I had just finished cleaning the scalpel handle and tongs. Swirling the old toothbrush around in the frozen slush that is supposed to be "low Ph" disinfectant acid, scrubbing the bloody scalpel handle and tongs with the slush, and then scouring them clean in a nearby snowbank. And I turned to look up the street to see a green game warden pickup rapidly approaching me. With red and blue lights flashing.

I assume she knew who I was, standing in uniform by my tailgate, and just had the lights on as a joke. But I'm not sure. But she didn't park close, instead staying back a ways, and parking her rig in the street, staggered from mine. Couldn't hear what she was saying over the traffic on the nearby interstate, but she was gesturing towards a red truck parked on the exit ramp.

Me, I ignored her and greeted the heeler sisters' sister, who came bounding out wearing a corset of blaze orange marking tape.

Warden asks if I've been cutting horns off an antelope.

Uh, no.

She can see the blue latex gloves I'm wearing, the scalpel handles and tongs drying on the spare tire, and the bottle of frozen hallucinogenic, mutagenic, carcinogenic cleaning fluid still on the tailgate.

Obviously, I've just taken lymph node samples for CWD testing.

From a roadkilled doe deer, right over there in the median of the interstate. Wife reported it this morning, saying it was exactly two-tenths of a mile the other side of milepost 215. Saw no reason to risk dragging the thing across the busy highway, so I just slit the neck and jerked the nodes there in the median.

At milepost 214.8.

Then came here on the frontage road to clean everything up.

Warden had just been enjoying her late lunch at McD's, when dispatch reported receiving a cell phone report of someone, in a green truck, cutting antlers off a roadkilled antelope. At milepost 214.

I avoided pointing out antelope don't have antlers. They have horns.

But we can see all of mile 214 from the frontage road where we're parked. No dead antelope. Just my dead deer.

So, apparently, I am the culprit that she and the sheriff's office have been desperately trying to hunt down ever since. Which explains the deputy that drove by on the exit ramp just a few minutes ago.

And presumably, the red truck parked on the exit ramp is the reporting witness, who probably wonders why the poacher and game warden have their dogs out running and playing together in an empty field.

So, warden reports the false alarm to dispatch, who will call back the RP. We visit on classifications and bighorn sheep while the heeler sisters play, and soon the red truck leaves.

But hey, at least they called in, right?

The warden leaves first, and as I start up my rig I hear her and the dispatch laughing over the airwaves.

So I jump on the local frequency, and demand to know what she told them.

"Just that I wrote you a citation anyway, 'cause I needed the ticket this month."

But I got the last laugh, as I heard her utter a mild expletive over the local band.

Followed by "Now my fries are cold!"

Today's Grouse Pic is specifically for Melissa, who seems to be having trouble finding deer to photograph. (And yes, this one was taken from the truck, too. Only from the passenger's side, so I had to lean over on top of two wiggling heelers to roll down the window, and then time the shutter between heeler squirms.)