what happened?

If you’ve never chased a dog with a chicken in its mouth around a muddy, goose-shit-covered lawn, in the rain, in your bare feet, with a chest cold, then you haven’t lived a relatively happy life only to be struck down in your prime by pneumonia or some mysterious goose shit disease, like I’m ‘boutsta be.

FARM LIFE!

How things have been.

In the morning and in the evening, and sometimes in the middle of the day, everything is shrouded in mist.  If you get high enough you can watch it creep up the road with the sun.  It hangs over fields, inches above the ground, and you almost expect shapes to emerge: horses, soldiers, wagon trains.

In September, the neighborhood winery started using propane cannons to scare birds away from the grapes.  Every few minutes, another boom.  Ralph the Girl Dog is afraid of the sound, and ever since it started, she refuses to spend more than a few minutes outside.  Before the cannons, we would walk the property every day, up to the pond or out into the woods. We would leave the farm and take long, slow jogs on the gravel road, past several vineyards and fields full of cows. It’s been over a month since I’ve been for a long walk; it doesn’t feel right to travel far by foot without a leash in hand. Harvest is over now, and the cannons have stopped, but the dog still won’t go beyond the front gate.

There is a dead deer on the shoulder of the road to town. It’s been there for months, sinking into itself, shrinking away, but the head is bent towards the road in such a way that it seems like at any moment the deer could wake up, scurry to its feet, and start running again. Yesterday I remembered to look for it, and it was gone.  Or else I didn’t look in the right place.