"What'd you do to tire these two out?"

This a question posed to me by the wife, as we looked at the two heelers dead asleep on the bed.

Lots of drag races. Long races, which was their doing.

Once upon a time, whenever I let the sisters out to race at a gate, they would take off and be gone long enough for me to open the gate, drive through, and be ready to close the gate by the time they got back.

This summer, though, for some reason, they've been cutting their races short. Turning around and dashing back before I can even get the gate open. Which means, for safety's sake, they have to load back up so's I can drive through. And then sit there, bored, while I get out to close it.

I have tried and tried to explain that they need to race farther. It's not my fault they're spending more time in the truck and less time running.

Today, all of a sudden, they got it.

Second gate, and they're off. I open the gate and turn back to look, expecting to see arriving heelers.

They're still running.

I drive through the gate.

They're still running. Clear to the crest of the first rise, and out of sight.

I have time to get the camera out, turn it on, and wait for it to warm up.

Finally.

And they did it at the next gate, too. Most gates. And we had lots of gates this evening.

We should have been out classifying this morning, too, but I just couldn't do it. Or, more accurately, didn't want to. Not after putting in 43 hours during the weekend. (15 of which I will get penalized for working. It's a complicated thing to explain, but the gist of it is this... the new time compensation policy works great for people who work 40-hour weeks, and use all their sick and vacation days. For the rest of us, though, you essentially don't get paid to work the holiday, and also lose an additional 50 percent of the time you worked. My wardens were smarter, and took the holiday off.)

Either way, sleeping in felt good. And my reports are done, so the morning wasn't wasted. But now I've got two morning routes to run by Saturday, and only two mornings to run them in. No slack left at all for bad weather, or broken trucks.

Couple notes for the evening:

Country is bone dry. Good grass from the spring rains, but July and August were such scorchers that everything is crisp and dusty now. Stockponds and creeks all dry, too. Almost all the pronghorn were within a mile or so of the reservoir, or the grassy flats that exist where the reservoir is supposed to be.

The alates are flying. Even with the lack of moisture. Usually it seems the ants send their drones and virgin females out shortly after a rain, presumably because the new queens'll have an easier time digging their colony holes. But we must be late enough in the summer to have them all come out, anyway.

So, there was fun picking flying ants out of my hair. And out of the truck.

Masked heeler suddenly went into a panic in the back seat, attacking her rear foot, and limped thereafter, so I wonder of she got bit.

Seemed fine when we finally got home, though.

Flying ants were a blessing to some, like this sage thrasher that essentially cleaned off an entire rock outcrop of the bugs for its dinner.

We were also on what used to be a sheep ranch, still full of miles and miles of sheep-tight fences.

Happen to be antelope-tight, too. At least for fawns.

Can be a real problem in dry summers, when the only water is on the other side of the fence.

Like this summer.