Volume 12 - Day 232/134, 2020 - Wednesday

I hope this does not gross anybody out, but one thing I learned when I was doing regular, long-distance bike rides is, all mammals, no matter what they are, all smell the same when they are dead and decaying. ALL mammals, it does not matter. If you are reading this, and you die and your corpse is rotting, you are not going to smell any better than Rocky the Raccoon. Yep, Rocky is a goner. I am really glad that I got that last photo of him. He was old, crippled and just had no more life in him, but his last days were as good as they could have been, maybe. At least I know that he was not stalked by me or any other beast, and he passed as comfortably as I could make it for him. And then, I got a big garden fork, got him dislodged from the beds in front of the garage, and hauled him across the road and unceremoniously into a low spot where the other surviving critters will finish him off and he will be returned to whence he came. That is the part of farm life that is not that appealing to me, but it is just part of the cycle. Chickens are by far the easiest to dispose of. Cattle (depending on where they die) can be easy, because there is really nothing you can do except wait, and there are varying levels of difficulty for all the other things that can cause a big stink. Whatever...I have not regaled you with photos of traffic challenges, but I encountered one this morning. In reality, it should not have hindered my drive-in to Austin, but we all had to look, and I had to take a picture.