Chapter 6 ~ Things That Slither!

I don’t like snakes and never have.  It may go back to my having heard stories about what one of them did to Eve in The Garden, but personally, I think it goes back to the Heber Creeper incident when I was 8.* 

The Heber Creeper is a narrow- gauge railroad that runs from Heber City to Provo, Utah, through the Provo canyon.  At one time, I understand, it was a prolific and functional rail line.  Today it is used mostly by tourists or by Hollywood types when they want to portray an old narrow-gauge steam engine on the screen.  When I first knew it, it was just two rusted bands of iron tied together with ancient and weather wood.  Weeds grew along the line and between the rail ties, unhampered by more than the foot traffic of an occasional fisherman.

My grandfather was one such fisherman.  He had a favorite summer fishing hole, a place where the Provo River eddied around a cluster of rocks.  That’s where the big ones hid – in the deep pool created by the eddy.  I loved my grandfather.  I lived for the summers when I could spend a week by myself in Provo with him and my grandmother.  I was especially excited when he would close the barbershop for the day and we would drive up into the canyon. 

My great-aunt Ett had a cabin in Wildwood, just across the road from the Provo River.  I can still hear the sound of the tiny creek that trickled over the rocks under the back porch.  I loved to lay in the big bed at night, listening to the crickets and the flow of the water, snuggled in a thick quilt to keep warm against the surprisingly cool nights so high in the Wasatch Mountains.  The sounds and the coolness and the fresh pine smells would lull me to sleep, despite my excitement and anticipation of going fishing with Grandpa in his special place at dawn.

On one such morning, I awoke with the sun full on my face.  I could hear my grandmother and my aunt talking in the kitchen.  I pulled on my jeans and shirt and hurriedly laced my oxfords, only to find that my grandfather had left without me.  In retrospect, he probably needed some time without my constant chattering, but at the time I was crushed.  After breakfast, Grandma and Aunt Ett sat down to play gin rummy and I was left to my own devices.  Did I ever tell you that I was sometimes a very mischievous little girl?

It didn’t take long for me to become bored and I was certainly hurt by having been left behind.  I knew the way to the special place.  I’d gone there with Grandpa often enough.  I walked down the dirt lane, crossed the highway by the park and headed across the Provo River on a thin suspension bridge. (What was it Kathleen Turner said to Michael Douglas in Romancing the Stone?  “That’s not a bridge; that’s Pre-Colombian art!”  That scene could have been filmed at that spot on the Provo River!)  Once across the road, I found the tracks of the Heber Creeper.  All I had to do was to turn left and follow the tracks.

It’s amazing how quiet it is when one is a chatterbox and there is no one to whom to chatter!  I remember humming to myself, quite oblivious to my surroundings, when I heard a humming sound that wasn’t coming from me.  I stopped in the middle of the tracks and listened.  The sound seemed to be coming from a bush to the left side of the track about parallel to where I stood.  I’d never heard anything quite like it and wondered for a moment if it might be a cricket.  If I caught a cricket and took it to my grandfather to use as bait, perhaps he wouldn’t be so upset with me for doing what I was in the process of doing. 

I took one small step closer to the bush and that cricket buzzed even louder.  I don’t know what it was at that moment, short of divine intervention, but I was suddenly terrified.  I began to run and I didn’t stop until I reached the special place and found my grandfather.  Fortunately, he was a creature of habit and was actually there.  Unfortunately, he was just as angry with me as I thought he would be.  He immediately reeled in his line and marched me back up the tracks of the Heber Creeper toward home. 

Unbeknownst to me, my grandmother had discovered my absence shortly after I left and, having once been a very mischievous little girl herself, quickly surmised what I had done.  My dad’s cousin, Wils, was playing tennis just down the road and my grandmother sent him after me.  About the time my grandfather and I were about to the place where I had heard the cricket, we saw Wils.  He was just standing there, looking down at something in the middle the tracks at his feet.  When we got closer, I could see what was crumpled there, its head hidden under a rock:  a huge snake, still coiled, with a pattern of diamonds down its back and it’s rattle laying oddly still at the end of its tail.

~ ~ ~


Carmon actually liked snakes.  Maybe liked is too strong a word; he respected them.  Like so many things in nature, he seemed to have an innate sense of their purpose in the larger scheme of things. I, on the other hand,  thought they had been put on this earth simply to scare the bedoobies out of me!

