Warning: The following description is not for the faint of heart or stomach

As nearly everyone began to head out the door and back down to Ventura, it was deduced that due to some bad timing and forgetfulness, *somebody* had left a frozen calf in the thaw box last week. Last week as in seven, 90+ degree days ago. Geoff: "Devon, you and Angela can deal with it later. You guys will have the truck." Thanks Geoff. Thanks a lot. And then they left. 

Devon and I wanted to get it over with quickly. We grabbed our carcass gloves and hopped in the (brand new) truck and drove down the road to the thaw box. Stepping out of the car, the sound of flies and the smell of rotting meat were like a smack in the face, and that from several feet away. As we got closer, we could see a dark liquid dripping from underneath the closed door of the wooden box. Oh. Lovely. A lot of faces were made. Devon and I went to either side of the box to each undo one of the bolts and then let the door drop. I tried to breathe through my mouth but forgot and in one instant smelled the worst smell I've ever smelled. Once, on a trip to the Huntington Library and Gardens, I saw a flower they had on special exhibit there known as a "corpse flower"--named for its distinct odor: that of rotting flesh. And I remember thinking at the time that how would I know what it did or did not smell like, having never smelled a rotting corpse. 

Corpse flower (Amorphophallus titanum)

Well, now I am all too familiar with said smell. There was a fleeting instant in which I could feel my lunch attempting a jailbreak but I tamped it down. Breathed through my mouth. Barely breathed at all. The visual was not much prettier than the stench: a furry lump that was once a rabbit was half-submerged in the pool of viscous red-brown liquid toward the front of the box; a black plastic garbage bag containing a deflated mass practically floated toward the back. The liquid itself was roiling with maggots. There was no way we were getting this in the truck bed. It seemed a shame to drench the brand new truck in gut-churning viscera, and anyways, we didn't even have a lift gate. For the two of us to lift this mess--tall as the truck is, short as we are, and liquid as the calf was--would have meant for a much messier job than either Devon or I was prepared to handle. 

"Let's just toss the rabbit into the bushes," Devon suggested, and I agreed. We each grabbed a leg, and were walking over to the bushes when the skin slipped off and the rabbit fell. We both leapt out of the way like the thing was cursed. Or more to get out of the splash zone. That task accomplished, we debated what to do with the calf. Bury it? We gave shovels a try but it quickly became apparent that digging a hole would require far more time and effort than we were willing to devote. In the end, we dragged it off into the bushes, covered it with some dirt and long grass, and left it. That smell, however, stayed with me, lingering in my nostrils for the rest of the day, tinging everything I ate or drank with the faint smell of rotten meat. This is how it works: you eat before, not after dealing with the dead stuff. I learned that lesson the hard way on night one, when, after returning to the ranch house from a feeding site, everything I ate tasted a little like defrosted bear. 

I feel you, Ludo from the 80's movie masterpiece, "Labyrinth."

Would you like some cheese with that whine?

After saying farewell to James for the week, I hopped on my ATV to ride to the North Rim blind. My hours in the blind were not the most pleasant ever. It was cramped and cold; there weren’t enough hooks on which to hang things, and the floor was viscous mud that seemed intent to drag me feet-first into its depths; the chair sat too low relative to the scope, so I had to remain perched on the edge, back arched, to view the proceedings of the day. Unlike the blind at Hopper, this one was not insulated against the wind or the rain. By the time I left, my toes felt like a block of ice and I couldn’t move my fingers. I had to push on the ATV’s accelerator with my wrist because I couldn’t make my thumb work.

When I miraculously made it back to the house, I had such a cup of hot chocolate.

I left the house once more just after it had started raining to check in with the flight pen birds. I spent the rest of that afternoon slightly less cold in the blind there.

Later:

I started a crappy movie that was left at the house. I was just finishing dinner when Geoff called and told me I should go change the water in the flight pen. Ok. I’ve done this. Granted, I haven’t done this alone, but that shouldn’t be a problem.

This task couldn’t have gone worse unless the birds had actually escaped.

Let’s see: I couldn’t get the tap on the Water Buffalo to turn on, I couldn’t get the bolt on the flight pen door to budge for a good five minutes, I forgot to collect the old carcasses littering the bottom of the enclosure, and then, horror of horrors, I couldn’t get the door to close again. That was the worst, not only because I COULDN’T GET THE DOOR TO CLOSE but there was a powerfully gusty wind blowing and I had visions of showing up in the morning to an empty flight pen, the door open and swinging in the breeze; visions of tendering my resignation—dismissed, rejected, publicly humiliated. It was more than I could bear, and at one point I totally lost my cool (what cool I ever had to begin with). I scraped my finger, popped the bones in my thumb, pulled a muscle in my side trying anything to get that goddamn bolt into its socket. When I finally decided it was good enough, it was a good fifteen minutes later, and I’d worked up a sweat in spite of the cool and blustery night air. I went to bed that night, still unsure what I would (or wouldn’t) find in the morning.

*

That night, riding the four-wheeler through the dark on my way to the flight pen, I caught a ghostly flash of the downy white underbelly and wings of a barn owl. David Bowie, is that you?