Drive - A Memoir 111th Installment
– the
ant was screaming! I guess he didn’t like to fly. An ant can scream
or at least squeak. I know it’s true because I heard it.
“Ooohkaaay,”
Russell stretched out the okay to amplify his doubt about my
experience with the ant. He went on to remind me of the time we went
hunting and noticed several flocks of sage hens flying over the hill
into the field beyond. All the flocks came in from different
directions and headed to the same place. We got curious and took off
in the direction they were landing, and as we came over the hill, we
saw about a thousand sage hens covering the one ten acre field. We’d
never seen more than five or ten sage hens together in one location
let alone a thousand. This was a strange sight to see and us without
a shot gun.
“Ooohkaaay”
I said mocking him like his story was as odd as mine. Seriously,
though, these things do happen. Animals are linked to Mother Nature;
they know things and do things that astonish us humans. We were
stacking hay at Spoon’s place one afternoon. It was a very hot
midsummer day – and dead still. I mean, we could toss a feather off
the ten layer hay stack, and it would float straight down. We were
standing about fifteen feet in the air on the stack between the
loafing sheds. The loafing shed is a roof supported by strong wood
poles where the animals could get shelter during inclement weather.
This mountain of hay was mid feedlot where about a hundred cattle
were being fattened to be sold, slaughtered and eaten.
Other
than the heat, the day was perfect: cattle were lowing, the birds
were chirping, and the insects were buzzing around our heads. Russ
and I were talking, laughing, sweating, and working hard.
Suddenly
Russ whispered, “Do you hear that?”
“I
hear nothing!” I didn’t hear anything.
“That’s
what I meant,” he explained. “Dead silence! Not a moo, not a
chirp, not a buzz.” The silence and the dead stillness were
supernatural, uncanny and mystical for at least twenty seconds.
Suddenly
we heard the roar of a freight train, thunderous tearing, ripping,
screeching of nails, and snapping of wire. A large piece of the
loafing shed roof ten or fifteen feet across erupted in the air to an
unbelievable height and spun down, apparently on us.
“Get
out of the way,” I screamed.
“Where?
We’re trapped up here! We’ll have to jump for it!” Russ cried.
We scrambled to the edge of the stack and luckily didn’t have to
jump. The roof had broken up and the largest piece had crashed into
the other side of the hay stack. We covered our heads with our arms
and danced around trying to avoid the falling debris. Now the cows
were bellowing and running around trying to escape the corral. There
was still
500 more words tomorrow
0 comments:
Post a Comment
Comments