I often told Carmon that he’d been born 100 years too late.  He would have made a wonderful pioneer or mountain man.  If you took him out into the wilderness, stripped him naked, and left him 1,000 miles from nowhere, so long as you left him his pocketknife, he’d survive.  Not only survive, he would flourish.  I used to have visions of such an event occurring and of the powers-that-be coming back a year later to find that he’d carved a kingdom.  Nowhere was this affinity for nature more apparent than in his relationship with snakes.

Unfortunately, he also had a slightly warped sense of humor about them.  I remember the night, early in our marriage, when I went into the bathroom to wash up before fixing dinner only to find a large rattlesnake curled up in the bathroom sink.  The fact that it was made of rubber didn’t make me stop screaming, first in terror, then at him. 

Years later, I saw a similar sight of a rattlesnake coiled up, this time in a dish in my refrigerator.  I had the same sense of shock, followed by revulsion.   This one wasn’t made out of rubber.  It was skinned.  Carmon later rolled it in flour, salt, and pepper, and fried it in bacon grease.  He and the children ate it for dinner.  They said it tasted like chicken.  I couldn’t tell you if that’s true or not.  I never tasted it.  I spent the evening shut up in my bedroom!

© Gebara Education, 2001.  No portion of this book may be copied by any method without the express written permission of the author

* To read more about the Heber Creeper snake, go to http://www.lds.org/friend/2005/08/run?lang=eng for a short story I wrote about the incident from a child's point of view for the Friend magazine.

Picture of river with bridge from www.photoshow.com  
Picture of snake rattle from www.wikipedia.com
Picture of rubber snake from www.lovodobari.freehosting.bg  
Picture of Texas Rattlesnake Recipe from www.weekendcowgirl.com

Chapter 5 ~ The Pig in the Kitchen

(part 2)

Carmon wasn’t sentimental when it came to the livestock.  Arnold had became a real pet, which made it very difficult when it came butchering time.  I don’t even remember how he handled it (I’m sure there is something Freudian in my wanting to forget it) but I do know that he never allowed the children to name any of the pigs again.  He named them instead, giving them functional names like Ham, Pork Chop, and Bacon.  My sister, Janae, refused to eat any meat at my house after that because Carmon could tell her who, not just what we were eating! 

My mother, Hazel, likewise had a difficult time dealing with the fact that what was on the table today had been roaming around the backyard just a few days before.  One time my parents’ visit happened to coincide with our acquiring a new baby pig.  Carmon, who loved to tease my mother, asked her if she would like to name the new piglet.  My mother said no, she wouldn’t like to name something that in a few months would grace the dinner table.  So Carmon asked her what she thought he should name the pig.  “I don’t care,” she replied.  “You can name her anything but Hazel.”

That became the pig’s name:  Anything-but-Hazel!

~ ~ ~

Having never grown up on a farm, I knew about greased pig races only from what I’d read in books.  That was to change.  By the time we acquired Anything-but and her siblings, we were living on a 3-acre mini-farm.  Our neighbors were worried about our keeping pigs due to the odor.  Carmon assured them that pigs only stunk when they were kept in small, enclosed places with no way to keep cool other than to lie in hog wallows.  He insisted that he could pasture the pigs just as one might a horse, and that if they had room to move and clean water in which to keep wet and cool, they would not stink.  He was right, but getting there was far from easy.  The piglets had to be taught how to graze in a pasture.

Our property was surrounded on one long side by a concrete irrigation ditch.  Every six feet or so, there was a round porthole in the concrete which opened onto a small hollowed-out area.  The ports allowed irrigation water to flood the fields when the ditch was damned up on one end.  All of the holes had slide-on tin covers that locked into place when they were not in use.  That way, you could flood only the parts of the field you wanted to water. 

The pigs loved to get down into the ditch whenever it was our turn for irrigation, and let the cool water flood over them.  When they had grown, that was great.  When they were little, that posed a problem.  For one little piggy, the problem was almost Carmon’s undoing.

We had just acquired three new piglets.  For the first few weeks of their sojourn with us, Carmon kept them short-penned until they got used to the fact that this was home.  When they were a few weeks old, he would let them out for short periods of time while he watched to make sure they stayed within the fence.  After that, he could turn them loose onto the pasture with the cows and they would not leave.  At least, that was the theory.

