Getting My Goat

Good Goat, Aye?

We did it!  Leslie and I are now members of the Secret Order of the Goat-Eye Oracle (SOGEO).  By day we are simple country folk, but by night, armed with the oracle and it’s transcendental wisdom, we become soldiers in the sacred quest to rid this planet of goat-killing parasites.

Over the top?  You decide.

Almost all goats have internal parasites, and if the goat is particularly susceptible and left untreated, it will die.  This problem is largely the result of our domestication of the goat.  It’s a long story and not easily corrected.

To kill the parasites, certain drugs have been developed, called anthelmintics.  These drugs are given orally, much like you give an eye-dropper of Pediaprofen to a toddler.  Like antibiotics, when anthelmintics are used indiscriminately, they actually help breed parasites that are resistant to the drug, making matters much worse.

But a very smart doctor named Faffa Malan in South Africa came up with a system to augment the effectiveness of anthelmintics without aiding in the creation of super resistant parasites.  In a nutshell, you only treat the goats that absolutely need it.  But first, you have to determine which goats are anemic enough to warrant treatment, and you do that by looking at the color of the conjunctiva in their eyes.

To facilitate uniform evaluation of conjunctiva color for anemia, Dr. Malan created a chart with five shades of pink, ranging from “near-perfect-health red” to “gonna-die-anytime white” (he uses a numbering system, but I spiced it up for this story).  Dr. Malan called this FAMACHA, taken from FAffa MAlan CHArt.

The FAMACHA chart is little more than a color swatch from Lowes that’s been laminated.  It’s the process for its use that’s valuable.

But that’s not how things work when you commingle commercialism and animal health.  The science behind FAMACHA is fascinating (yes, I’m a goat nerd) and the process is easy to learn.  Directions for understanding and implementing the process are readily available online or from local extension agents.  There is no mystery as to how to do this, and everyone with goats is encouraged to implement its strategies.

But if you want the laminated color card, you have to be certified.  Yes, CERTIFIED!  It’s OK to guess how anemic your goats are and treat them willy-nilly, but to get a color card you have to be certified.

It’s like teaching aspiring doctors how to do brain surgery and telling them they can give it a shot if they want to, but if they want a scalpel, then they have to go to med school and pay $500,000.

You can go into Tractor Supply and buy syringes, needles, scalpels, castrators, antibiotics and all sorts of drugs without a third-grade education or proof that you know a cow from a chicken.  But, you can’t buy a color card.  No sir.  For that you need to take a two-hour certification class, and of course, pay your $10 certification fee.

Dr. Malan says, “Thank you!”  Cha-ching.

As I am wont to do when faced with seeming idiocy, I wrote to the University of Georgia, College of Veterinary Medicine, which administers FAMACHA in the United States.  My e-mail was, admittedly, a bit sarcastic (Surprise!).  I explained that I had college credit in, among other health science topics, pharmacology and cardiology.  As a Nationally Registered paramedic I used to diagnose and treat serious human illnesses in the field without consulting a doctor.  But I’m not qualified to buy a color card?

I had goats that needed anthelmintics.  Was I to be denied a color card because there was no one in my area to teach me the ancient and venerable art of holding it next to an eye for comparison?  I had already listened to a certified FAMACHA instructor give a two-hour lecture on parasite control, including the FAMACHA system, but because the class was not billed as an official FAMACHA training session, I could not get a color card.

To his credit, the Georgia Ph.D. who responded to my missive was exceptionally cordial and helpful.  He gave me a ton of information on parasite control practices.  But he couldn’t give me a color card.  Nope.  That would violate his contract with Dr. Malan’s organization.

I understand contracts.  Nobody wants to wind up in court on charges of possession of a color card with intent to distribute.  I get that.  What would the neighbors say?  What surprises me is that there’s no black market for the cards.  “Psssst!  Wanna buy some FAMACHA?  It’s good shit.  Five bucks.  Fell off a nerd truck.  Honest.”

Leslie and I waited, and finally late last month we were officially certified in FAMACHA.  We paid our $10 and got our card.  We own the oracle.  Our lives have changed forever.  All hail the Goat-Eye Oracle.

But the irony of goat medicine doesn’t end there.  While I proudly carry the Goat-Eye Oracle with full legal protection, all of the drugs it recommends I use are illegal.  All the anthelmintics currently used for goats are labeled either for sheep or cows.  Extra-label usage of drugs by laypeople is a federal crime, so all goat farmers are criminals.

Psssst!  Wanna buy a used FAMACHA card?  Five bucks and it’s yours.  I have to make bail.

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Bang-Bang! You’ve Been Harvested

Rural Badge of Honor

To hunt in Virginia, you need a license (unless you’re on your own property).  To get a license, you need to complete a 10-hour hunter education course.  Jordan and I did that a few weeks ago, along with 90 other locals.  It’s a rural right of passage, one we were honored to achieve.

The course was great.  I know a fair amount about guns, but I still learned a lot about hunting firearms, bows and muzzle loaders.  We also learned a lot about hunting laws and wildlife.  Jordan and I can now field-dress a squirrel in about 30 seconds.  In this economy, that could be quite valuable.  Unless you’re a squirrel.

We learned that hunting does not involve “killing” any animals.  All legally hunted animals are “harvested.”  Somehow, I don’t think PETA is fooled by that.  And trying to make a pickup full of drunken bozos with shotguns and blood lust sound like subsistence farmers bringing in a crop of corn is also a tad insulting.  But I digress.

We also discovered that hunting laws are written by the same people who conjure IRS regulations.  There are 51 different categories of hunting licenses, and like with deer, you probably need at least two just to hunt one animal.

There are 65 counties in Virginia, and each enforces a unique combination of 75 different firearms ordinances. For example, Halifax enforces firearms ordinances 33, 61 & 75.  Each county also has its own set of seasons for each of the 22 animals (not including waterfowl and fish) listed in Virginia’s annual publication Hunting & Trapping in Virginia (65 pages).  Each animal has multiple seasons for different methods of hunting, like archery, muzzle loading, firearms, etc.

“Deer season” is actually a combination of 22 different permutations of date and method which includes esoteric seasons like Early Antlerless Only Archery season.  Once you start to combine regulations on licensing, geography, date and hunting methodology, you need an IBM mainframe (see how old I am?) to figure  it all out.

The bottom line on hunting is that if you’re confronted by a game warden, you’d better have a stick of Chapstick because you’re gonna be kissing some serious butt.  It’s almost guaranteed you’ve violated some arcane provision of a hunting regulation.

To become certified to hunt, we had to pass a 50-question test, best described in one word: laughable.  The rules say you have to be in at least the fourth grade to take the course and test, but I know I sat next to a kid so young he couldn’t even read the test.  AND HE PASSED!

In fact, everyone passed.  Any test given to 90 people where everyone passed is not much of a test.  Especially in the country.  When the test was over, the instructors wouldn’t give out grades because, “What’s important is that you passed.”  Jordan and I disagreed.  We want to hunt with people who got 100 percent, not people who scored 70.  In fact, if you missed any of the questions, you shouldn’t be allowed to touch a hunting weapon.  Seriously.

The multiple choice questions went something like this:

The No. 1 rule when handling a firearm is:

A. Looking down the barrel of a loaded gun is safe, as long as you’re quick about it.

B. Always keep it loaded and ready to fire. You never know when a deer might jump in front of your truck.

C. Always keep the muzzle pointed in a safe direction.

D. Bullets are cheap.  Shoot fast and shoot often at anything that moves.

I’m going to guess most people reading this haven’t taken the course, but you should be able to answer this question correctly even without it.  The answer is “C” and I’m positive everyone out here got it right since the instructors did everything but tattoo the answer on their foreheads.  Yet, I get no comfort from hearing several smokers joke that “B” and/or “D” were more practical.

Still, the 10 hours was time well spent, even though I will probably never hunt.  I still don’t “get it.”  I have no problem killing an animal out of necessity or for food, but I’ve never, ever enjoyed it.  I know deer populations are exploding and they’re a danger to traffic and farmers, so I support hunters.  I just don’t know why they find it fun.

As a result, I’ve often made fun of hunters.  Many deserve it because they’re addle-brained yahoos who think a gun is a metaphorical extension of their manhood.  I have more respect for a wildlife photographer than a ninth-grade dropout sitting beside the road with a .30-06 pointed out the window.

But I was stunned when the instructors spent about 30 minutes making the same point.  They showed videos of hunters who give the sport a bad name.  They derided the bubbas who slap a dead deer on their hood and ride into town and park at the Dairy Dell.

