Nothing to Add Today

I want to get the story caught up to current events but I'm taking the day off today. I'm so tired of thinking about all this and I'm sure all of you are also - so today I've got nothing. I even googled "cancer jokes" to try to lighten the place up but none of them are very funny. There was the list of 10 Ways You Know You Are A Cancer Survivor but I'm not there yet so I'll save those until..well until it's more apropos.

Anyway, I do have the death in the neighborhood story. I was walking Maddie last week on the trail across the street and I saw my friend Annette up on the road. I walked up to say "hi" and she said that the elk in the neighbor's yard was really sick. He had laid down in front of their front door and was in obvious pain and breathing very hard. One of the Park Service naturalists drove by and she said they had been watching him for a few hours and they thought he had eaten something. They weren't going to do anything to help him which is the norm in the parks. Which reminds me of a very sad but kind of funny story from my Yellowstone days. We had an elk up at Mammoth Hot Springs that had somehow broken her jaw. It was very sad to see her for days slowly starving to death near my office. Someone in the Park Service finally took pity on her and decided to put her out of her misery. The poor elk was laying near the back of the hotel and no longer had the strength to get up. Tourists who didn't know that she was near death were circled around her taking pictures and excited to see an elk up close. The guy they sent over from the park service showed up and with no warning to the visitors dispatched of the elk in front of all of them. I guess there were a few kids screaming bloody murder (literally) and some very angry parents. I didn't see it happen but there was a big streak of blood on the hotel for a few days. I was just happy (if that's the right word - relieved is probably a better term) the poor elk was no longer suffering. No idea why I think the kid's trauma is kind of funny. I guess it's the fact that the guy didn't even think about it. I bet they still have nightmares about their YNP vacation. Anyway, the elk here died not long after Maddie and I finished our walk. He was beautiful and looked so healthy. I hope they figure out what happened to him. That's a picture of him from outside my bedroom window a couple of days before he died.