The theory had worked for all the piglets but one.  This little piggy may have had an inkling of what was to come, for we could not keep him in the pen.  I’ll never forget the first afternoon he got out.  It was like the circus had come to town.  My children and several of the neighbor kids ran through the fields trying to catch that little pig.  The pig was squealing and so were the children!  I soon became winded and had to consign myself to watching.

The kids’ strategy was to trap the little fellow in the empty irrigation ditch, then come at him from both ends of the ditch.  The sides were steep and fairly smooth, so the piggy couldn’t get a hoof-hold.  The idea probably would have worked had it not been for the fact that our neighbors to the north had left their ports open.  In less time than it takes to tell, that piglet was through the port and running full-tilt across the alfalfa.  When the children did get hold of the piglet, he was so small and so quick that he’d slip right through their hands.  It made me wonder why greased pig races even need bother with grease.  This little fellow was slippery enough without it!

All things must come to an end and this chase was no exception.  One of the older children caught the little pig by one leg, taking him back to the pen and his fate.  The pig did not, however, go quietly.  Like a baby’s smallest toe, this was the little piggy that went “Wee, wee, wee!” all the way home.

“Wee, wee, wee!”

© Gebara Education, 2001.  No portion of this book may be copied by any method without the express written permission of the author

Picture of pigs on the fence from www.valdosta.edu

Picture of pig with daffodil from www.treehuggerbarbie.com

Picture of swimming pig from www.levian.mi

Picture of pig race from www.viewfromthecouch.blogspot.com

Picture of wee, wee, wee piggy from www.rosales.posterous.com

One can not reflect in streaming water.  

Only those who know internal peace can give it to others.   

 Lao Tzu

I love the Kung Fu Panda movies!  The whole premise of the second movie is Po's search for inner peace - a search Master Shifu undergoes in the first movie.  In fact, my favorite character in the original Kung Fu Panda is Master Oogway, the wise, old turtle.  Oogway made reference to this Lao Tzu quote when he stirred the water in the reflecting pond in order to teach Shifu about inner peace.  I'd like to be an Oogway when I grow up, floating in a cloud of pink peach blossoms!  I also search for inner peace.  It is a worthy journey, but not one made in a day.  After all, Master Oogway was a century old!

In all seriousness; do you ever feel as if you've lost your center?  As if you've lost your direction?  As if you don't know what you want to do with the rest of your life?  I do.  Here are some Master Oogway quotes that address some of the things that cause a loss of focus:

Oogway: My friend, the panda will never fulfill his destiny, nor you yours until you let go of the illusion of control.
Shifu: Illusion?
Oogway: Yes. [pointing at peach tree] Look at this tree, Shifu: I cannot make it blossom when it suits me nor make it bear fruit before its time.
Shifu: But there are things we can control: I can control when the fruit will fall, I can control where to plant the seed: that is no illusion, Master!
Oogway: Ah, yes. But no matter what you do, that seed will grow to be a peach tree. You may wish for an apple or an orange, but you will get a peach.

One of the biggest sources of frustration and sorrow I encounter in my counseling practice is the nature of human beings to want to control things they cannot control - and I include myself in that assessment.  I cannot control other people.  I can learn to control myself.  I cannot control everything that happens to me.  I can control how I choose to respond to what happens to me.  I cannot control God's will. I can seek to learn His will and to align my will with His. 

If the people I love make poor choices and suffer painful consequences, I cannot fix their mistakes or take away those consequences without damaging both them and me.  I can love them and encourage them; pray with and for them; weep for them and hold them when they weep.  But I cannot "fix" things that are ultimately their problems to fix.  That is one of the most powerless feelings in the world and one that so often stands in the way of inner peace.

Oogway: One often meets his destiny on the road he takes to avoid it.

Remember the story of Jonah in the Old Testament?  I'm sure you do.  Jonah tried to run away from God - from his destiny - but he learned that a man cannot run away from God.  Jonah met God in the belly of a large fish and ultimately fulfilled his destiny.  Even then, Jonah was not happy.  Jonah had some serious inner peace issues! 

Are there things you know you should do, but you don't want to do them, so you don't?  Have you ever ended up in the very situation you were trying to avoid?  That usually happens to me when I take my eyes of the Savior.  When I get into "I" speak - I need; I want; I did; I don't - me, me, me.  You can't hit the bulls-eye in life if you take your eye off the target.  I don't know how you find your focus again, but I have found a few things that work for me:

• Return to the scriptures;  read them deeply and daily
• Be more faithful in my prayers; God is not a celestial Santa Claus and when I treat Him that way, I always lose sight of the target
• Take time for myself to mediate; find those places and situations that bring a peaceful feeling; find the deep ahhhhh sighs in life
• Reflect on my blessings
• Serve someone else

Po: Maybe I should just quit and go back to making noodles.
Oogway: Quit, don't quit? Noodles, don't noodles? You are too concerned about what was and what will be. There is a saying: yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift. That is why it is called the "present."