And I almost fell out of my chair when an instructor pointed his finger at the class and said, “Let’s be honest.  There’s nothing pretty about death.  If you’re going to hunt, be responsible and respect those who don’t share your views on the sport.”

Out here, that’s tough talk.  I don’t know if anyone listened or cared, but it meant something to me.  Since that class, I’ve watched a good friend slaughter two goats.  He’s done it many times before and it wasn’t a big deal, yet I could tell that he didn’t find it fun.  Just necessary.

There are good hunters and bad hunters, but all are armed.  Therefore I have no respect for the bad ones.  It’s not even firearms deer season yet and already there’s been a hunting fatality in Virginia.  In Buena Vista (north of Lynchburg), a 21-year-old shot and killed a 15-year-old while hunting and is being charged with reckless handling of a firearm and involuntary manslaughter.

I can’t help but wonder what the 21-year-old scored on his hunter education course.

###

Dirty Jobs – Alton Edition

Two weeks ago, I watched two men whom I respect very much debate the merits of sticking a pointed, barbed, plastic plug in a goat’s rectum.  It was the beginning of an unusual, yet classically rural day.

Ned, my goat mentor and icon of all things rural, was slaughtering two goats for an upcoming meat goat association open house.  Aiding Ned was Fred, a recent addition to our community and a man well versed in animal dissection.

I’ve never “dressed” an animal, but I know the basic theory.  So, when I overheard Fred suggesting Ned stick this green plastic thing in the goat’s butt hole, I thought I’d caught the punch line to an off-color joke.  Good thing I stifled a sophomoric giggle.  These guys were serious.

The plug enables you to cut out the rectum, pull out the bowel and tie it off before you slice open the goat.  This prevents spilling any of the bowel’s contents on the meat.  The thing works like a charm.  I just can’t imagine being tasked with marketing this invention.

“Billy Mays here.  Do you have problems with fecal matter falling out of your dead goat’s rectum?  Well, say goodbye to those crappy clean-ups.  Introducing, Rectum Check, the sure-fire way to seal ANY goat’s rectum.”

But wait, there’s more …

Jordan and I watched these two goats being dressed and eventually lent a hand.  We skinned and hacked until we had gleaming, skinless goat carcasses hanging before us.

By now, everyone’s hands were covered with blood.  I brought latex gloves, not because I’m fastidious or a priss, but because years in EMS taught me to keep any and all body fluids off my skin.  But when I realized everyone else was going bare knuckled, I didn’t want to be the wuss wearing light green pinkie protectors.

At this time, Ned pulled out the Sawzall, a powerful reciprocating saw you’d likely find at any construction site.  While Fred held the carcasses, Ned deftly sawed them into smaller portions.  Both were occasionally rewarded with flecks of flesh, bone and blood flung on to their shirts and pants.

As we watched through a soft pink mist, the climax of the event came when the horned heads were sawed off and bounced on the bloody grass.  It was like a scene in a classic, third-rate horror movie, sans the pentagram, candles and bevy of nude virgins.  Nothing speaks to a man’s inner beast more than killing, dressing and ultimately eating an animal.  OK, nude virgins would have made it a little better, but not much.

Ned kept the meat for cooking and presentation at the open house and I volunteered to dispose of the offal on our property.  Then Jordan said he wanted to take home a goat head.  Kids today.  They expect it all: computer, HD TV, cellphone, iPod, you name it.  And he still has to have a freshly-severed, still-oozing, goat head with its trachea dangling underneath like a miniature, white garden hose.  We’ve certainly spoiled the boy.

I resisted, but he insisted.  I’m weak.  I caved, so into the truck went both goat heads along with their guts.  I confess, as I drove Jordan to school I fantasized about getting into an accident where the remains in my truck were tossed all over the highway.  The arriving constable would think I’d run over a small pack of albino cub scouts.

I know.  I need therapy.

Jordan had school and football the next two days, so figuring out what to do with the goat heads fell to me.  Insect larva (e.g. maggots) do an excellent job of eating decaying flesh, but if you leave body parts on the ground, larger predators chew up and drag off the bones.  So, Ned suggested I hoist the heads into a tree.

I pretty much ran the gamut of macabre that morning, beginning with my education in goat rectum sealing and ending with me standing in the forest a quarter mile from the house, hands on hips, admiring two bloody goat heads hanging from a tree.

I left the city an ex-soccer coach and sports writer.  Now I’m lord of the flies.

###

Hope for Heidi

Heidi, our "project" goat

Yes, I’m a goat rancher.  You don’t hear many city people say that.

But I’m also a caprine counselor, working to bring harmony to a small herd of goats that has chosen one of its own to bully and ostracize.  Leslie and I are working to keep six mean step-sisters from picking on a sweet doe that doesn’t “fit in.”

Rest assured, you don’t hear country people say that.

Welcome to my world.  It’s called cultural purgatory, and I’m the 2009 poster child.  It’s the price I pay for marrying a woman who embodies both pro wrestling and PETA.  She crushes bugs with her fingers, grabs snakes like they were department store bargains and once beat our oldest son arm wrestling when he was nearly 16 (he’s still in counseling).  And don’t get between her and a good steak lest you loose a limb.

Yet, she makes me stop in the middle of a busy road to rescue an injured bird.  She worries about rodents suffering in a mouse trap and she once brought home an injured frog she found dying in a gutter.

So, when we discussed raising meat goats, she agreed only if we could keep one as a pet.  As though taken from a saccharine Disney script, Leslie chose the outcast underdog as her pet.  Her name is Heidi.

All seven of our original doelings were sired by a pure-blood boer, but the mothers of six were Nubian dairy goats.  Heidi’s mother was, we’re told, a Saanen – another dairy breed that comes from Switzerland’s Saanen Valley and looks like the goat in the movie Heidi.  Now you know where the goat got her name.

Heidi is small and looks different, so on the proverbial goat playground, she’s the one that gets stuffed in the trash can.  When the rest of the goats are lounging in the shade of their shelter, Heidi is left outside to rest alone.  For no apparent reason, other goats will suddenly head-butt Heidi in the ribs, sometimes knocking her over.

When we give the goats their morning “training feed,” the herd keeps Heidi from eating, so we take a separate bucket behind the shelter for her so she can enjoy a few mouthfuls of feed without being tossed aside by her vicious step sisters.

But despite her lowly status, Heidi perseveres.  She’s often the friendliest goat and definitely the most vocal.  She adores attention and loves to be scratched.  I swear she knows her name.

And she’s possibly the bravest.

Jordan loves to play “Around the World” by running around the goats’ pasture fencing and enticing them to follow.  Heidi, Omega goat in the day-to-day goat hierarchy, suddenly becomes Alpha leader, taking point as the weed munchers navigate the dense overgrowth in full sprint.  She always finishes first, bleating her triumph for all to hear.

We like to think our nurturing will make Heidi a strong and capable leader.  We want to make sure Heidi knows she’s loved and can overcome any adversity.  We want Heidi to be all she can be.

I know, it’s sad.  Deeply tanned and calloused, I fit in at the local Tractor Supply.  But beneath this manly, rural facade is a goat-pecked wuss who calls the herd his “goaty girls” and chirps with baby talk designed to sooth a tortured goat’s psyche.

(Sigh)

There’s no hope for me, but at least there’s hope for Heidi.

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Your Sister Needs Worming

With one son off at college and another primed to leave in two years, Les and I were gearing up for an empty nest.  All that changed on August 16, when we brought home seven kids to feed and nurture.  Yes, seven darling little girls.

So far, they’ve been a joy, which is a good thing, because if they don’t behave as expected, we’ll either sell them or eat them.  Life is tough in the country.

The kids we’re talking about are baby goats.  Les and I are going into the meat goat business.

Raising meat goats is one of the fastest growing agricultural endeavors in the U.S. today.  Believe it or not, goat meat is the most prevalent type of meat eaten worldwide.  The U.S. is a rare exception where goat meat lags behind beef and pork.

Goat meat is incredibly lean, healthy and very tasty (I’m told).  Leslie and I have never actually eaten goat meat, which is called chevon.  Think about it.  You don’t eat cow meat, you eat beef.  You don’t eat pig meat, you eat pork.  Goat meat needed it’s own unique term, so voila, they coined “chevon.”

Chevon comes from the French word chevre, which means (Surprise!) goat.  We’re so creative.

With our burgeoning immigrant population and health-conscious culture, the demand for goat meat is growing and we’re gonna ride the wave.  We’ve joined the Southern Virginia Meat Goat Association, which has connected with national markets and can’t supply enough goats to meet demand.

