Rolling With The Flow

Now yesterday was interesting.

Lisa was in the mood for Chipotle, so off we went to Longmont to get it. On the way there I spotted that same large male elk in the field, but this time he was holding court with a number of younger bulls, who were sitting around him in a circle. I actually turned around so I could go back and snap a few photos, including the one at the top of this blog. They are magnificent creatures.

Given that this is the middle of Elk hunting season – IMHO, I find all game hunting barbaric – I added an extra incantation for their safety. I know that this viewpoint isn’t going to sit well with all the hunters out here, and I’ve gotten some backlash in the past, but unless the only way you can feed your family is by ending another creature’s life, I can find no acceptable excuse for doing so.

Once back at Casa Claire, I received a text from our neighbors, Drew and Kelly, asking if they could borrow some hay bales for this weekend’s Halloween festivities. Over the past few years, they and other local families with young kids, including L & G and my three grans, gather on Halloween to drive the collective group of ghoulish urchins throughout the neighborhood on a flatbed trailer – a modern version of a rural hayride –

and each year the number of participating children has grown. So has the needed number of haybales.

Does my heart good to see it.

Halloween Spirits & Children – The Wise Novelist

Now I usually have plenty of hay stored away to get me though the winter months, but this year, the hay crop just hasn’t been as plentiful, and my usual local supplier dried up. So, instead of just waiting for deliveries here at Casa Claire, I’ve been forced to buy smaller numbers of the compressed bales, six at a time, and pick them up in my Toyota (yes, that one). Now luckily, Claire and Honey have had plenty of on-site summer grazing and foraging, so I manage, through this piece-meal fashion, to purchase enough hay to keep the racks full.

So, when Drew asked me yesterday if he could borrow the bales again, I explained that I have six compressed bales on hand that he’s welcome to. However, I knew it wouldn’t be anywhere near enough. When I mentioned the predicament to Lisa, she suggested I call around to see what else is available. It turned out that Hygiene Feed – mentioned in The Wise Ass – did have some full-size bales if I wanted to come pick them up.

I proposed to Drew that if he would lend me his pick-up truck, I would go and buy as many bales as I could fit in its back bed. We could leave them in the truck until he used them on Halloween and then I could store them in the barn and use them to nurture my magic mules as needed afterwards.

Half hour later, I pulled into Hygiene Feed, and there was assisted by the preternaturally strong, tall and mesmerizingly attractive young woman in her twenties named Molly (just giving credit where credit is due), who played basketball as a two-guard, also trains horses in the area, and who would shame the cowgirls on Yellowstone or Landman. Watching how easily she tossed those bales onto the truck bed during loading, if she told me she was a Vampire I would have no problem believing it. In fact, I’m hoping she is, as she would definitely make the cut in the spin-off series brewing in my head that picks up the story of the younger generation of TCS characters standing together at the end of Where The Ley Lines Meet.

Anyway, I managed to stack fourteen full-sized bales of hay into the back bed. But instead of stacking them horizontally in layers, I decided after some trial and error to stack them perpendicularly like soldiers, which allowed me to add more than I could have gotten using the traditional method. Necessity is the mother of invention. When it was all said and done, I made it back to Berthoud, parked the unloaded truck on Drew’s property and asked if he could drop a tarp over them until the weekend, when a bunch of very excited local children will enjoy sitting on them during their Halloween rounds and then Claire and Honey will enjoy devouring them at least through January. A win-win!

The one tragic note to the entire journey, was spotting a dead young Elk bull on the side of the back road leading to Hygiene. I didn’t see any obvious damage to the elk or any waylaid damaged cars that could have hit it, and no signs of a gun wound, so I’m going to kid myself into believing that it just died of a heart attack and imagine its soul enjoying the far side of the rainbow bridge with all of the previously passed creatures of Casa Claire. Nature can be unforgiving.

People, please drive carefully for your safety and for the sake of all sentient creatures accessing the roads.

Well, my fine, five readers, who are gainfully employed, Tuesday has again arrived, leaving poor Monday in the rearview mirror. This is the heavy lifting day for those with serious projects on their desk. Get to the office as early as you can and stay as late as necessary to get the heart of those projects done. That way, you can comfortably fine tune it into perfection on Wednesday and Thursday without the stress of possibly impinging on your Halloween weekend. Friday awaits.

And no matter what else we get up to, let us make today a great one.