After setting 51 snares yesterday for coyotes, I woke up with high expectations, only to find we had a severe ice storm overnight...Oh well, what's the worst that could happen? A few dozen frozen snares?

So, off I go and check the first snare, just a few hundred yards from the house. No coyote, but they'd been in, feeding on a deer carcas...well, off a few miles to check nine more snares.
Everything was slow, but ok, until I turned off the main road, onto a sheet of solid ice!

Suddenly my truck seemed to be swiveled in the middle moving in directions I didn't know it could...
even though I was only going 15 mph.After missing a telephone poll and then a tree which was three times as big,

I found myself sliding sideways as I tried to climb a hill. Eventually, I came to a stop, but the truck started sliding sideways again, this time from a stand still.

Trying to keep it under control to no avail, it ended up sideways in the ditch,on top of some brush,( cut from a down tree, no doubt, from the last storm) dispite my best effort to keep it on the road.
After a lot of see-sawing, I managed to get it back on the pavement but not up the hill. After ten minutes or so, I finally did make it and off to check some snares.
As I entered the property, I saw some movement, only to find two free roaming dogs, snared...
same two I had caught last year...from a house a quarter mile away. Not wanting to harm the dogs or release them either, I phoned the land owner who wanted to know if I catch any dogs, as he'd had poultry killed off and on. After getting off the phone, I went back towards the house to get a dog crate to put both dogs in, when
BAM!, I hit a jagged stump and sliced the sidewall of the front tire!

So, out comes all the trapping gear and the lil' 2-ton jack, which because of the low ground I was on, I couldn't get it high enough to get the tire off. And because I was only on three wheels, I can't go forward or backward. So I keep trying it this way and that way, all the time laying on frozen ground, so by now, I'm good and wet...Well, best check the snares on foot then!

Some two hours later, the landowner shows up, with a heavy duty jack, followed by a van from County Animal Control. So after we got the two dogs cut out of the snares and carted off, we changed the tire and Iwent on my way...which by now over 1/2 the day is shot. I feel like last Sunday's "Mutts cartoon"...
Always tomorrow! 