But making money, if it happens, is only the cherry on the chevon cake.  These little critters love to eat the weeds and brush that cover half our 45 acres.  The land that was “cut-over” about five years ago is so dense with the type of vegetation goats love that we can’t even see most of our property.  There could be an old mine, hunting shack, ‘57 Chevy or an old drum holding Jimmy Hoffa sitting out there and we wouldn’t know it.

In the first six days these four-legged weed whackers were here, they cleared out Poison Ivy Ridge, a small outcropping of trees, vines and brush that lies inside one of our horse pastures.  The goats went through it like Sherman through Atlanta, without the smoke.

And they leave thousand of little fertilizer “pills” behind.  The goat stomach is a miraculous four-chambered organ that turns heavily masticated vegetable matter into something that looks like a blueberry.  It’s really interesting to watch them poop (I know, I’ve lost it).

We paid a ridiculously low price for these wonderfully healthy doelings.  We had to drive into the squeal-like-a-pig western mountains of Virginia to get them, but it was worth it.  One of our local friends, Ned Strange, who is a big meat goat producer said, “Shoot, at that price, if one don’t work out, you can just eat her.  It’ll be the cheapest and best steak you ever had.”

Ned Strange is not a member of PETA.

Ned, and his wife Donna, are two of the finest people on Earth, and they’re helping us learn the goat trade.  But we’ve already disregarded one bit of their advice.  We named the goats.

Since these seven are going to (hopefully) be long-term mothers, we won’t be selling/eating them any time soon.  So, Leslie couldn’t resist giving them names.

The queen (the herd leader, or alpha doe) is named Blandine, after Leslie’s mother.  Another is Bertha, after my mom.  Jordan named one Funk Master in jest, but since he hasn’t revised that name, it’s stuck.  He’s embarrassed when we tell people the name, but not as much as the goat.

We also have Heidi and Daisy Mae, and one of our nephews named a goat Marley.  And last, but not least, is “Your Sister.”  That’s right, we named a goat Your Sister.  It’s a hoot, especially when we tell people.

“And this one is Your Sister,” I said.

“You named her Bernice?,” the local said.

“No, not after your sister, ‘Your Sister,’” I reply.  It’s loads of fun, especially when we’re in the pasture with the critters.

“Leslie, Your Sister is licking my leg again.  And she just pooped on my foot,” I say.

“Well, if Your Sister wasn’t such a pig she wouldn’t be pooping everywhere,” she replies.

The jokes are infinite.  We were going to name two of the goats after good friends Jamie and Carolyn, but there’s a Carolyn across the street and we were afraid she’d be on the front porch one evening and hear us say, “Carolyn needs her hooves trimmed, but she’s looking good for an old goat.”  That would wind up in the church bulletin.

Plenty more to say about the goats, but for now, au revoir.

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Your Sister Won't Shut Up

Bubbas (Part One)

I have been accused, on occasion, of lacking savoir-faire.  That James-Bond-esque sophistication most of you have come to expect from me doesn’t come naturally.  True!  While spending the better part of the last two decades living among high financiers, doctors and engineers, I secretly waged a battle with my inner redneck.

I was reared in a home where a t-shirt and boxers was legitimate dinner attire, real men proudly claimed their farts and everyone drank cheap beer from the can.  But then I met Leslie and I had to grow up (although I’m still a level-10 fart master).

In the country, many guys skip the “grow up” part.  They still aspire to succeed, but insist on remaining true to their redneck roots.  Sometimes, it’s hard not to admire the can-do attitude of the rural unsophisticated.  Case in point:

Leslie and I were driving the Halifax County back roads the other day, dodging deer, groundhogs and the occasional turkey.  Yes, all three are bona fide hazards to navigation on the roads.

In the middle of nowhere, we came upon a large area of cleared, mowed land and large, elaborate, brick pillars that would, in Virginia Beach, announce a trendy, up-scale neighborhood.  The expensive sign said “Gobbler’s Roost,” (not the real name since I don’t want to get shot) and a newly paved road led back into a nascent housing development.

Gravel driveways, livestock fences and RFD mailboxes are the norm out here, so Leslie and I turned into the development to see what form of “culture” had begun to blossom in the backwoods.  We turned right at the first intersection to find homemade markers delineating lots along the “road,” which went from asphalt to gravel to grass in just a few dozen yards.

We continued on, trying to get a lay of the land and a “sense” of the development.  The “road” quickly became a hastily graded cul-de-sac, so we did a lazy 180 and began to head out.  Suddenly, a big pickup truck whipped around the corner and slid to a stop beside us.  The window rolled down and I was greeted by a not-so-friendly “Can I help you?”

The guy offering the rhetorical help was about 45, overweight, shirtless and literally covered from bellybutton to neck in tattoos.  His greasy, gray hair was pulled back into a pony tail and his flush cheeks announced a Budweiser Blush.

A young man in the passenger seat had a shirt draped across his lap and there were people in the back seat I couldn’t see clearly.  The tone wasn’t friendly, so I resorted to my innocent-yet-smart-ass mode.

“I’m sorry,” I said.  “Am I on private property?”

I could see the rusty wheels moving in Bubba’s head (he never introduced himself, so I’m calling him Bubba).  He was trying to sell property, but seemed offended that people would actually come by to look at it.  He wiped his face with his hand as though to put on a more friendly visage.

In the next two minutes we had a more cordial conversation.  The guys in the back seat put away their shotguns (I can only imagine) and Bubba scratched his ample, hairy, graffiti-covered chest in that endearing way a great ape makes guests feel at home in his banana tree.

In a little over 100 seconds, we learned that Bubba had been embroiled in a lawsuit in Alaska and took some of his settlement to buy this property.  Somewhere behind the trees and scrub was a little airstrip he had carved out of the clay.  He and his buddies had been “bush hogging hard” for the last few weeks to build a residential paradise for private pilots.

The goal was a “gated community” where residents can land and taxi their private aircraft right into the back yard.   You can’t tell, but I’m laughing as I type this.  We have a lot of gated communities around here.  How else do you keep the cows, horses and goats in?  But aircraft theft isn’t big on the local “radar.”  See, I made a funny.

Seriously, we actually know a commercial airline pilot who lives in Alton, and there is another guy near the post office who has his own airstrip, so the concept isn’t entirely crazy.  But I’m guessing that anybody looking for a John Travolta-like community isn’t going to be house hunting in this neck of the woods, or interested in buying real estate from a beer-sodden, bare-chested biker with the sales acumen of a roadhouse bouncer.

But Bubba seemed undeterred and unashamed.  His last words were, “Stop in for a beer sometime.”  I remember that from my real estate sales training days.  It’s called the Redneck Close.

As we pulled away and approached the development’s only intersection, one of Bubba’s buddies was standing in the middle of the road that led to the air strip like a Secret Service sentry, obviously tasked with making sure we didn’t proceed further and would take the correct path back to the main road.

Heaven forbid we should travel unescorted in this soon-to-be haven for airborne elite.

A few days later, Leslie told this story to a friend who is very familiar wth that part of the county.  “Drugs,” he said.  “Lots of people around there are into drugs.”

Great.  Now you know why everyone carries a gun around here.

My last words to Bubba were that I would spread the word.  So, if you’re a pilot looking for an inexpensive place to bring in your shipment of Columbian Gold, park your Piper, knock down a few beers with the locals and then crash before your big sale to the Mob at midnight, Gobbler’s Roost is the place for you.

Don’t tell Bubba I sent you.

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Tick Talk

Ticks we've collected just this spring

Doesn’t everyone have a tick jar?

You come inside from a stroll around the property, strip for the requisite shower and began plucking the little critters off your nether regions, dropping them into a small jar of alcohol, thus saving them for posterity.

Are we the only ones?

Probably.  Only my wife could come up with such a macabre accessory as a tick jar.  She’s a nature nerd who can simultaneously channel Steve Irwin and Calamity Jane (and still be afraid of the dark).

But I am loath to mock this buggy beauty of the backwoods.  While most country folk pluck ticks and simply crush them between two fingernails and toss them on the ground, my wife has transformed de-tickifying into a fun summertime activity.

First, there’s the fun of a mutual tick hunt.  If you’ve ever heard Brad Paisley’s song Ticks, you know what I’m talking about.  But even if the hunt is solo, there’s much to learn.  Like where they prefer to hide, how fast they scamper when discovered and how tenacious they hold on once they’ve drilled for blood.

We mostly attract Lone Star ticks, which are rather large and brown with a big, white dot on their back.  They’re easier to spot than the smaller deer ticks, which are the ones that carry Lyme Disease.

