Post 02210
Created:
Modified:
A few years ago near my cabin a ram lost his life in a barbed-wire fence. He and a number of other rams had fed, then climbed to the top of a small crag by the roadside. While they were there, a man on horseback came along. Indifferently they watched him approach; but when he stopped to take a picture all but one fled in alarm, easily leaping a shoulder-high fence. After a minute the remaining ram became excited, dashed off to follow the others, and ran into the fence. He was hurled backward and one of his curved horns hooked over a wire. Finding himself caught, he surged desperately to tear himself free. In doing this a barb severed the jugular vein. He fell and freed his horn from the wire in falling. Rising, he ran for the crag from which he had just fled, with his blood escaping in great gushes. As he was gaining the top of the crag he rolled over dead.
A flock which is often divided into two, one of ewes and one of rams, lives on the summit of Battle Mountain, at an altitude of twelve thousand feet, about four miles from my cabin. I have sometimes followed them when they were rambling. About the middle of one September this flock united and moved off to the south. I made haste to climb to the top of Mt. Meeker so as to command most of their movements. I had been watching for several hours without even a glimpse of them. Rising to move away, I surprised them as they lay at rest near-by, a little below the summit; and I also surprised a lion that evidently was sneaking up on them. This was close to the altitude of fourteen thousand feet. The mountain lion is the game-hog of the heights and is a persistent and insidious foe of sheep. He kills both old and young, and usually makes a capture by sneaking up on his victim. Sometimes for hours he lies in wait by a sheep trail.
The day following the surprise on Mt. Meeker, this flock appeared at timber-line about three miles to the southeast. Here some hunters fired on it. As it fled past me, I counted, and one of the twenty-eight was missing. The flock spent most of the next day about Chasm Lake, just under the northern crags of Meeker. Before night it was back at its old stamping-ground on Battle Mountain. Early the following morning the big ram led the way slowly to the west on the northern slope of Long’s Peak, a little above timber-line.