It took over an hour just to get ready. Since the truck had almost nothing in it.

Spotted a dead elk along the road while coming home yesterday. Not that far from where we had our first case of CWD last week.

So collecting a test sample from this roadkill would be good. Problem was, I was in the new rig, with barely any equipment.

Including no CWD sampling kit.

So today, after checking to make sure the local warden hadn't already pulled retropharyngeal nodes from this poor elk, I headed north to do so. After stocking the barest necessities in the truck (GPS, spotting scope, water, water bowl).

Taking the heeler sisters on their first ride in the new truck.

The mostly blind masked heeler did not like it. Everything is different, from the height and width of the seats, to all the empty space in the back. I'm sure she misses all the familiar smells, too. She spent most of the 58-mile trip shivering miserably beside me.

Her sister, on the other hand, adapted easily, riding comfortably in the passenger seat.

Good news is... their weight, even combined together, is not enough to activate the passenger air bag. So no worries about them being blown out the back window if I hit a bump hard enough to set off the bags. (The old truck had a switch to turn off the passenger airbag.)

Bad news was...

The elk was dead longer than I expected. Just no scavengers in the neighborhood to whittle away at her, I guess. When I sliced in, all the tissues looked exactly the same. A mixture of dull greys, browns and red. Just a uniform mass of rotted flesh.

Collected a mass that was in the right spot on her neck, but I suspect it isn't what the lab needs.

A wasted trip.

When the wife saw that image above, her response was: "Someone's going to report that as an alien mutilation!"

And she may be right. We'll see.

The drive home produced this...

The heelers' first sunset in the new rig.