Want to impress your friends when they come over?  Whip out the tick jar.  It’s a better conversation piece than grandma’s ashes on the mantle or that mangled big toe that won’t heal because the horses keep stepping on it.

An alcohol-filled tick jar also makes for a sure kill.  Ticks are essentially two-dimensional, without mass in the third dimension.  These creatures are very had to crush.  You can stomp on them, squeeze them between two fingers with all your might or even wash them down the sink and they will still come back to suck you dry.  Sort of like a teen you’ve sent off to college.

I once plucked a Lone Star and washed him down the bathroom sink.  An hour later I found him crawling up the spout and looking quite peeved.  I’ve been chased by turkeys, cows (a long story) and now ticks.  If only I attracted women that way.

Still, the most important value of a tick jar is its ability to measure your contact with nature.  Collecting, and thus counting your ticks gives you a sense of how closely you interact with the land.

For instance, on Sunday I took a seven-tick hike.  You can measure a hike in the woods by how long you were there or how far you traveled, but when you’re with Leslie, neither give you a sense of how close you got to the trees and bushes.  Ticks do.

She wanted to go for a walk, so I agreed.  She grabbed her camera on the way out so I knew what to expect.  If it walked, crawled, flew, chirped or buzzed, she had to stop and take six photos from three different angles.  We moved through the forest with all the grace and fluidity of a city bus moving through Manhattan.

But it was fun, at least until it became clear why I was such a valued hiking partner.  The vegetation surrounding the forest was heavily overgrown, and as we transitioned from open land to the forest and back, Princess Nature called on me to lead the way.

Like Shrek moving through a brier patch, I cleared a path for my beloved.  I donated blood to thorns, tasted leaves of all sorts, wrapped my head in spider webs and gave the ticks a once-in-a-lifetime target.  I could hear the tick lookout yell, “Holy hemoglobin boys, here comes the mother load.  On the count of three, JUMP!”

Once home, Leslie removed only five ticks from her bod.   But I set a record with seven.

Those ticks are dead, but country chivalry is alive and well.

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Spring Critters (Part Two)

You remember the old joke:  How do you catch a squirrel?  You climb up a tree and act like a nut.

In Alton, one man learned that to catch a bobcat, all you have to do is climb in the bushes and act like a turkey.

As reported in the Gazette-Virginian on 4-21-09 under the title “Bobcat Mauls Turkey Hunter,” a local learned the true price of quality camouflage and deft turkey calling.

Camouflaged from head to toe, with only a slit for his eyes, this intrepid hunter took to the underbrush and began his turkey chants.  It’s unknown if he fooled any turkeys, but he definitely got the attention of a hungry bobcat which jumped on the hunter’s head.

One can only speculate as to who was more surprised.  A brief struggle ensued and the bobcat (which weighs 20-30 pounds) tore at the hunter’s face.

“If I hadn’t been wearing glasses, I probably would have lost my eyes,” the hunter said.

The bobcat escaped and the bloody hunter drove himself to the emergency room.  I’m married to an ER nurse, so I can only imagine the giggles shared in the ER break room that day.  The hunter received stitches in his face and has to get regular rabies injections.

But his spirit is undaunted.  When asked by the Gazette-Virginian if the incident has deterred him from hunting, he replied, “Naw.  I went out hunting the next day … I just went to another spot.”

Nothing stops hunting out here.

Lest you think this is an isolated incident, something similar happened a few weeks later.

On May 13, the Gazette-Virginian again reported that the tables had been turned on a local hunter.  It seems a “veteran” hunter took a shot at a 20-pound gobbler and apparently missed.  He chased the bird into a clearing and dropped to one knee for a second shot.  It was then he had one of those, “Oh shit!” moments we all like to avoid when out in the woods alone.

“The turkey started toward me,” recalled the stunned hunter.  “I thought he would stop, or turn away, but he didn’t.  He attacked me.”

Turkeys have sharp, Jurassic Park-like spurs on their feet, so getting attacked by a big gobbler isn’t the same as dodging a dive-bombing mocking bird.  Wild turkeys are the bad-ass birds of the brush and have little in common with their fat, flightless Thanksgiving cousins.  Wild turkeys are armed.

The Gazette-Virginian reported, “The two fought it out in the woods, spurring, grappling, choking, battling until man emerged the victor.”

The hunter got a 12-inch gash on his arm from the bird’s 1 1/4-inch spurs, but to read the story you’d think it was a WWF cage fight on Pay Per View.  I’m guessing the reporter gets paid by the verb.

In reality, the bird was quickly dispatched, and I suppose made a tasty meal.

Wrestling with a bobcat sounds cool, even if the animal is nothing more than a house cat on steroids.  But getting your ass kicked by a turkey?  Man, it will take a while to shake that one off.

Which brings me to this morning.  I noticed a mama turkey in our back yard, not 50 feet from our deck.  That’s unusually close.  She was accompanied by a handful of chicks, none bigger than a sparrow.  I took some photos from the window before the horses noticed the birds and scared them into the tall grass.

Turkey mama with chicks wanders Sunset Rock

I knew the turkey mama was hunkered-down just a few yards away, so I went outside to see if I could get some close-up shots.  In case you’re wondering, I was in pure city-boy mode.  The turkey hunting tales I’ve shared above hadn’t entered my mind.  That’s why I have to wear a special wrist band when I’m at the zoo, lest I wander unattended into the lion’s cage muttering, “Nice kitty …

I quietly moved toward the spot where I knew the turkey mama and babies were hiding.  Well, as quiet as a hippo in flip-flops can be.  I was about 10 feet away when the mama took off running with a big display of wings flapping and frantic gobbling.

Turkey mama runs away, hoping I'll follow

The turkey mom wants a predator to follow her, leaving the babies alone.  She can fly and the babies can’t.  But when I failed to follow her, she stopped, turned and gave me a look I’ve never seen in an animal before.

"I'll bust you up, fool," says mad turkey mama

Suddenly, the aforementioned turkey tales popped into my mind and I heard a familiar voice – my Inner Wuss.  Brevity has always been a hallmark of my Inner Wuss, and today’s tactical advice was no exception.  “Run!” is all it said.

No one could see me except the horses, and they have no respect for me anyway, so I wasn’t worried about the image of my lumbering, flip-flopping butt charging across the backyard while being pursued by a couple of drumsticks.

What I feared most was going to the ER, where my wife was working, with several spur slashes in my BACK.  If I’m going to do battle with a bird, I’m going to do it face-to-face, man-to-foul.  I’d rather lose my eyes than spend the rest of my life explaining that I was shanked in my own back yard by a turkey.

I stood my ground and continued to shoot pictures.  Most were out of focus because it’s hard to concentrate with your Inner Wuss yelling at you.

The charge was over quickly.  Obviously, the image of a large animal dressed like a Virginia Beach tourist is something of a deterrent in maternal turkey attacks.  Things like that are good to know.

Turkey mama gives up charge and heads for the bush

The turkey mama veered off, headed for the brush while clucking for her chicks to follow.  I went inside secure in  the knowledge that I could offer the story to the local paper.  The headline would read, “City Feller Shows Rural Bravery in Standoff With Turkey.”

Just so long as they don’t interview the horses.

The horses laugh

###

Spring Critters (Part One)

It’s been a warm, wet spring, and the black widows are everywhere.  I saw one black widow in all the decades I lived in Norfolk and Virginia Beach, and that was already in a jar.  Out here, they’re almost as common as horse flies.  And no jars.

Black widows are actually very pretty and quite shy.  But I can walk out of the back door and find one any day, any time, in about 60 seconds.  They’re under everything that sits outside, especially rocks.  And since we named our farm Sunset Rock, it’s no surprise we have plenty of hiding places for black widows.

Actually, there are several species of black widow, and we have two: the Southern Black Widow and the Northern Black Widow.  They’re often hard to tell apart, but we’ve learned how.

The Northern Black Widow bites and quickly runs away.  The Southern Black Widow has big hair, smiles, and after it bites says, “Y’all come back now, heah.”  Southern Hospitality runs deep in Virginia.

One widow took refuge in a shoe Jordan left on the front porch.  We no longer have to remind Jordan not to leave his shoes outside.

Why you don't leave your shoes outside in the country.

Seriously, we’ve seen or squished dozens and dozens of black widows, but to our knowledge, no one around here has ever been bitten.

Still, we wear gloves whenever working outside and we never put a foot in a shoe or a butt in a chair without careful inspection.  I always appreciate Southern hospitality, but I prefer to pass on the Southern hospitalization.

