Thanksgiving

While the weather was warm for Thanksgiving, the wind, as has been the norm lately, was howling. Karen and I were invited to Tami's for Thanksgiving dinner, so we were free to entertain ourselves for most of the day. We attempted to fly Pud and Yogi here at the house. The Harris's have so much trouble fighting the wind, that I really didn't want to invest that much fuel on a lost cause, by driving to Arock.

The Jacks here at the house have been paying attention and had changed their routine enough that I was having trouble getting anything up for the girls to chase. It didn't take long and Yogi decided that she would default to what had worked for her in the past, and she went off to chase the Antelope Ground Squirrels that live along the fence line.

I sent Karen to get her and put her up, since I wanted to discourage that kind of behavior. Puddy decided that Yogi might be getting more than she was, so she abandoned me for Karen. Yogi up to that time had been trying to catch Chipmunks. Puddy decided that one of the Chickens in the captive pen just might be edible. The whole thing deteriorated from there.

The wind picked up to a reported 24 MPH out of the S SW. Jessie was at a weight that she should be successful, so I took her over to Tami's at 3 PM. Tami had been keeping an eye out for Ducks on the ditch in the field behind her house, and there were a few there, so we formed a battle plan to get them to fly over the ground. Her brother and a guest from Italy were both young enough to be fleet of foot, so they got the part of the plan that required running.

We lined up by the fence and I turned Jessie loose. She was swept away by the wind, and she spent about 10 minutes playing low over the fields with the wind. She is designed for the wind, but even for her this stuff was a bit strong, and she showed it by not getting much higher than 100 feet, and dipping down to just over the ground, then back up. She finally satisfied her desire to fly and came back to us, making a circle over the ditch and when she came back around at about 100 feet, I yelled and off we went. The ducks flushed and tried to go up wind, but TJ, Tami's brother cut them off and they swung away from the ditch. I was watching the ducks get higher and higher, with no sign of Jessie anywhere. Then out of the corner of my eye I could see her streaking just over the reeds after them. She had dived down close to the ground using her speed to come up in under the flock. She rocketed up from ground level and forced a Drake Gadwall to try to climb to escape her attack. He had no chance and she bound to him at about 75 feet in the air. She turned over and glided clear of the large Cattails.

We all waded across the creek and walked to where she was with the duck. I didn't want to go through with the 5 day wait for her to come down in weight after stripping all the fat from this duck, so I offered her a Pigeon to eat instead. She accepted the exchange, and I secured her to my vest, and stepped back to allow her to eat.

 David, Reuben, Tami, TJ and Grace kept us company while Jessie finished her meal. I talked TJ into taking the Duck, so they retired to pluck it out of sight of Jessie.

After she finished her Pigeon, I took her home and changed out of my swamp clothes. I returned back to Tami's for a great Thanksgiving meal. As is normal there was way too much food, that was way too good to not eat.