It is so difficult for me to remain in the present!  My brain is always running ahead of me at about mach 3!  One of my sisters once asked me if it was scary living in my brain.  It's not, by the way, but sometimes I wish I could get it to stop thinking for just 5 seconds and let me rest!  There is a difference between wise planning and obsessing about the future.  I just need to learn how to do it!

Another thing that used to bother me a lot more than it does now is worrying about the past.  I used to rehearse every tiny mistake - mine and other people's - over and over ad nauseum until I drove myself nuts.  What a revelation it was the day I realized that I could not go back and change the past!  What a blessing!  It was as if a huge weight had lifted off of my soul and I could breathe again.  If there were things for which repentance is necessary, then repent fully and let it go.  God promises that He will remember our sins no more, so why should we harrow up our souls for sins He has forgotten?  If you don't know how to differentiate between what has and has not be repented of, counsel with God in prayer and with your ecclesiastical leader when necessary.

I have learned to let go of past pain.  Now I just need to do the same for the future and stop worrying and start living!

Oogway: There are no accidents.

Shifu: You've said that already - twice.
Oogway: And that is no accident!
Shifu:  Thrice.

Some of my favorite scriptures circle around this issue.  I am in God's hands.  I've just got to learn to trust Him more.  Here are a few of my faves:

• Be careful for nothing; but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your request be made know unto God.  And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. Philippeans 4: 6-7
• I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me. Philippeans 4:13
• These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribultion; but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world. John 16: 33
• I not forget thee. Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands. Isaiah 49:16

Enough said ~ ~ ~

All scripture quotes are from the KJV

Photo credits:

Japanese garden pond from www.oregonscenics.com

Christ's hands from www.coverwithhishands.wordpress.com

Chapter 5 ~ The Pig in the Kitchen

The children named the pig Arnold.  That he was named after the pig on the TV show, Green Acres didn’t make my father any happier.  He was offended.  His father – my Grandpa Scotch – was named Arnold.

As time went on, however, even my father had to admit that Arnold was one smart porker.  He recognized his name and came when called.  He frequently outsmarted and out-maneuvered the dog, much to her chagrin and frustration.  But perhaps the greatest feat of intellectual prowess came the night it snowed.

It had been a frosty 20 degrees that night.  Carmon awoke early and went outside to check on the livestock which, at that time, consisted of several New Zealand Giant breeding rabbits and Arnold.  The rabbits lived in pens in a partially enclosed rabbit house out back.  The bottom half of its wall was made of wood; the top half was made of wire screening.  Arnold had the run of the yard during the day, but at nighttime, he slept at one end of the rabbit house, under the rabbits’ pens.  This gave him some protection from the wind and cold, but it was no match for below freezing temperatures and snow. 

Carmon wasn’t too worried about the rabbits.  After all, each hutch had a ramp that led to a nesting box deep under the ground.  The rabbits spent a lot of time in those nesting boxes whenever the weather was excessively hot or cold.  But a little sleek pig was another story entirely.  What had the cold done to Arnold? 

The gray light of dawn was just giving way to pale pink when all of us rushed out into the yard to see what the freeze had done.  Carmon unlocked the rabbit house door and we all jammed ourselves through it.  Sure enough, there wasn’t a rabbit in sight.  They were all snuggled down in their warm nesting boxes.  We looked again; there wasn’t a pig in sight either.  Where was Arnold?  He had no warm nesting box in which to snuggle.  Had he dug under the fence and run away?

Frantically, the children called out his name.  A reassuring oink reached our ears, but from whence had it come?  We still couldn’t see him.  The children called his name again and louder.  Again we heard the oink.  Following the direction of the sound, Carmon shined a flashlight toward the back of the shed.  The only sight that met our gaze was a stack of empty rabbit feed sacks stored there.  Then one of the feed sacks moved and a tiny snout appeared under its edge.  

