to regular technology, I'm gonna look that one up.

Yesterday we took the dogs to a bark park in Georgetown. I know. Why would you take dogs off a 90 acre spread twenty-something miles away to a bark park? Wellllll, our ranch neighbor, Steve, came over to exterminate the house for wasps, hornets, scorpions, spiders, and rattlesnakes (sort of).He said we could leave the dogs here in their kennels, but that didn't sound like a good idea to me, so we took the pups to Georgetown to add to their burr collection.

Steve's family used to own my brother's land,too. The surrounding thousand or so acres has belonged to his family since before the Civil War. Steve says he guesses that the Indians owned it before that.We've seen some flints and stone tools that indicate this is so.
Steve and his family are goat farmers, but Steve also works for an extermination company in Marble Falls.

Since he was here, I also asked him about help with the feral hog situation. See much of Texas has a feral hog problem. I really want to know how it started. Another thing to research when I'm back to high-speed Internet country. Anyway, that brings up something else I've pondered when I take my breaks. Is there a hierarchy in wild hog packs?

My brother has several deer feeders on the property. He hunts, and we eat the venison. One of the feeders is set up so that you can watch the wildlife from the back porch. We've seen a couple of deer, a flock of wild turkeys, a racoon, and the dreaded hogs. It started out as one hog. A lone black mass at dusk. Could've been a shadow, a bush. I got my binoculars and confirmed that it was a hog. The next day, lone hog came back. About an hour later several of his friends showed up. Made me wonder if he was the scout, the front line, the official food taster or the hog equivalent of a food blogger. Yesterday we counted a dozen hogs at dusk around the feeder. I bravely went out on the porch an hollered "go away pigs!"
They ran away, but it will be interesting to see how many show up tonight.

My brother intends to teach me to shoot a rifle, so I can help rid the place of the hogs. I never thought I would do that, but all of those massive snorters so close to then house, me, Mom, and my burr-ridden pups was a bit troubling.

We'll see. Stay tuned. My next post will reveal the American Pickers connection to Burnet, Texas. Just a hogs throw from Oatmeal.