Well we made it through June.  We’re in July.  We can do it.  We can.  We can do it.  It’s an often-repeated Florida-resident’s summer chant & mantra.  We are at the stage where condensation starts to form on the inside of the glass windows in the house, and the air-conditioners are straining and molding.  This evening, just before sunset, I looked out the back window.  The setting sun made the trees an illuminated, florescent green, but behind them the sky was a dark, icy-looking, slate blue-gray.  And then a big, big thunder-boomer came rattling through.  It’s still in the distance but I can feel it vibrating through the kitchen tile floor.

(Here’s that warning I promised from an earlier post)………………..(Read on with Caution)

Last summer we had the daily, late afternoon thunderstorms.  On the one-hand they cool off the day abruptly, on the other hand they are very, very dangerous.  You know you’re in trouble when the hair follicles on your arms start to itch.  That’s when you should squat down on the balls of your feet so you are as low as possible with as little contact as possible with the ground.  Have I mentioned yet that Florida is considered the lightening capital of the United States?………………..great…………………..

We are also the area where they field test new dog & cat flea medications……..I kid you not……………..this is ground-zero for indelible super-fleas, but I digress…………

During the thunderstorms we get  up with regularity and check out the windows to see if the horses are still standing after some exceptionally close strikes.  Well, I’ll tell you right now, we didn’t loose any horses during this one exceptionally exceptional electrical storm.  We did however discover three dead doe goats around the base of a tree in our back pasture the next day after the storm.  Hopefully (not to sound trite) they didn’t know what hit them.  There was an entrance burn and an exit burn on each one of them.  Just like the books say.  I don’t fully understand how lightening and electricity works.  I’ve been told a charge comes from the ground up, but it sure does look like lightening comes from the sky down………………..But, I don’t and I won’t ever, ever, ever question Mother Nature………………………she rules!

Now here’s some logistics.  We live eye-to-eye with sea level on the best days here on our dead-end road in the swamp.  The summers are monsoon-season, but they don’t call it that.  It’s probably some mandate from the Tourist Board.  Monsoon and Family-Vacation and Disney just don’t usually appear in the same sentence.

So we have a water-table issue when we are deep into the rainy (monsoon) season.  Digging a hole doesn’t work really well.  You are really just digging a small, slurpy, muddy swimming hole.  Additionally, summers are hot…………….so hot……………….and three large, dead goats………………..not a happy combination.  There was no capacity for successfully burying the poor ladies.  What to do.  What to do.  What to do………………..(quickly).

Well, our property backs up onto nothingness and swamp.  Sooooooooooooo, we loaded the bloated dears into the front bucket of our trusty tractor and headed into the swamp.  Four-wheel drive is a wonderful thing…………….I recommend it.  Especially when motoring around bloated goats in a sheeting swamp.

I was able to head in (hoping for firm enough ground so I could back out) until the water was just shy of the base of the tractor’s engine block. I wished the girls well and left them there…………….things don’t last long in a Florida swamp.  Ours is no different.  But before that…………the water rose again (sigh) and the goats turned into the worst, inflated, horrific, floating pool toys that you have ever seen.  The three girls were all Saanens so they were very white and easily seen from our back porch……………….they practically glowed-in-the-dark contrasting with the black water and all the mud………………………….and then there were the vultures……………………….they thought they had alighted on the best floating buffet ever………………………………and there they all alit & sat & coffee-klatched (dark birds on white, floating/bloated goats).

And then they all started moving down-stream………………………………….

I can honestly say that my daughters & I stood akimbo (good word, huh?) with mouths all slack-jawed in the backyard watching the ladies and the vultures head down-stream…………………………Mason (the thoroughbred) was not phased at all when they passed by…………………not phased at all…………………..

You just can’t make this stuff up.  You really can’t.

We had to wait (months) for the water to go down enough so we could wade out and see what happened and where they all ended up……………….

Well the girls didn’t go all that far down-stream.  They had gotten mid-current though and had picked up some steam, but they ultimately got snagged on cypress tree knees and moored there.  So we now have a collection of goat skulls in our garage, added to the wild boar skulls and the deer skulls and the Easter Diamondback skeleton………….and one squirrel.  And I suppose with suitable amounts of mediocre Bourbon, they could all be worn as hats (not the snake though).

I wonder if I take the HomeAgain scanner out into the swamp in the dry season if it will pick up their micro-chips in the ground?  Hmmmmmm.  I will have to give it a try.

I need to get out more…………………….