We all rushed to the back of the shed.  There was Arnold, warm and snug.  He had dug out a pig-sized hollow in the dirt at the back of the shed where the ground was sandy.  He had then methodically shredded several empty paper grain sacks into pieces no larger than a half-inch square, leaving two bags whole.  After this was complete, he settled himself in his homemade bed, fluffing the shredded paper around him until all but his head was covered.  Finally, he had dragged the two intact grain sacks over the hole, covering every inch of his body with the exception of the end of his snout, which he’d left free for breathing. 

How did we know that was what he had done?  Because after he’d greeted us and eaten his breakfast, he crawled back into his warm little nest and we watched him do it.  So when anyone tries to tell me that pigs are stupid, I can say with the authority born of experience, “I beg to differ.  At least one pig I knew was the smartest animal on the farm.”

~ ~ ~

Arnold wasn’t just smart; he was sociable.  He loved the children and would follow them around the yard just like a puppy.  He liked to have his belly scratched, and when he grew to be quite large, he could become a real nuisance about that.  After all of that, it was hard to keep him down on the farm.  Looking back on it, I truly believe that Arnold didn’t know he was a pig.  I’m sure he thought he was one of the kids and his mamma just dressed him funny!  In later years, when my children took their own children to see the movie “Babe” none of them had any trouble believing that a heroic little pig could do everything the movie showed him doing.

One of the funniest events involving Arnold would never have happened had I not decided to go back to college.  I had always wanted to be a teacher and so despite having a home, husband, and children to care for, I enrolled at the university.  My mother watched my youngest and I took classes while the three older children were in school.  I got home from my classes about the same time the children got home from theirs.  It was difficult to get any studying done with four children underfoot, so I would often get up at 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning to do my homework.  I got a lot accomplished this way, but it did mean that I needed to do some careful editing of any papers written in this manner.  It’s always amazing to me how awful an idea can look in the cold light of day when it seemed absolutely brilliant at 2:00 A.M.!

I was, therefore, most appreciative when my friend, Vera, volunteered to go over my papers with me.  Vera was a former high school English teacher who edited with the proverbial fine-tooth comb.  As mentioned, I was really grateful for this service, but I was always a little in awe of her - a throwback, I’m sure, to the respect with which I’d held my own high school English teachers.  One day, Vera had offered to drop by and do some editing at my home.  I rushed around, making sure that the living room was presentable, although the rest of the house would never have passed muster.  I had instructed the children to play out back, with the older ones watching out for the younger ones.  All was going well, I thought.  I hadn’t, however, counted on Arnold.

Vera was well into the paper, going over changes she was recommending I make, when we both heard a low, snuffling sound coming from the kitchen followed by a loud crash.  My heart sank.  I knew what – or should I say who? – it was.  Sure enough, the children had slipped into the kitchen for Kool-Aid and one of them had left the back door open just a crack.  That was all Arnold needed.  Since he was the only kid left without a glass of Kool-Aid, he had decided to take matters into his own hooves.  When I heard the crash, I covered my eyes and groaned.  Although I didn’t want to do it, I walked over to the door between the living room and kitchen and cautiously peeked in.  There was Arnold in the kitchen happily snuffling up the spilt Kool-Aid and licking the pitcher clean.  The thing that made it the most embarrassing was that Vera was the only person in my house that day who found a pig in the kitchen to be anything out-of-the-ordinary.  Around our house it was just another day.

© Gebara Education, 2001.  No portion of this book may be copied by any method without the express written permission of the author

Picture of white pig from www.fwi.co.uk

Picture of white rabbits from www.taluswindranch.com

Picture of rabbit hutch from www.farmlearning.com

Picture of Pigs are Friends tee-shirt from www.spreadshirt.com

Picture of Kool-Aid from www.rcjordin.com

Remembering Carmon

I think it is difficult to say whether there is such a thing as hope or not. Hope is like a road in the country; there was never a road, but when many people walk on it, the road comes into existence. Lusin

The phone call arrived at 5:45 on a Sunday morning.  I don't know how long it rang before it woke me up, so I was groggy when I answered it.  It was a local sheriff's deputy asking for directions to my house.  Interesting - what is that all about?  The deputy and his partner arrived a few minutes later to tell me that my husband had been killed in a one-car accident on the Mogollon Rim.  As I remembered it later, time slipped out of sync.  Everything was half a beat off and I felt as if I were outside myself watching this happen to someone else.*

Dr. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, in her ground-breaking book, On Death and Dying, said that the first stage of grief is shock and denial.  I can testify that this is so.  The sudden shock when you hear a loved one has died or is going to die, is so monumental that the mind can't fully absorb it.  It takes even longer for the heart to understand.

