The first warm day, when warm has become anything near freezing, since early December. With the thaw comes new tasks:

Shoveling walks for the umpteenth time so they can finally melt clear.

Shoveling the two piles of snow on the north side of the house around to the front yard. That snow's gonna melt, and I remember well standing in the rain at midnight, trying to drain rainwater away from the foundation on the north side so it'd stop flooding the basement. I suspect melting snow would be even worse.

If you're interested, the first pile is five steps from the snow mountain I've built in the front yard. The other is twelve steps. Got twenty shovelfuls off the second pile, with just as many yet to go. When I wasn't counting steps and shovels of snow, I was trying to estimate the volume of water in each shovel of white cold. (Best guess is about 600cc.)

With the thaw comes puddles of melt in the streets. A problem aggravated by all the storm drains (including the one on our corner) being frozen solid with ice. In town, I gently slushed through one urban lake as a young couple stepped back from their efforts to open the drain.

He didn't look happy. I wonder if that water is already invading their home.

Also passed one of our local ranchers, out chiseling a canal through the ice in front of their home so the water would flow on down the street. He waved and actually looked happy.

I suppose after months of plowing miles and miles of ranch roads to feed and water stock, chipping ice in front of your house probably seems like relaxation.

Of course, other things thaw, too. Which was why I was heading through town on a Saturday. One of my wardens has two frozen pronghorn carcasses in her truck, and this seems the perfect day to carve them up.

Now, why would one want to carve up roadkilled or poached antelope carcasses you might ask?

Because this has been the toughest winter in seven years, and maybe in fifteen. Soon we will be making recommendations for this fall's hunting harvest, and it would be really wise to have some idea what we lost in the winter before setting those quotas. Roadkilled and poached animals (and railroadkilled, too) give a great little random sample of how the critters are doing.

So we pull her rig into the Sheriff's storage garage to get out of the wind (Ummm, no, we didn't ask permission. He won't mind. We're pretty sure...) and start whacking away.

Literally.

I think my warden may have been expecting a process a little more sophisticated. But no, I simply grab a leg (pronghorn, not human) and smack it with fencing pliers. The bone breaks, and we peel back the hide to check the marrow. And both does are in surprisingly good condition, considering the weather. One with marrow that is white and waxy (meaning she still had most of her last fat reserves left), and the other's just barely pink (meaning her body was just starting to grow capillaries into the marrow to extract fat).

Checking their fetuses was even cruder. Rather than the elaborate process a hunter uses to carefully gut an animal while preserving the meat to eat, this is simply a fast slice along the pelvis, reach in and grab the uterus, and pull it out.

I suppose for a female, that might be a little unsettling to watch. Sorta like males watching calves being nutted.

Anyway, the does had two fawns each, and each would have been born healthy. No resorption. Which is good news for our herds.

If the thaw holds and gives animals a break for a while.

Another problem with severe winters is that animals have to move a lot, trying to find some place out of the wind. Some place with a bit of forage exposed. And that brings them into contact with that horrible human invention...

Fences.

Including this unfortunate fellow.

I was surprised to find him still alive. Most pronghorn are dead long before they're noticed. And while lucky enough to be found alive, like many others, this little buck fawn appears to have lost the use of the leg he had hung up.

Whether he will regain use of the leg after circulation has been working, or if it is permanently dislocated, I will probably never know.

But at least the rest of his day was more peaceful than the beginning.