Hmmm...the last couple of weeks were...
llllooonnnggg! I had busy work weeks combined with volunteering at
Rit's school teaching an art class. And the general piling up of stuff to do around the house left me falling into bed each night, utterly exhausted.
My sweet Otto unfortunately killed a little baby bunny. I was in my studio working with the windows open (GORGEOUS WEATHER!!) when I heard a ruckus right outside followed by a loud and terrible shrieking. Yuck. Really yuck. Not a good sound. However, squirrels have been known to make very unpleasant sounds when chattering their disapproval at the dogs and their chasing antics. Anyway, I looked outside and saw Maggie sitting calmly in the middle of the patio. And yes, she did have a forced look of innocence on her face..."I did NOT do it!"
I stepped outside and rounded the corner of my studio. There is a small space roughly a couple of feet wide between my studio and the fence. We store the canoe on the side of the studio which creates a lovely canopy...and therefore a cubby for our cubby dog, Otto. She hangs out back there and digs to her hearts content. It's her cave.
I peeked around the corner and much to my dismay, Otto was sitting looking down at her catch...a freshly killed bunny...about the size of my hand...very small...so sad. Anyone who knows me or who has read this blog in the past is aware of the fact that I cannot handle dead animals. I just can't do it. I tear up at the sight of roadkill. So the sight of a dead baby bunny almost put me into a tailspin. I stepped as close I could manage without passing out to see if it was possibly still alive. No such luck. Of course, in hindsight, I don't know what I would have done had it still been alive.
I called Otto and Maggie and put them in the house...so grateful for obedient dogs. Then I looked just to double check that the bunny wasn't miraculously still alive and dragging its limp body toward cover. Yuck. I cannot handle dead animals. Obviously. It's just too devastating to me. I couldn't pick it up...not even with a long-handled shovel. So I called Ed and explained that I was in the most dire of circumstances.
Ed lives next door. He's our sometimes-sweet-sometimes-sour ex-farmer neighbor. He spends a lot of time over in our yard trying to create work for himself so that he doesn't get bored. He's accustomed to long days filled with hard physical labor. He needs that still...even though he's 80. Our relationship is best described as a mix of unadulterated appreciation sprinkled with sheer exasperation. Sometimes his efforts to help border on distructive and blatantly unattractive. Our prickly sides have clashed a few times, causing Rit to intervene, but we always make up and we're good friends.
So, Ed came over with a plastic bag and proceeded around the side of the studio while I hid inside. I couldn't even be party to such things. Cringe. He shortly came back around with a plastic-wrapped bundle, much too small to be a dead thing. So sad. He then proceeded to tell me, in detail and much to my horror, how the bunny looked, the location of the mortal wound, and did I know that these critters die with their eyes open? I almost passed out. I couldn't protest strongly enough to keep him from divulging. He spoke as though of course I would want to know such things...as any good landowner would.
Well, that was over a week ago and I'm still too scared to look into Otto's cubby.
This senario is not uncommon for me. This is why I have to laugh at my occassional desire to buy a farm. "Sure," I tell my equally Little-House-on-the-Prairie-minded sister. "We would totally raise our own turkeys and chickens and goats. Maybe a cow or two." What am I thinking? Do I truly believe that I could make it one week on a farm where animals are present and most likely will meet with some feathers-and-blood-everywhere fate?
We had chickens growing up....and dogs. And the two never did quite see eye to eye on the whole let's-both-survive thing. Inevitably, the dogs would masacre the chickens...usually during the night...in some long-planned and perfectly executed under the fence dig. Imagine six impressionable children coming around the back of garage to the site of flies and blood and gore and feathers. No, I don't think I'd make it long raising livestock.
Maybe an organic farm....a CSA...
But I love it here. I love the hot summers. I love Lake Michigan. I love the myriad of little bodies of water that dot the countryside. I love calling to tell my family in Utah that it's 30 below right now outside. I love the migrating geese flying overhead. I love the farmland and the dark richness of freshly tilled earth. I love the sunrises and sunsets over the lake. There is much to love here.