When it happened to me, I felt as if someone had taken the puzzle pieces for my life - a life I thought I was putting together nicely - and dumped them all over the floor.  I couldn't cope with the enormity of the task of putting my life back together.

As I reach out to anyone experiencing this stage of grief right now, be gentle with yourself.  What you are going through is both normal and necessary.  It takes time for the heart to learn what the head already knows.   Take it a day at a time - a minute at a time if necessary.  The key word above is through.  As a colleague of mine once noted, the only way out is through. Here are some words of experience about this stage of grief:

• Don't try to rush it by trying to push too far ahead.  You'll put yourself into a frenzy or a panic.  I repeat: Be gentle with yourself.
• Don't try to stay in it by pretending it didn't happen and life if the same as normal.  Grief will require you to build for yourself a new normal.  Have the courage to build it.
• Don't try to medicate it with drugs or alcohol or any other ultimately self-destructive behavior.
• If you feel stuck, get help. Grief is a process that requires work.  Do that work.  Their are those in your community who can help you with that.
• Reach out to the Savior.  He has perfect empathy.  He is a God of emotion and has felt everything you are feeling.  He will help and He will heal.  Allow Him to set the pace.  Allow Him to help you pick up the pieces of your life.  Allow Him to show you where each piece should go.  You will be amazed at the picture that emerges.
 

It is hard to see even a tiny glimmer of hope in the beginning, but hope is there, cradled deep in your soul. Put one foot in front of the other and step forward in faith.  With the help of the Savior and the Comforter, you will see a path beneath your feet,  albeit one step at a time. 

* For a full account of these experiences and the stages of grief, you can read The Living Half, © Deseret Book, SLC, UT, 1984. Out of print, but available on sites such as Amazon.com

Photo Credits:

Picture of green puzzle from www.onlinegamestown.com

Picture of multiple pieces from www.lifelessons.eu

Chapter 4 ~ Giddy-up Gobblers and Other Fowl Stories

(part 3)

Earlier, I mentioned imprinting.  For those of you who may not know, imprinting is an instinctive reaction of newly hatched birds to bond with (imprint on) the first living creature they see.  That creature becomes the bird’s mamma, so to speak, whether it is its biological mother or not.  Dr. Seuss fans will recall that as being the entire premise of the book Horton Hatches an Egg where a wonderfully loveable, if somewhat naïve, elephant agree to egg-sit for an irresponsible and flighty (if you’ll pardon the pun) mother bird.  When the baby bird finally hatches, it immediately claims Horton as its mother. 

Carmon became fascinated by the prospects he could create around this fact of nature.  Over the years, he had acquired several breeds of chickens and ducks.  One spring, when they all were nesting, he slipped out and switched the eggs among the nests.  I thought he had finally slipped a cog, but even I had to admit that it was pretty funny to watch the baby ducks waddling in a straight line behind a chicken, then hop into the children’s wading pool (no longer being used for wading, by the way) while the chicken stood beside it clucking her little heart out.  The mother duck couldn’t entice her baby chicks into the pool even for a second, but the bantam hen got along fine with her leghorn chicks, although they towered over her by the time they were a few weeks old.  At night, all babies returned to the nest with their mothers to begin again the next day.  I don’t think it did any damage, as all of the birds grew healthy and on schedule.  I’m not sure if their little fowl psyches were permanently scarred.  Even in my professinal field, I have yet to meet a bird psychologist (although I have little doubt that they may well exists).

~ ~ ~

If turkeys are the dumbest birds, then geese are the loudest.  I have often thought since then of the money some enterprising person could make running a guard-goose service.  They are certainly as good a deterrent to trespassers as a barking dog and you don’t need the services of a pooper-scooper, although, I must admit, you’ll want to refrain from walking around the yard in your bare feet!

Our first geese were wild.  Strange as it may seem, a pair of Canadian honkers decided to park on our pond one fall and stayed through 'til spring.  The ensuing little gaggle of geese was fun to watch, but they were a skittish crew, never letting anyone close enough even to watch them properly.  Carmon wanted them to stay, so he kept the children and dogs far away from the corner of the property where they had their nest.  Their tenure with us was brief, despite his best efforts, and with the spring, they were gone.

