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No Such Things
All across this country, animal shelters are full to bursting. In the region in which I live, I’ve noticed that the majority of dogs in shelters are some variety of the notorious pit bull. The dogs themselves do make warning lights go off in my head when I see them. I have been around a few pit bulls that seemed friendly enough, but their very appearance puts me in mind of monsters like the uruk-hai: creatures bred specifically for a malign purpose. Yes, yes, I know, I know. There are no such things as bad dogs…only bad owners. Every time I have expressed my unease with this breed of dog,…
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Land Within Reason
Out here in the country, we don’t have a trash pickup service, so we have to take ours either to the county landfill or to one of the smaller drop-off stations situated in various places around the county. The one we mainly use is a few miles from our house, on a two-lane highway that offers beautiful scenery year-round. Just before the turnoff for the drop-off station sits a small farm. Out in front of the house is a pasture with an old but still serviceable barn. In the pasture is a hay ring, and most times I pass the place, there is an old horse and a goat…
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Wings Of Contemplation
We received a surprise skiff of snow during the night, and an even more surprising squall of the stuff during the morning, giving us a couple of inches of nice, fluffy snow, the kind that squeaks beneath the boot and provides good traction. The sun came out a while ago, but more snow is supposed to move in during the night. Jinx is keeping a close eye on the weather forecast, as snow is one of his great joys in life. He enjoys speeding along the ground like a spotted rocket, nose barely above terra firma, mouth slightly ajar and scooping up loads of the stuff. He stops occasionally to…
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How About A Little Fire, Scarecrow?
Wait…I meant, how about a little opera? Something classy to close out the year. ~ S.K. Orr
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Six Caws
I love the magic of the mornings at this time of year. Driving to work in the damp dark, lights like paint strokes across the black asphalt, twisting devils of leaves writhing in the headlights, passing the sleepy pockets of light that I know are houses hidden in the hollows, where coffee is dripping into a clear, clean pot and the news is buzzing on some device in the background while stiff spines try to loosen and heavy eyelids attempt their lifts. How many secrets, how many stories I pass as I glide past in the dark, in the morning, in the stillness of November. And then arriving at my…
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Cycles
A year ago today, an intrepid heating & A/C repairman helped me remove a dead and reeking possum from our furnace. A few days ago I caught a young possum in a live trap in the cellar. And this morning? It was raining hard and steady when I let the dogs outside. Little Dixee immediately alerted on something and followed the scent all over the back yard, nose to grass, stub of a tail quivering like the needles on a polygraph. Jinx did his bidness and wanted back inside, but not the little dowager. I watched her as she tracked around and then finally reared up on her hind legs…
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Have A Heart
Wanting to avoid last September’s nightmarish experience with a possum who found his way into our furnace and died, my wife and I decided to take steps to prevent such a thing. Yesterday evening, I got my large Have-A-Hart trap from the barn, baited it with marshmallows, and placed it in the cellar. This morning when I let the dogs out, it occurred to me to check the trap, so I went to the cellar and flicked on the light. A young possum, about the size of a kitten, was staring back at me from inside the Have-A-Hart. I waited until I let the dogs back into the house, then…
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Unseen Enemies
Yesterday Jinx cornered two black snakes. Like all of his kind, he has a special hostility for the legless, undulating creatures that appear in our nightmares and in certain gardens. I’m sure Jinx would join me in my disdain and mistrust of anyone who keeps a snake as a pet. Such herpatalogical husbandry is certainly a type of virtue signaling. A very bad type. The bark Jinx used to alert me to the snakes was an interesting cross between his “Hey, there’s a cow coming up the driveway and I think I’ll go herd her out of here!” rhorf and his “There’s a rabbit! I think I’ll see if I…
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A Season
The day has been remarkably cool and breezy, the middle of June but feeling more like early October. This morning, I stood in the parking lot at work and drank in the sight of a rainbow that seemed to stretch from one end of town to the other. The center of the bow was obscured by a charcoal-and-pink cloud that looked like the smoke from a cursed city afire. I watched the clouds and procrastinated entering my building, and I wondered what other symbols of goodness and blessing will be hijacked for unsavory causes and purposes. This past Saturday marked three months since Jinx came to live at the farm.…
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Day Of Sighs
I drove to work, almost able to see the miasma of lies and evil hanging like summer fog in the air through which I moved. Natural beauty almost always lifts me out of myself and helps me forget the ugliness within and without, but yesterday, I could feel it affecting me, entering my spirit’s lungs, sickening me. Arriving at my office and parking in my usual spot beneath the tree, I did not want to leave the shelter of my vehicle, did not want to cross that parking lot, did not want to enter that building where profit is king and spiritual realities are, at best, sneer-fodder. I wanted to…