My life is a bit of a strange place to live.It seems I am always having a creative adventure, whether by design ,desire, or default of the life I live, but adventures they are…
Between you and me, I’m a good bit willing to listen to animals more than people, they seem to hold no pretense. At least the farm animals, I might feel differently about a house cat. Take the fellow above, he lives enroute to Dallas, Texas and we got right neighborly when he and a group of his friends kept me on my toes when they assumed the interstate was their playground. Quite startling when you’re buzzing down the road at 80 on the interstate and you see something fuzzy and fury in the not to distant front of you. Getting them shooed (yes, I shoo cows and the occasional donkey) off the interstate was a piece of cake, however there was this issue with the open field versus one with a gate. That became more of an issue, I know without a gate they’d be at risk of disrupting their lives again.
I was raised in the town of Gurdon,Arkansas, about 100 miles south of Little Rock. We lived in town proper, but our Pappy Nunnally had a pig farm. If you visited it, you’d know he raised hogs from the nature scents that perfumed your entry. However, I digress, I spent weekends with his pigs, other weekends with my Grandfather Geddie’s goats at Dossie Mae, so by the time I was on the interstate, well, animals don’t scare me, in fact they seem to have a kind of professional courtesy to do things with me that perhaps are hard for others. (maybe its that they recognize crazy and avoid upset) You can see both sides are pastures, but the left one, well, the gate was no longer on the hinges or able to be tied in place, so it was like a feeding space with no protection to not end up back on the interstate.
The guys that were loose, were shall we say “herd mentality” and truly not up for much nonsense, but this fellow, well, he seemed to understand how to move them…but he himself preferred to stay on the opposite side of the pen. His lady Ginny wasn’t much for talking to other women, she stayed close and from time to time raised an eyebrow our way. Her side eye was in tact.
Now you understand in the circumstance I’m dealing with there is not an owner, a house, a state trooper around. (they are ALWAYS around if I get a little heavy footed and go over 81, but never when I need them or when I am being a law abiding citizen) I started to understand that this fellow believed that singing was required to get the herd to move… why I think these things I will never know, but like Dr. Doolittle I seem to understand the needs or at least the conversations. That empathic part of me speaks beast apparently.
Singing on the interstate with cars whizzing then slowing then wondering who the heck is in the interstate with zoo. I could get them to follow me off the road, but if you notice they are on the opposite side of the contained fence. Uhm, NASA we have a problem.
That would be me.
First song up was “Amazing Grace” but these two were not the Christian type, so I worked on “You Are My Sunshine” which suited their ego needs much more appropriately. (however do you see that face, “on key please”…really..do you hear yourself” he seemed to say) I often think that perhaps if one is naughty, one gets to be in a non verbal in a human way body for the next generation…I think perhaps this one was in his second or third cycle as an ass.
However, sing I did and before I got to the third verse the ladies and fellows lined up and returned to the pen. I don’t know whose pen, but they were safe from the interstate. After an event that lasted over eight days…and no I am not smoking anything. Cars whizzed by, a few slowed to take pictures, for its not every day you see crazy in East Texas with Alabama plates singing on the interstate to animals in a Ralph Lauren suit and heels headed for New York. Before you knew it the guys and ladies were in a holding pen (who knows if theirs or another’s, )but at least not becoming a hazard or road kill ingredients for the next BBQ.
Sweetieland..adventures seem to find me when I’m on the road….and they seem to be daily these days.
So brother ass and his friends and I parted, I thanked him for his suggestion of singing, took heed of his suggestion that I shouldn’t leave my day job for Vegas, and I headed on to DFW to catch the next plane.