###

Equine Drive-Thru

It’s hard to write in the spring.  So many chores, all involving sweat, bug bites and blisters.

And then, there are the distractions.  The hospice cat begs for food like a feline Oliver, the troublemaker cat finds something to shred in whatever room you’re NOT in, while the fat cat meows for a lift onto his perch near my desk so he can supervise my literary lunacy.  Well, he’s really just basking in the sun, but I pretend he’s interested in me.  You have to pretend with cats.

But nothing says, “Hey, whatcha doin’ dad?” like a horse at your office window.

I'd like a bag of apples and a carrot milkshake, to go please!

I can tell Duke really wants to help.  I once told him that his mom has an Apple computer and he’s been trying to sneak in ever since.  But he’s a bit hard on the keyboard and his stories are limited to saccharine tales of sweet feed and alfalfa.  And he can’t spell for crap, so I don’t dare let him near the computer.  My wife probably wouldn’t mind if I let him in, but my son, who has to clean the litter boxes, would lose his mind if I handed him a muck rake and told him there was a “surprise” in the hallway.  Still, it might be worth it to see the look on the cats’ face.

But a horse in my window is an unimagined joy I never knew existed.  The country is like that.

###

Those Horse People

Horse people are nuts.  There.  I said it and I mean it.

I’m a horse owner, horse lover and sometimes horse enthusiast (although when I’m chasing one of those eternally exasperating equids the enthusiasm is quickly lost).  But I am not “horse people.”

The difference is this: Horse People think anything that happens while on the back of a horse is good, special and often spiritual.  Sure, watching the sun set or traversing a shallow, babbling brook while in the saddle can be quite magical.  Being stuck on a narrow path behind the world’s most prolific methane machine, not so much.  But nothing bothers horse people.  Case in point – my wife.  I love her very much, but she’s horse people.

A week or two ago Leslie decided to hike the woods with her horse.  She wasn’t riding, just strolling with the horse on a lead line, kind of like taking a big Labrador for a walk.  Then, while she’s back in the woods where no one would find her broken body for weeks, she decides to ride Corky bareback.  Horse people …

The woman uses a large mounting block to get on the horse when it’s saddled up, yet in the woods without a saddle she manages to climb on the horse’s back, and off they go.

Now, let’s skip to the end.  An hour later she walks into the house looking like a Somalian war orphan.  There are little twigs and leaves in her disheveled hair, dirt on her face and forehead and her pants and shirt are streaked with dirt and mud.  Her t-shirt has a gaping rip across the front and I can see an angry red slash, about eight inches long, across her belly.  AND SHE’S SMILING!

“Dear God, what happened,” I asked.

“I fell off,” she said, still grinning.

When she climbed on Corky, she inadvertently squeezed with her legs to secure her seat.  If you ride, you know that squeezing with your legs is the equivalent of a hearty “giddy up.”  Corky took off through the narrow trail and before Leslie could rein him in, the horse had turned right and Leslie went straight.

She doesn’t remember falling, but she’s got a clear memory of her butt-plant on the forest floor.  Like all good horse people, she still held the reins and the horse stopped to stare at her with what can only be described as equine pity.  Leslie climbed back on and managed a squeeze-less ride through the woods.

This is a woman who won’t trail ride alone because of the potential danger, yet she decided that being in the woods by herself was a great time for her inaugural bareback romp.  Horse people …

Incredulous, I asked how she managed the scar on her belly if she fell on her butt.  “Oh, Corky went trailblazing,” she said.

Corky likes to make his own trails through the woods.  Rocky Mountain Horses are sure-footed, courageous and agile in all sorts of terrain, but like other horses, they don’t compute the added height of a rider when going under branches.  Leslie took several limbs in the kisser and one big one in the chest, ripping her shirt and scraping her belly.  And she smiled the whole time she told me this because it happened while on horseback.  Horse people …

On Mother’s Day, she went for a four-hour ride with our son, Jordan.  Yes, with a saddle this time.  She returned with a scratch under her right eye (trailblazing again) and a very sore neck.  While navigating under a half-fallen tree, Corky did a quick side-step which slammed Leslie’s head against the tree trunk.  She always wears a helmet, so her head was well protected, but her neck muscles were abused and sore.

Ask Leslie about this ride.  “It was wonderful,” she’ll respond.  Horse people …

Leslie and Corky on a Trail Ride

A couple of days later, I watched Leslie folding clothes.  She picked up the T-shirt with the big rip in the front, which she had washed and dried, and began folding it with care so as not to wrinkle in the dresser.  This is a woman who tries to throw away my perfectly good underwear if they have a small hole in them, and now she’s folding a ratty trail T-shirt with a rip in the front.  Horse people …

Two years in the country and my wife is still nervous going 15 feet out the door to her car in the pre-dawn morning.  There might be bears hiding behind the car hoping for a quick snack of nurse.

Put this woman on horseback in her favorite torn T-shirt and she’s Genghis Khan, ready to lead the Mongol hoards on a quest to conquer Asia.

Horse people …

###

Huntin’, Fishin’ & Puttin’ Out Fires

Surprisingly, DMV says this plate is available

Wildlife conservationist.  Out here, that means hunter.

Virginia sells several different Wildlife Conservationist License Plates with the term “Wildlife Conservationist” at the bottom.  The most prevalent plate in these parts is the one with a deer head on the plate.  Which is kind of redundant, because you’ll often see a dead deer head hanging off a bloody deer carcass that’s draped over the hunting-dog kennels in the back of the pickup truck.

Am I the only one who sees the irony here?

Money from the sale of these plates does go to the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries.  So, if you buy a Wildlife Conservationist plate, you get to claim membership in the club of wildlife conservationists.

But, the funny thing is, the stated goal of Game in Inland Fisheries is to, “… manage wildlife to maintain populations to serve hunters …”

Let’s see, the department exists to keep enough game in the woods for the hunters to kill.  Sounds like the only thing we’re conserving is the hunters.  I’m sure the deer would agree.

I have nothing against hunting.  I just think the license plate should be honest.  There should be a white “X” over the deer’s eyes and at the bottom it should say, “Like to Kill Shit.”

Out here, “going fishin’” is a euphemism for drinking and driving.  At least among firefighters.  We learned that at a forest fire.

Leslie and I went geeking the other day to locate the source of a large, tire-fed forest fire we could see from over 10 miles away.  “Geeking” is where emergency personnel (in our case, EX-emergency personnel) can’t resist the urge to chase an accident or disaster because we’re still drawn to blood and destruction.

We got to the fire before any fire crews, so we had a ring-side seat to the action.

Out in the county, if something is on fire, the firefighting crew that shows up is going to be volunteers.  That’s all there is.  When I was a paid firefighter in Norfolk, we made fun of volunteers because they usually just got in the way.  That doesn’t happen out here.  If you want a fire put out, you don’t dis the guys who are doing it.

The first on scene at our forest fire (it was “our” fire because we got there first) were two young volunteers in their POV (privately owned vehicle), all adorned with flashing lights and impressive stickers.  Armed with portable 2-way radios and a 4WD geekmobile, they drove into the woods to get a better look at the fire.  Moments later they came rolling back out mentioning something about it being “hot” back there.

You can insert your own joke here.  I want the guys to come to my house if it’s on fire, so I’ll pass on this one.

Since all these two guys could do was wait for the pumpers, one came over to my truck to chat with his “fans.”  The other guy went into the cab of his pickup and started tossing half-empty beer bottles into the roadside brush.

Noticing our somewhat surprised look, the firefighter standing next to my truck explained everything in four words: “We were going fishin’.”

‘Nuf said.  Leslie and I assumed that was all anyone needed to completely understand the situation.  And while we normally despise littering and drinking and driving, we found ourselves strangely enamored with these two.  These country boys had postponed a fishing trip and tossed perfectly good beer for the opportunity to risk their necks putting out a fire on someone else’s property.  For free.

I respect that.  Maybe they’re entitled to a little “fishin’.”

###

You Know You’re in the Country When …

Muddy pickups, fire trucks, tractors and camouflage gear all at the prom.  You know you’re in the country when …

What makes a school rural is not just it’s location.  Halifax County High School is located in the “commercial heart” … (I’ll stop laughing in a minute) … of South Boston, Virginia.  It sits across the street from the Walmart, Lowes, Wendys and a slew of other smaller stores.

But, a significant percentage of the kids who go to HCHS are from the hundreds of square miles of farm land surrounding SoBo (a cute name we locals use for South Boston to make the little hick village sound hip).  It’s the heart of the kids that make a school rural, and some of these kids couldn’t be more rural if they drove to school on their tractors.  Which they sometimes do.