That was not to be the case with the tame geese.  No one had to keep children, dogs, or other fowl away from that pair!  They did quite a job of it themselves.  They also kept everyone and everything away from the fruit trees (where they liked to eat the overly ripe droppings) and every other place they had decided was their own.  If a car door banged or a neighbors voice was heard, the male began to honk.  It was the most awful din, topped only by the female if a stranger (or anyone else for that matter) even looked like he or she was going to approach her nest.

Finally, even Carmon wearied of the constant cacophony, to say nothing of the droppings on the back porch.  One morning, when the kids and I awoke both geese were gone.  Since nothing new appeared on the dinner table, I’m not sure what he did with them.  Nor did I ask.  I just enjoyed the newly washed porch and the blessed silence.

© Gebara Education, 2001.  No portion of this book may be copied by any method without the express written permission of the author

Picture of ducks following dog from www.newsdiscovery.com

Picture of ducklings and kitten from multiple sources

Picture of Canadian geese from www.ruralramblings.com

Picture of domestic geese from www.deltanewsweb.com

Chapter 4 ~ Giddy-up Gobblers and Other Fowl Stories

(part 2)

The children got their very first chickens for Easter.  Carmon brought them home, all cute and yellow and fluffy. The pet store had tinted them with food coloring, so they were even more yellow and appealing than Mother Nature intended.   I don’t know why parents think that giving live animals as Easter gifts is a good idea. It certainly is high on my list of dumbest things we ever did!

The first clue we had that this was a big mistake was how Sess (then about age three) reacted.  I’m not sure what triggered it, but he decided that his chick needed a bath.  He and Beed (just turned 6) dragged a number three washtub out onto the back patio and filled with water from the hose and bubble bath from the bathroom.  By the time Carmon found out what they were up to, Beed and Sess were dunking the baby chicks up and down in the suds, while Sess sang an off-key rendition of The Bear Went Over the Mountain.  Carmon rescued the chicks, dried them off, and placed them in an incubator made out of a shoebox and a small light bulb.  The chicks lived, but the poor things walked backward for a week!

I don’t know if it was Murphy’s Law or sweet revenge, but those cute little chicks grew into the world’s two orneriest roosters.  By the time summer arrived, they ruled the back yard.  Our two boys couldn’t go out to play without being chased and pecked.  As the mother in the house, I can tell you that I wasn’t thrilled to have them inside and underfoot all day long.  Tee was just a few months old and I looked forward to those rare moments when she was asleep and the boys were outside so I could sit down and put my feet up.  Even Sess’ fourth birthday party had to be held inside.  Carmon was less than sympathetic, but then he wasn’t the one cooped up in the house all day with a baby, a pre-schooler, and a recent kindergarten graduate!  My pleas to get rid of those roosters fell on the proverbial deaf ears. 

The crowning insult happened one washday afternoon.  Many people had automatic clothes driers in those days, but I wasn’t one of them.  I had an energy-efficient solar clothes drier – in other words, a clothesline.  The line ran along the west side of the house and it really was quite effective.  On a summer’s day in the southwest, by the time I had finished hanging a load of wash, the first items in the load were already dry and sunshine fresh!  This worked particularly well with cloth diapers, of which, needless to say, I had a lot.       

         

Carmon had strung some chicken wire between the house and the fence along the southwest corner of the yard in order to keep the roosters away from the clothesline.  His idea had worked well when the chicks were still young and small.  Unfortunately, like all living things, the chicks grew up.  You know how the entire theme of the movie, Chicken Run, was built around the premise that chickens can’t fly?  That may be true over long distances or when a fictional Mrs. Tweedy is waiting to turn them into chicken pies, but for short distances and when driven by a perverse desire for revenge after having been dyed yellow and bathed in Mr. Bubble, roosters can fly. 

So there I was, with two little boys squabbling in the kitchen, a baby fussing to be fed, and every diaper in the house (except the one Tee was wearing) in the wet wash basket ready to be hung.  I was a quick draw with a clothespin, so I decided to hang the wash first in the hopes that the diapers would be dry by the time I had finished feeding the baby.  I was flying down the line of wash in record time when I was attacked.  Without warning, in a whir of feathers and loud squawks, both roosters sailed over that pitiful little fence.  With neck feathers ruffed, they pecked and spurred my feet, ankles, and legs.  I tried shooing them away, but that was about as effective as shooing a swarm of angry bees.  I finally had no recourse but to drop the basket of wash and run for my life into the house.  I tried several times that afternoon to retrieve the wash, but the roosters were in that war for the duration.  At the slightest crack in the door, the squawking resumed as the roosters attacked the screen.  That was it!  This was war!  I had one nerve left, and those roosters had jumped right in the middle of it!  I didn’t know how I was going to win, but I knew that somebody was leaving and it wasn’t going to be me!

