A Tragic Road Tale

Rabbit was busy in his garden when he heard a screech of some kind and a thump. Then quiet. “Odd” he thought. “I wonder what that was.” He went back to his garden, but was troubled by the strange noises and decided to go have a look. When he got to the road, he was shocked to see his old friend Armadillo on his back, barely moving his legs. Rabbit rushed up to Armadillo and cried “Armadillo!!! Armadillo? What happened? Are you hurt?” And then he saw the blood leaking out from his friends shell.

“Oh NOOOO! Armadillo, can you hear me? What happened?”  Armadillo whispered “Oh Rabbit. I was just crossing the road when something big and fast swerved to my side and hit me very hard. I think I am broken inside, and I think I am dying. Please get my family?”

Rabbit dragged Armadillo to the grass on the side of the road and ran off to Armadillo’s burrow. “Mrs. Armadillo, come quickly! Armadillo has been hurt. He is very weak.” Mrs. Armadillo heard Rabbit's words and for a moment was confused. Hurt? How? Weak? “Rabbit, are you sure?”

“Yes. He was hit by something big and fast, and now he says he is dying. Please come quickly.” So Mrs. Armadillo called her children and they all ran after Rabbit. When they got to the road, Armadillo was very, very weak, and whispered only “I love you all. Please remember me”, and he died. When the news spread, Armadillo’s friends came from all over to help his family and to grieve with them.

When Rabbit got home that night, his children sat around him and asked “Daddy, why was Armadillo hit by that big and fast moving thing? He was a kind and gentle animal. He was a generous neighbor. We are so sad, and so angry. Why Daddy, why?”  Rabbit thought for a while and finally said “Children, dying is something we all do eventually. We die of old age or sickness or in the maws of a predator. These ways of dying we accept and understand. But Armadillo was murdered by a thoughtless animal who was directing the beast that killed him. There is no way to know why. Animals like these are around all the time, and they kill us for no reason at all. You must always be on the lookout for these animals, called MAN, and avoid them. They have no sense of right and wrong, and are little more than beasts themselves. We will grieve for our good friend and neighbor Armadillo, but we must learn a lesson. If we do that, he will not have died in vain.”

That night, all the children who knew the Armadillo family were told of the terrible animals called MAN, and warned to be wary. But one young rabbit had a different idea. More on that later.

Image: http://www.asergeev.com/pictures/archives/2006/545/jpeg/10.jpg

BMFR Finds a Home, Finally

 For several years, actually since the Geology Department was unfortunately scrapped at TU, the BMFR has lived with us. First at Rainbow Farm, and now at Rainbow Rise.
The BMFR was adopted by several geology students and presented to Prof. McWilliams for use in class or for the fun of it. Both are great reasons to rescue this rock from the Wilds. When the department was disbanded, many of the specimens found their way to RBF and thence to RBR where the prevailing thought was "I WILL find something to use these for." And all had been used, except the BMFR. Why? Hard to handle for an OF is one reason. But that OF got it in place this morning. The better reason was it needed to be in the perfect place to display and to function, the way all rocks want to live. When we decided to raise the waterfall outflow, suddenly the BMFR said "Hey, numbnuts!! (Rocks like this talk like that) I would be the PERFECT rock for the waterfall to feed into  the pond. Just put me on an angle and I will do the rest." Well, that was a splendid suggestion, so I said "Okay GRAVEL BREATH, you are on."
And this morning it happened. As I slid the BMFR into place and adjusted the hight, I swear I could hear a murmur of contentment. When the water started to flow, I did hear a sigh of relief.
The BMFR has finally found a home.
Images: BMFR portraits by Woody.

She said “The Moron in Your Head.”

This morning I was telling Sally the text of a dream from last night. Dreams are funny things, no? Bits of reality strung together with ridiculous images and ideas that on reflection often make no sense at all. This one was based loosely on a problem created by the Franklin County road department when they paved the road in front of our lot. They raised the road bed quite a bit, which when added to the deep swale made the driveway a steep dip. So steep that any trailer over about 10 feet would bottom out going in or out, and longer ones would hang. The road department has yet to respond.

The dream took that premise and changed the location of the lot. Not unusual for dreams. So here I was, driving up the road that isn’t there, noticing all the road work on driveway bibs. When I get to mine, I see that the road guys cut the pavement away from the bib, removed my 10 foot gate and fence (always locked), filled the ditch to a slight taper, and built two concrete block gate posts about 15 feet into the property to be used for a new gate. No fence, no gate. And all of this seemed okay, as dreams often do, until I noticed that the “gate posts” were only 7 feet apart, not nearly enough to get any good sized boat or camper through.

Now here comes reality again. As I was telling Sally about the dream, I got to the part where I noticed the posts being 7 feet apart, and reacting as if this were a real event, I said to her “What kind of Moron would put gate posts 7 feet apart?”

And she said “The Moron in your head”. Suddenly, I went from telling about a dream to having a resident moron. And you know what? We all have one. Sometimes the moron just plays with dreams and makes up the most bizarre stuff. Conflates things not related, invents impossible tasks and solutions and creates totally unrealistic situations. Those are not problems as long as you recognize the moron at work. (And sometimes you wake yourself up when things get so strange even your sleeping brain knows things are getting really stupid.)

The real problem is when the moron in your head manifests in real life, when you make snap judgments about people or situations, or when you make stupid decisions without considering the consequences. The reality is that we all have a moron in our heads waiting to manifest. So beware, you have a moron in your head. 

Thanks to Sally for putting a name and face on mine. And you are welcome for me putting a name and face on yours.

Image: http://www.bolgernow.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/caution_moron_alert.jpg