Danville is a neighboring city (an honest-to-gosh incorporated city) in Pittsylvania County.  It has a whopping 45,000 residents – about the same amount of people you’ll find at the intersection of First Colonial and Laskin Roads in Virginia Beach any day during rush hour.

Danville kids think they’re from the big city, so when they visit Halifax for a soccer match, some of the usual taunts include, “So, how’d you guys get to the game … on your TRACTORS?”

Hormonal high school varsity athletes have short fuses during athletic competition, but the Halifax kids laugh at the tractor jokes.  They’ll kill you if you insult their hunting skills or dis their pickup, but a tractor joke is always funny.

After all, it’s a school with much more than an equine studies program, a NASCAR motorsports academy, Future Farmers of America and 4H.  Halifax County High School has a polka club.  Yes, polka.  Jordan thought it was a joke until he heard a PA broadcast one day announcing when the polka club would meet.

Did you know people outside the Black Hills of Germany still do the polka?  Leslie and I turned on RFD-TV (channel 345 on Direct TV) to watch the Big Joe Polka Show (I kid you not).  We were rolling on the floor, which was very appropriate because they played the Laughing Polka.

If you’ve never heard the Laughing Polka, please find it and listen to it.  You have to find a version where the musicians actually laugh while playing the music.  Your life will be complete.  And then envision a room full of teenagers dressed in jeans and sod-buster boots dancing to it.

Sure, I poke fun at rural culture, mainly because if you love polka you deserve it.  But Leslie and I also have a bale of respect for the country kids who shrug off convention and do what’s fun.  And Halifax County’s recent prom was a showcase of rural fun.

The Halifax prom was held at the school because it’s the biggest venue in the county, and parents line up outside the main entrance while the kids make an Academy Awards-like entrance.  It’s called the Parade of Fashion and it looks like more fun than having your prize sow win the blue ribbon at the county fair.

The following pictures appeared in the News & Record 4-27-09.  They were taken by David Conner II.

Mud on your pickup truck is always a badge of honor, and what better way to tell your prom date that she’s special than to encase your truck in mud for that special night.  Let’s hope he left the shotgun and deer urine at home.

Prom Fashion Parade Mud Truck - photo by David Conner II

Who needs a limo when dad will deliver you in the cargo bed of his vintage, restored pickup.  I’m thinking this was a little rough on the lady’s hair, but country girls are tough.

Prom Fashion Parade Vintage Truck - Photo by David Conner II

How about arriving on the running board of the local volunteer fire truck.  That’s always an eye-catcher and it makes parking a breeze.

Prom Fashion Parade Fire Truck - Photo by David Conner II

But my favorite is J.W. and his date.  J.W. plays soccer with Jordan so I got the inside scoop on this.  J.W. outfitted the family tractor with an old couch and a stereo in the front loader.  They were “chauffeured” to school sitting on the couch in the tractor’s bucket.  Even Jeff Foxworthy would do a double-take on that one.

But J.W. is no one-trick pony.  He went the full monty by wearing a camouflage tuxedo.  The fact that someone even makes a camouflage tux is funny, but wearing one to the prom is downright hilarious.  Still, the night’s top award goes to J.W.’s date.  This young lady wore a camouflage dress.  To her prom.

Prom Fashion Parade Camo Combo - Photo by David Conner II

There are a million country boys all across America who would sell their bass boat to just be in the same room with a gal like that.  Guys, when your woman is willing to wear a camouflage dress to her prom, by God, you’ve got a keeper.

Leslie and I didn’t know about the Parade of Fashion beforehand, so we weren’t there.  Jordan is only a sophomore, so he wasn’t at the prom.  But, whether Jordan goes next year or not, Les and I will be at the school to see the parade.

In the city, proms often become about money, limos, expensive restaurants and rented seaside condos, all of which are in short supply out here.  In the country, you use what you got, so our hats go off to the school administrators, parents and kids of Halifax County High School who proved that muddy pickups, fire trucks, tractors and matching camo gear all have a fun, natural place at the prom.

###

Sweaty and Soiled

Whew!  We got the crops in today.

I can’t tell you what it feels like to work the land, turning over soil, planting what will become food in just a few months, breathing the fresh, spring air slightly tinged with the exhaust from the tractor.  It’s almost spiritual.

The sun beating on my neck, dirt under my nails and the sweat born of honest American labor on my brow.  Planting crops is farming, and those who plant are farmers.  Therefore, I am a farmer.  That is just so cool to say.

Farmer Al, agriculture’s pal.

OK, so what if it’s only a 10 x 10 vegetable garden.  It’s all true.  I used the tractor to haul compost, a small tiller to mix the compost with the soil and I planted the tomato plants by hand.  It’s still farming, just on a small scale.  We own a 45-acre farm and I plant crops.  There.  I’m a farmer.

It’s an elevated garden filled with the absolute best compost available: horse poop.  We’ve been composting the poop for a year, and now it’s time for the payoff.  This soil is so rich I expect tomatoes the size of cantaloupes and cucumbers the size of watermelons.

We will also plant green beans (yum!), and squash (boring).  Leslie insists on the squash every year (yes, I was a vegetable farmer in Virginia Beach).  Squash has no taste.  It’s like eating a soft rice cake.  Who grows rice cakes?  Sure, sautéed with garlic, onions and butter, squash is wonderful.  Toenails sautéed with garlic, onions and butter would be wonderful.

But Leslie wants squash, so we plant squash.  We’ll eat the first dozen, freeze the next dozen, beg people to take the next two dozen and finally let the final 100 rot on the vine.  It’s a ritual – the annual Keck Squash Kill.

And Leslie is also planting basil.  “Ahhhhh, fresh basil,” she sighs with dreamy eyes.  I used to get those looks.  Now it’s herb.

I wouldn’t know basil if it was growing between my toes, and since the only spice I need is Texas Pete or diced jalapenos, I can’t see wasting tomato space for basil.  Besides, basil isn’t even a vegetable.  It belongs in a pot on the deck.  I hope the deer eat it.

Anyway, the crops are in, the horses are fed and Jordan is still asleep.  Just a typical Sunday on the farm.

Leave a comment with your name and address and we’ll send you some squash.

###

Sweet 16 and Never Killed a Deer

Jordan Yesterday

Today is my son Jordan’s 16th birthday.  Sweet 16 and never killed a deer.  Out here, that’s called a virgin.

In Halifax County, 16 also means he never has to wear his seatbelt again.  It may not be the law, but it damn sure is the custom.  Hardly anyone of driving age wears a seatbelt around here and I see kids under 10 at stoplights bouncing around in the car like it was a rolling space walk.

I’ve considered rolling down my window and say something, but it’s hard to get across the true meaning of “force equals mass times acceleration” in just a few syllables.  Especially when the woman driving is singing to her favorite country song and day dreaming about getting a tick check from Brad Paisley.

Besides, everyone out here is armed.  Guns keep road rage to a bare minimum.

It’s not like the consequences of driving un-belted aren’t obvious.  Countless big trees along the highway are adorned with wreaths to memorialize someone who “over corrected” and was ultimately thrown through the windshield.  Jordan has lost at least three school mates to auto accidents since we’ve been here.

So, you can forgive me if I’m not too overjoyed by the fact that my little wubby (if you can call 6-foot-1 little) is now of driving age.   He still has three months before he can get his solo license, but 16 is officially that age when boys become new drivers and parents become neurotic.  We live 25 miles from his school, so he’ll be driving 250 miles a week, mostly on 55-mph roads lined with Grand Canyonesque ditches.  I need a drink.  He needs to wear bubble-wrap.

It isn’t easy on Jordan either.  Both parents are former paramedics and mom works at Duke University as an ER nurse.  I used to be an Emergency Vehicle Operator’s Course instructor for the Commonwealth of Virginia.  He’s heard more horror stories and lectures on the kinematics of trauma to make most kids hurl.  I don’t want you to think our goal was to frighten him.  Oh no.  We want to scare the ever-loving crap out of him.  Every time he turns a car ignition I want his mind’s eye to flash images of mangled bodies and brain-spattered roadways.  I want him to think the Grim Reaper is riding shotgun and working on his quota.

To start driving on his learner’s permit, Jordan had to read and sign a eight-page driving contract and submit to relentless critiques of his driving.  Yes, we are the parents from Hell, but we make up for it with wit, charm and captivating dinner conversation.

The good news is that he’s more likely to hit a deer out here than another car.  Deer can do major damage to a car, but most times the driver is safe.  I can handle that.  And the virgin-thing will go away as well.  They grow up so fast.

