A little after seven-thirty, I looked out the window.

And saw it was a perfect, cool, calm, cloudless morning.

Wasted.

The best hour of the morning wasted because I had decided the heeler sisters and I deserved a sleep-in morning.

And a little voice from some unknown place in the deeper recesses of my mind asked...

Well, are you going to waste the rest of the morning, too?

I mean, yes, it is best if antelope classification starts first thing in the morning, when the world is cool and the animals active.

But if I had gone out to classify this morning, we'd probably just now be getting close to the rattlesnake camp, with another four hours of classification to do.

Can't we do those four hours anyway?

So, less than fifteen minutes later the heelers and I were happily on our way.

Four and a half hours later we were at the end of the morning's classification route, and I was looking at a doe pronghorn.

A dead doe pronghorn.

Who had absolutely no reason to be dead, but here she was...

Dead.

Freshly, unbloated dead. Her tongue and lips still damp with saliva freshly dead.

Miles from anywhere, with my vehicle making the only tracks on the road.

Two hours later I was 70 miles away down the interstate, transferring the freshly dead pronghorn into a young woman's truck. A young woman who was quite thrilled to have an excuse to escape from the mundane laboratory for a couple hours to help ferry this dead pronghorn to said laboratory.

Two hours later I was back on the interstate, my truck loaded with tranquilizing gear, to grab hold of the doe deer that a lariat was not able to grab on to yesterday.

An hour and a half later, we were cutting a metal tomato cage off that poor doe's neck and shoulders.

An hour and a half after that, she was finally holding her head upright, and I went off to find the elderly woman on the South Side who had thrown her oxygen tank and air hose onto the ground yesterday so she could try to help us lasso said deer in her front yard.

Just to let her know we finally got the deed done.

And and hour and a half after that, I finally had breakfast/lunch/dinner of home cooked lemon pepper chicken, courtesy of eldest son and his girlfriend.

Who I guess I could probably call his live-in girlfriend now.

For a while, anyways.