I just now got out of bed.

No, no April Fool.

Sleeping in felt great. The heeler sisters agree.

Nice bed, too.

Tonight I sleep in a truck.

Yesterday was a long one, starting with lek surveys, which ran into another hunter safety class, which then led into another search of the winter range for rotting elk carcasses (Actually, I was checking for duplicates errors in the database. Found two.) And finally ended 13 hours after it started. And then the wife and I had to push the dead Dodge back up into the driveway. Died right in the middle of the sidewalk that morning as she was headed to work.

It's still dead.

Hence, no entry yesterday.

The weather has warmed. Coyotes, ravens and bald eagles no longer have the three hundred-some elk carcasses to themselves.

They have competition.

So, now the protein laying out there that weeks ago was gorgeous, brown elk, is being recycled into:

Maggots.

Or, since this is the Easter season, perhaps all would feel better if we referred to them as "baby flies."

Thousands and thousands of "baby flies."

Millions, actually. Walking across the open sage, dodging cactus for the sake of the little maskless heeler following literally on my heels, I tried to do a little mental arithmetic.

Of a 300-pound elk, probably 200 pounds is convertible flesh. Stuff that maggots would eat (yes, there are parts maggots don't eat). And there are probably close to 400 elk carcasses out here. Being generous, let's figure the bigger scavengers got maybe half of that.

So, flies get the rest. Forty thousand pounds of elk.

How many maggots is that?

Assuming they're pretty efficient consumers, since there's not much left of a carcass after the maggots have left to bury themselves, pupating into flies so they can buzz away and pester humans and other critters, how many maggots do you get out of a pound of elk?

I imagine a pound of burger in my hand. Got a fair idea of how big that is. Then I imagine that same mass, only consisting of pale, white, squiggly, wormy baby flies.

As I mentally push some of imaginary mass of squirming baby flies back into my fingers, I guess, maybe 3,000.

So. Three thousand new flies from every pound of elk. And we got 40,000 pounds of elk available. That's, um, 120 million new flies.

Fortunately, these are spread out of 50 square miles, so that's only two and a half million flies per square mile. Bet you'd hardly even notice.

Besides, my guess of how many baby flies fit in a handful could easily be off by a thousand or more. And, fortunately, there are lots of things out there that like to eat maggots. And probably just as many, if not more, that like to eat flies. I'm thinking of those thousands of dragonflies that migrated through last fall, not to mention a lot of feathered critters.

Local folks have been asking what we were going to do about all those dead elk out there. Kids in one hunter safety class were even asking. So think about it. Come next fall, if you live in the North American continent, some small molecules of those elk may come migrating past you.

Cool, huh?

So now, a quick peek at emails, a shower, and then a double-chocolate fudge chocolate-chip muffin for breakfast.

Time to start the day.