###

Jordan Today

Things I Miss

Life in the country is sweet, but it’s not always about the joy of cow killers and cheesecake (refer to my post of 10-9-07).  There are a few things I miss about the city.

Like delivery pizza.  Heck, I miss delivery anything.  I’d phone-in an order for liver and Brussels sprouts if they’d deliver.  It’s a 26-mile round trip to the closest fast food restaurant or grocery store.  There’s a Dominos near the Food Lion just 13.5 miles away, but when you give them your address they just laugh.

UPS delivers, but the lady driver looks like a crew member on Magellan’s Trinidad when she gets off the truck with a package.  And the pizza is no good by then either.

I miss our fiber optic Internet connection.  I miss the somewhat slower cable Internet connection.  I miss DSL.  I’m like a starving man trying to eat fillet mignon through a cocktail straw.  Sure, we are among the few in the area with satellite Internet and I’ve set up WiFi in the house.  But it’s still slower than DSL, which was way too slow when we were in Virginia Beach.  Now I’d kill for DSL.  Or even fillet mignon, which you won’t find out here either.

But you know what the real pisser is?  There’s a big, honking fiver-optic trunk line running ON OUR PROPERTY near the street.  There’s enough bandwidth in that cable to download Europe, yet I can’t touch it.  It’s a special run just for Virginia International Raceway, which is a few miles down the road in Squeal-Like-a-Pig-Ville.

Most of Alton, Virginia feels honored to get phone service and daily mail delivery, so when Verizon teases me with fiber optic in the front yard, it’s cruel and unusual punishment.

I miss good Sunday comics.  Believe it or not, Nancy, Hi and Lois, and Snuffy Smith are among the funniest of the Sunday bunch.  I’m very sad on Sundays.

I miss British accents.  The only Brit that I can think of that I miss is Steve O’Neal, but all British accents are divine.  Nothing reminds you that you’re a stupid hillbilly more than having a conversation with an Englishman.  They say, “Hello,” and your response always sounds like, “Well hey there, my name’s Goober.”

We did meet one British family a year or so ago.  The gods of irony conspired to put these lovely Brits, from the outskirts of London, at a backwoods hootenanny with me, Leslie and Jordan.  The Brits were vacationing at a local horse retreat, and the retreat owner felt they needed to dip into the local culture.  Truth be told, the retreat owner just wanted to dip into a beer cooler, so he invited us to baby sit his vacationers.

This was the kind of party that outsiders usually don’t know about.  If you’re part of the “family,” you know where and when.  If not, you ain’t invited.  It was back in the woods where even the revenuers don’t want to go.  There was live bluegrass music, lots of beer and about a hundred locals all named Billy Bob or Linda Sue.  With a tooth-per-mouth average in the single digits and beer flowing like redneck Gatorade, our only option for intelligent conversation was with the Brits.

And they were funny.  They were huddled together like Connecticut Yankees who got separated from the wagon train and found themselves in Sioux territory.  They latched on to us like we were the Calvary.  We talked for hours about football (soccer) and our cultural differences while fending off the barefoot, middle-aged women who stopped by between beer runs to hear the English people talk funny.

We have plenty of other accents around here.  Jordan has been accused of having a Virginia Beach accent, whatever that is.  Maybe it’s because he pronounces deer with an “r” instead of “dee-a.”

We even get some foreign accents out here, like the guys who run a local sandwich shop.  They make excellent Philly cheese steaks while speaking an Arab/Brooklyn dialect of English.

You’ve got to love these brave guys.  They’re obviously from an Arab/Persian country in the Middle East, and they’ve come to an American, post-911 community that thinks any Yankee could be an Al-Qaeda operative.  The restaurant guys work hard, make good food and sell it at a fair price, all while being exceptionally friendly and courteous.  We love eating there.

But I think they might be trying too hard.  The name of their restaurant?  American Hero.  What a country.

###

Baby Horse, Big Pain

They call me the Horse Whisperer.

OK, nobody calls me that, but they should.  I may come up short in the anatomical identification of infant horses, but I make up for it in natural training talent.

It’s seems I’m a natural when it comes to halter-training young horses.  Who knew?  I didn’t, even when I was doing it.  In fact, all I was trying to do was keep from being labeled pitiful.  Let me explain:

It was a hot, muggy day last summer.  Our good friends at Harmony’s Rocky Farm were out of town for the day and wouldn’t get back until late, so they called looking for Jordan.  They wanted my son to go over to their farm and give the horses in the barn some water.  Simple.

I don’t remember where Jordan was, but he wasn’t available, so I volunteered to do it.  Jim Blanks, Harmony’s owner, horse breeder and great all-around guy, sounded a bit reluctant to take my offer of help.

“Heck Jim, I can do that, no problem,” I told him.

Jim thought a second, then gave me the hesitant OK.  Jim knows horses and he knows me.  I guess that really explains his concern.

Anyway, I went over and found all eight stalls filled with Jim’s Rocky Mountain Horses.  They’re a sweet, gregarious breed that’s easy to handle and I enjoy being around them.  So, I began the routine of taking each horse out on lead and letting them drink fresh, cool water just outside the barn entrance.

What Jim thought I was going to do was fill a five-gallon bucket and take it into each stall and allow the horses to drink there.  That would have worked too, but the only time I’d ever seen Jim water the horses during the day, he walked each one out to the big bucket.  I wanted to be like Jim, the horse master.  I wish I hadn’t tried.

Seven of the horses, all adults, were a piece of cake.  Even the two stallions.  Rockys are so sweet.  But the last stall on the left held a baby, about six months old.  Calling a young horse a “baby” is common practice, but it’s a bit hard to get all goo-goo/ga-ga with an animal that’s 500-600 pounds of don’t-wannna-do-that.

Still, this young-un was easy to pet and was wearing a halter.  Little did I know that Jim spent about 30 minutes wrestling this beast just to get the halter on and had never connected it to a lead line.  Dang it, there should be a sign explaining this.

Since I could easily pet and rub the horse and it was wearing a halter, I figured it was halter broken.  I will never make that assumption again.

I clicked on the lead line, opened the stall door and started walking the “baby” outside for a drink.  No problem.  This was easy, I thought.  Jim keeps a radio playing for the horses in the barn, and while I’m not completely sure, I thought I heard that circus song they play when the clowns are in the center ring.

Baby and I stepped outside, and as I turned toward the water bucket, baby looked at me, stuck out her tongue, said “beep-beep” and in a dead-on Road Runner imitation, took off in a cloud of dust.  My heart stopped.

Baby was headed for the road.  While she obviously recognized my intellectual shortcomings, she failed to consider my size.  I’m dumb, but I’m big, and as she bolted, I held onto that lead line like my life depended on it.  Because, it did.  There was nothing between this horse and the North Carolina line except the lead line connected to her halter.  And if I lost one of Jim’s babies, I would have to move to New Zealand and change my name.  Alone.

So I held on, the horse snapped around, and the tug-of-war began.  The horse has four legs and outweighs me by a few pounds, but I leaned back like one of those guys trying to pull a locomotive on Wide World of Sports.  It was a standoff.  I thought about screaming, but there’s no one near, so I just cussed at the horse.  Yes, I cussed at a baby horse.

I knew that if I slipped and lost traction, this horse would be dragging my fat ass all over Alton, Virginia.  I worried they might find my bloody body in a ditch the next day, still clinging to a tattered piece of rope.

My legs began to tremble, my arms began to ache, and I was sweating buckets.  And the country radio station was now playing Hang On Sloopy, Sloopy Hang On, although at the time it sounded like they were singing, “Hang on stupid, stupid hang on.”

While lactic acid built up in my muscles and I pulled out the serious list of prayer promises, I discovered why a halter works to control a much larger and stronger animal.  Pressure from the halter is uncomfortable on the horse’s face, and the horse would like to avoid it.  So this baby was working through her own dilemma: drag ol’ Fat Ass around the county or stand here and wait it out.  Thank God she chose the latter.

Baby and I faced each other across a lead line so taught it you could walk across it.  After a few minutes, I realized that when I gradually released pressure, so did baby.  I did this until the rope started to go slack, and then quickly pulled back to move the horse about a foot in my direction before she’d resist again.

I was about 40 feet from her stall, so all I had to do was move her one foot at a time and we were home.  I was shaking, cussing, sweating and panting, but over the course of the next 10 minutes I managed to get baby secure in her stall.  Then I sat on the ground to recover while, for the first time in my life, wondered what horse meat tastes like.

