Falling in Love

Earlier this week while cleaning out the seedling house for the end of the season, I found a little  mouse in the huge black trash bag full of empty soil bags, broken seed trays and old seed packages. I squealed, Chris came running, while telling me “don’t move” and whacked the mouse out of the bag with his shovel. Sitting, perplexed on the ground (the mouse, not Chris!) Chris trapped him between the shovel blade and the dirt road and that was the end of him. Pour guy. I think I saw his heart beat it's last beat. Outside of his fur. Ehwwwwwww!

This little mouse is a nuisance to the farm and the plants. Mice have eaten many beets and turnips this year alone. But, in that moment he wasn’t doing any harm. I wasn’t sad for his death, just sorry that he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. And now that I think of it, that is the fifth animal Chris has killed with that same shovel this season alone. And that does not include the rooster(s). Oh, dear…

 My closest friends can attest- I’ve never really been an animal lover. (Heidi, Percy, Bess, Bruiser, Harley- so sorry...) I’ve always just sort of been indifferent regarding pets such as dogs and cats. I had pets growing up, but in the country it was different. Dogs wandered up, cats came and went. And none of our pets were allowed indoors. I think I just sort of guarded myself from ever feeling sad should one die, get stolen, run off, or get hit by a car. Which did happen frequently.

 But here on the farm I guess I feel a sort of responsibility to care for the barnyard animals. I work around them eight hours a day, they are most always within view: Eleanor and Franklin the donkeys, Megaton and Amadeus the pigs (who should be meeting their fate very, very soon), and the abundance of roosters, hens and chicks. I enjoy dumping bins of weeds from the greenhouse over the eclectic fence for the donkeys. Thistles, purslane, lambsquarter: delicious. I like taking bolting lettuce to the chickens in the hen house and giving almost any and everything rotten to the pigs. They don’t like bell peppers though- or garlic.

Seamus is still my favorite animal on the farm. He walks around like he owns the place. Courageous, proud, boasting in his swagger. And each night around 7:00pm when he makes his mad dash for the dogie door in the basement of Thomas’s home Winston barks his head off- never backing down. But Seamus is wise and very aware. He mostly likes to taunt the dogs by laying right beyond their reach on the other side of the invisible fence which would give them a jolt should they proceed. It’s sort of funny that Seamus knows just where to talk and lay to upset the dogs. And I'll spare you the details here, but recently Seamus caught a tiny chipmunk and decided to play with it for awhile I still can't make it through the story without laughing my butt off!

I like their personalities. The donkeys expect treats of misshaped carrots and always stand right by the greenhouse whenever we are in there- hoping for oversized beets or slimy frisee. They brae and brae and brae. Pitiful. The pigs squeal when we walk by, but stop and tilt their heads and push their ears forward when they hear the food bin open. They literally do back flips for their feed. And tomatoes. Most all other veggies seem to bore them, yet they eat them nonetheless.

Megaton and Eleanor like to break out of their fences from time to time.  Always the girls- being mischievous. Breaking free. Looking for the greener grass. (or blueberry bushes and fields to root in, in this case.) I like this about my girls- never really satisfied and always knowing there is something more, this is not a bad thing!

I think I’ve just grown to appreciate what we can learn from animals- geese or birds or cats or pigs. I like observing them and trying to figure out what they are thinking. (Well, that’s why I like people watching too, but this is an entirely new level. It’s what we writers do, in case you’re wondering.) I’ve been known to size people up, and write their fictional story to a fault. But, I don’t really think I can change how my mind works. It’s sort of who I am. Quite wordy.

And in so many words I guess I am admitting here that I really like animals now.