There Are Trips And There Are Journeys

So yesterday I threw off a blog post about nothing, nothing at all, and get more hits than I've gotten in weeks and weeks. What's up with that?

Oh well. The good news is that the camera is fine. It was the CARD. I changed out the card. In doing so, I had to download (upload?) all the pictures on it to clear it because it was full. More on that later.

But what I want to discuss first is MEN. Okay, mostly just rooster-men. And Sam (aka Suzie) specifically. Now Sam is a fine-looking rooster. He's also well-behaved, generally. He'll eat out of my hand, he'll sometimes allow me to pick him up. But today he is mean. Why is he mean? He's horny. He's been chasing hens all morning and they do not appear to be interested in the least. His showy white feathers and beautiful pointed collar, his sturdy yellow legs and glossy black and green tail feathers mean nothing to them. Nor does his regal crow which sounds just like the first three notes of the Get Smart theme. Dut-dah-dah!

Uh-huh, no way, get that mess out of here, the hens say.

He's set his eye on my young hen, Lucille and has been pursuing her for days. This morning I saw the chase begin again. Lucille managed to escape but there was fussing and fuming in Coop Town for awhile. Then I went into the chicken house to get their corn scratch and found Miss Daffodil up on top of the nesting boxes, wedged precariously on a tilted tin roof, designed just so that the chickens wouldn't roost on it.

Haha!

"Oh Miss Daffodil!" I said. "Are you okay?" All the rest of the chickens were out in the coop, scratching and trying to avoid Sam and generally going about their morning routine. If there is one thing I know about chickens, it's that they all like to do the same thing at the same time. So if
a chicken isolates herself, something is wrong.

And me, being a human, just had to mess with things. I picked her up, against her will and have a scratch mark from her foot on my wrist to prove it. She sure didn't seem weak or sickly. I set her down on the ground only to turn around and see Sam, staring with his beady eyes. Daffodil saw him too and took off running with Sam hot on her heels. I grabbed for him, he grabbed for me, and now I have a peck-mark on the meaty part of my palm.

"You bad chicken!" I told him.

He did not look remorseful in the least but gave me a look and then chased after the object of his affections. I stepped back and let him have at it because you know what? Just because I think Daffodil is too little and is not yet ready to welcome grown-up chicken sex, it doesn't mean I need to get in the way of the Way of the Coop.

And Daffodil seems fine. She's nestled back into the bosom of her flock and she probably has one more reason to hate me. That little bird has never once eaten out of my hand and she never will after this morning's interference.


Well, it's good to have the camera back. Does it make me a lazy writer to put these pictures in here? I hope not.

So back to those pictures on the camera. Some of them were from a trip Mr. Moon and I took out west several years ago. We've been talking about that trip because he's gotten the Cutlass spiffed up pretty well. It's been a long-going project.


(Hard to take a picture- it's in the garage.)

And it's so nice to think about taking off in it, the top down, heading off into parts unknown. I am listening to a tape of Lonesome Dove. I can't seem to quit Larry McMurtry. (That was a joke because he co-wrote the screenplay for Brokeback Mountain. Get it? "Can't seem to quit you?")
Anyway, as I'm listening to the tape (and I've read the book several times and also watched the mini-series at least that many times) I'm thinking of McMurtry's cowboys taking those skinny Mexican cows from the Texas-Mexican border all the way up to Montana and remembering some of the things we saw on our drive out west.

Surely Gus and Call and Deets and Pea Eye and Dish and Newt saw scenes like this. Grand, sweeping vistas of endless land and mountains far off in the distance. Buffalo grazing. The sweet, cold air nipping at their faces as they rode. It's fun to think about doing another road trip, this time in Mr. Moon's beloved car.

Well, something to think about, this gray drizzly morning in Lloyd where my life right now is wrapped up in the social ranking of chickens and waiting for a grandson. The grand vistas will be there when we're ready to take them in. But that won't be for awhile. I know better than to go off and leave an infant for a few weeks. Who knows what could happen? He might forget his granny. And I'd probably have nightmares every night of the trip. Those nightmares about losing a baby. Those are the worst.

No. We're home for awhile and that is fine with me. Mr. Moon asked if I wanted to go to the island this Labor Day weekend. I just looked at him and said, "Uh- no. Are you kidding?"
"That baby isn't ready to come yet," he said.
I just shrugged. I don't think he is either, but what if he did?

No. Here I am and here I'll stay, waiting on Owen, feeding my chickens, taking my walks, listening to that great American novel on tape, which is another way to travel and the way I choose for right now while my grandson prepares for his journey and the universe gets ready for another soul to make its way here.