A few days later Jim thanked me for watering the horses and mentioned that when he took the baby out for halter training, she behaved like she’d been on a halter for years.  Only then did I have the courage to tell Jim what I’d done.  Like the true gentleman he is, he laughed and made me feel like a savant.

But he hasn’t asked me to water any more horses.

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Deer Heads Home

My wife is not normal.

Like an eccentric character in a Tom Sawyer adventure, she is always on the lookout for the less-collected offerings in Mother Nature’s wildlife boutique.  After an afternoon of trail clearing with horse-riding friends, she brought home a decomposing deer head, replete with peanut-buttery brains, half a face, two antlers and enough funk to gag the heartiest of maggots.

“Honey, look what I got,” she proudly declared.

Somebody’s got to love this woman, so it might as well be me.

Leslie scraped off much of the facial skin and scooped out some of the brains, but eventually surrendered to the olfactory assault.  So, she put the head outside for several weeks, hoping the plethora of indigenous bugs would clean the skull.  Alas, it seems that even bugs have standards.  Think about this.  My wife will pick up, put in her car and bring home decaying animal pieces that even bugs won’t touch.  I eat out a lot.

Undeterred, Leslie filled a bucket with bleach and water, then submerged the head, hoping to loosen tenacious tissue and cleanse the insides.  And where do you think she put the bucket?  Yep.  In the house.

Jordan went into the utility room to clean his soccer boots, and as he leaned his back against the counter, he noticed a weird, not-very-appealing smell.  Turning to peer into the bucket on the counter, he was face-to-face with a deer skull bobbing gently in a milky, pungent solution capped by floating bits of gamy brain matter.

So, Jordan turned back around and finished cleaning his boots.  That’s it.  He knows his mother and he’s been in the country almost two years, so this doesn’t even raise and eyebrow.  What have we done?

After several days, Leslie removed the skull, spooned out the remaining brains and declared, “Mission accomplished!”  I confess, the skull looks great and I hung it on the exterior wall of my tool shed.  It still emits a potent funk, but I’ve learned to live with shin guards and keeper gloves, so a stinky skull is nothing.

Mother nature isn’t always about spring tulips, humming birds and furry bunnies.  Deer skulls can be beautiful too.  If you want to play in the bushes, you accept the gifts Mother Nature brings you.  Likewise with my wife.

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Leslie's Deer Skull

No News is Still News

The New York Times brags that each issue contains, “All the news that’s fit to print.”

Ha!  They got nothing on country newspapers.  Out here, their motto is, “No news is still news.”  I’m not just talking about police blotters where cussing on the phone warrants arrest and notoriety.  And I’m not talking about lists of trivial traffic citations, like “det barke lights” and “drive after being declared ho.”  Discovering that you can’t legally drive after you’ve been officially designated a “ho” is scary stuff indeed.  Heck, the roads should be empty.

What I’m talking about here is that on a slow news day, one local paper will report on things that didn’t happen.  For instance:

Headline:  No Injuries When Truck Blows Tire

Huh?

Yes, some intrepid rural journalist put together a seven-column-inch report about a septic service truck that blew a tire, came to a stop in the highway median and NOBODY GOT HURT.  No traffic was blocked and no property (other than the truck’s wheel) was damaged.  The story lists the driver’s name, where he lives, the exact year, make and model of the truck, who owns the truck, the name of the state police officer who arrived on the scene, the exact time of the incident, exact date, day and location and the estimated cost to repair the tire.

Adding tension to the story, the reporter said the driver “escaped injury,” like it’s hard to believe he wasn’t choppered to the nearest trauma center after such a horrendous “mishap.”  In my youth, I once lost a fan belt while traveling a county road at night.  It’s a wonder I survived.

This journalistic go-getter even took a photo of the truck, which appears undamaged except for a blown tire.  The photo is above the story, on top of page A3, spread across three columns.  Wow.  They say a picture is worth a thousand words.  I guess that’s true here, provided you say, “Why the Hell is this in the paper,” 125 times.

But the story did have redeeming value.  One fact, caught by an obviously bored, yet highly trained journalist, reached out to the very core values of everyone in this proud and self-sufficient community.  You’ll be glad to hear that no charges were filed against the driver of the truck.

That’s right.  Just when you thought the government had put its icy claws into every aspect of your life, you learn from one selfless, determined reporter that it is still legal to get a flat tire in this country.  God Bless America!

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The Miracle of Birth

Farm critters have to be “sexed” when they’re born.  Farmers need to know if they’ve just been blessed with a future milk cow or an ornery bull.  It’s not rocket science with most big mammals – you look between the rear legs and hope to identify certain common landmarks.

Simple, right?  Especially for a guy like me who’s got college credit in Anatomy & Physiology, worked for years as a paramedic and has actually delivered several babies.  You’d think.

But noooooo, it isn’t that simple, especially when you’re under pressure in a wide-open pasture with a 15-knot, 20-degree wind slicing across your body.

I was on my way to pick up a load of hay early one morning when I passed Harmony’s Rocky Farm, where we bought our Rocky Mountain Horses.  As I approached the main pasture, I noticed a flock of buzzards munching on something in the grass.  Buzzards are not a good sign in a horse pasture.

I slowed down, and as I got closer, I noticed one of the farm’s mares standing nearby, over what looked like a very large pile of poop.  Out here there are some incredibly impressive piles of poop, so I didn’t pay it much mind.  But as my eyes adjusted and I shielded the morning sun, I could see that the poop had a little horse head.  For a moment, I lamented the fact that this poop wasn’t shaped like the Virgin Mary – I could freeze it and sell it to GoldenPalace.com for a million dollars, thereby ensuring I could afford to feed our horses for another month or two.

Still, it was the next best thing.  The “poop” turned out to be a baby horse, just born and not yet standing.

I called Nola, the farm’s owner and good friend while I drove down to the house.  Her husband, Jim, was out of town, so I knew she would need some help getting the mom and baby into the barn.

We took the golf cart out to the baby and scared away the buzzards, which were feasting on the after-birth (pizza anyone?).  I lifted the baby to its feet and held it steady while it found its balance.  Then I directed it toward its mother’s teets so it could nurse and bond and do all the things it would eventually do without my help.  But it was freezing and we had to get the mom and this wobbly baby inside the barn, which was hundreds of yards away.

Baby horses are born as blind as Ray Charles.  They quickly learn to follow the scent and sound of their mother, but we were trying to accelerate the learning curve for the sake of our goose-pimpled skin.  The plan was for Nola to lead the mother and I would gently guide the baby back to the barn.  But first, Nola had an epiphany.

“We need to know if it’s a boy or a girl,” she said.

She was standing at the baby’s head, so she reached over, pulled its tail up and asked me, “Do you see any testicles?”

I have horses, and one of the first things you learn is that you don’t stick your nose in a horse’s ass.  All sorts of bad things can happen, including getting kicked, gassed and tail-slapped.  But at this moment, Nola was the boss and I was just an incompetent farm hand, so I bent over for a look-see.

“I don’t see any testicles,” I responded, and Nola proudly proclaimed that the latest addition to her farm was a little filly.  Still, I was thinking, “I didn’t see anything at all.”  For all I knew, this horse didn’t have genitals.  Maybe it’s a new breed.  But since I’m a city boy, I figured the farm gal knew what she was doing when she entrusted this important procedure to me.  After all, even if I had closed my eyes I had a 50-percent chance of being right.

As we traversed the pasture, I had to fend off a herd of curious young horses who’d never seen a newborn before, all while keeping blind baby headed in the right direction.  We finally put mom and baby in a stall, and Nola quickly got on the phone to let Jim and the rest of the world know about the new arrival.

Word spread quickly (it’s a very small town) and in hours, friends and neighbors were stopping by to see the little critter.  All praised the new little girl.

It wasn’t until the next day when Leslie, my annoyingly competent wife, was photographing the little horse when she noticed it had little bumps where little girl horses shouldn’t have bumps.  I’m not kidding, when it comes to animals, my wife will put her hands anywhere.  She even knows the Sheath Cleaning song, but that’s another story I am unlikely to ever write about.

Anyway, in no time the word was out.  The darling little filly was actually a frisky colt, and I was a zoological numbskull.  A week later, one neighbor put his hand on my shoulder and deadpanned, “I seriously hope you’re not thinking of a career in veterinary medicine.”  Ha, ha, Larry.  Ha, ha.

Baby horses are among the cutest animals on a farm.  This one is named Louisiana Gold, but we call him Big Louie.  He’s growing like a weed, but my ego remains deflated.  Welcome to the country.

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Mamma and Big Louie of Harmony's Rocky Farm