That evening, when Carmon came home from work, he found two scared sons, a wet baby, and a wife with blood in her eyes.  This was Waterloo and I was Wellington!  I won’t go into the painful details.  Suffice it to say that by nightfall, Tee had dry diapers, the boys had their play yard, I had my clothesline, and we all had fried chicken for dinner the next day.

© Gebara Education, 2001.  No portion of this book may be copied by any method without the express written permission of the author

Picture of baby chicks from www.backyardchickens.com

Picture of #3 washtub from www.factorydirectcraft.com

Picture of diapers on the clothesline from www.simplehomemade.net

Picture of two roosters fighting (a cruel pastime, by the way) from www.thepeoplesvoice.org

Chapter 4 ~ Giddy-up Gobblers and Other Fowl Stories

One of my favorite memories of Brandy was the time she adopted four baby turkeys.  Ever the pragmatist, Carmon had named the turkeys Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, and 4th of July.  He brought them home one April morning, fresh from the feed store, in a little cardboard box with holes in it.  He made them an incubator out of a number three metal washtub by hanging a light bulb in one corner and providing a partial cover.  The turkey chicks lived there in the corner of the kitchen for about a week.  When they had gained some weight and didn’t seem to need the heat of the light, Carmon moved them outside.  He didn’t want to put them in the chicken coop with the other fowl, so he made them a little pen of their own.

From the beginning, Brandy was enthralled with the turkey chicks and they with her.  We got the turkey chicks when they were already a few days old, so it is hard to believe that they would have imprinted on the dog, but if that’s not what happened, I don’t know how else to explain it.  As soon as they were outside, those chicks followed Brandy everywhere she went. 

Far from being snappy with them, the dog protected her little brood as if they were her pups.  When they were still just a few weeks old, Brandy would lie down and the chicks would hop up on her back.  Safely aboard, they could view the world from a dog’s eye view as Brandy strolled her babies around the yard.  If any of the larger or more aggressive birds even looked as if they were going after the turkeys, Brandy would be there to literally nip things in the bud.

While this bond of affection provided some Kodak moments when the chicks were two, three, or four weeks old, it soon became apparent that things could not go on this way forever.  The turkey chicks grew (as most young things are wont to do) and soon they were almost as tall as their surrogate mother.  Still, they flew to her back whenever she appeared in the yard, loudly squawking their request for the Brandy Buntin Transit Authority to chauffeur them around the yard.  The children came from the surrounding neighborhoods to watch Brandy and her adopted babies taking the morning air.

More time passed.  Soon the chicks were taller than the dog and there was no longer room for all four of them on Brandy’s back at one time.  That began what we called The Gobble Wars.  The usual scenario played itself out this way: As soon as Brandy would come out of her doghouse in the morning, the race would be on.  Four almost full-grown turkeys would gallop across the yard to see who could get to mama first.  Chests puffed out.  Wattles grew deep red.  Feathers flew.  Raucous gobbles broke the morning silence.  Once the winner was safely perched on Brandy’s back, he would stay there as long as he could.  Poor Brandy would puff around the yard, playing horsey, with a load weighing almost as much as she did. [The photo to the left will show you the relative size of grown turkey to a dog Brandy's size.]

I was really beginning to get worried about Brandy’s health and said so to Carmon.  He wasn’t worried.  He said the problem would work itself out if I would just go and look at the calendar.  I did, and saw that April had long since passed.  It was the third week of November, followed quickly by the third week of December, and two of the turkeys lived up to their functional, if not creative, names.  The other two, without their brothers to compete, soon gave up the game.  And April and July were coming!

The only problem with that arrangement is that my sister, Janae, refused to eat dinner at our home that Thanksgiving (since our main course was Thanksgiving!).  She made my father take her to McDonald’s.  Since then, I’ve often wondered from whence she thought the hamburger came!

© Gebara Education, 2001.  No portion of this book may be copied by any method without the express written permission of the author

Photo of turkey chicks from www.cacklehatchery.com

Photo of turkey from www.flyingdogpress.com

Photo of turkey with dogs from www.turkeydog.org

Photo of turkey with tail fanned from www.turkeyunderthetablewithjen.com