Me and all my animals (chickens, a donkey and one cat) have all been cooped up (so to speak) for the last few days with the constant fall rains. Even though it was still overcast and a drizzle came down on my hooded head I invited JuJu the donkey to go for a walk with me...
She totally wanted to come. On with the halter and out the gate, we ventured not too far from our home but far enough to feel freedom from the gloomy confinement.
JuJu is one of the most alert, consistent, and reliable guard animals I have ever seen - she hears things from farther away then I can even imagine them and is always right on target. She knows when they are just something to notice or if they are a true threat (which
a donkey will kill or injure), she always shows me whats far ahead when she stops short of walking, flares her nostrils, and takes on the stiff, high eared pose she has in the pic above.
A lil' further up, I saw what she heard over some hills and hundreds of feet away...
wild turkeys!!! (See them in the pic below, making a run down a nook in the meadow...)
Along the road we also came upon something that is fairly new... someone set up a
wood stove for outside cooking! I happen to love this idea, because I have a really old not serviceable wood stove on my porch and have been dreaming of using it as an outside fire/cook stove for Spring, Summer and Fall when it's too warm to fire up the one inside the house.
The wood stove I have is missing a front door, and I thought it could be turned into a
Cob Oven! (Read
HERE how to build your own
cheap outside oven.)
JuJu has a thing for
the retro trailer too. Everytime we pass it she wants to walk all around it, look in the windows, nibble on some charcoal in a burn pile out front, and just generally chill out there...
I am so glad she doesn't look in the windows of my neighbors who are actually home! ha.
The same someone who must have set up the wood stove, placed two animal skulls side by side on a mossy log. Then I found the plastic daisy. I like old plastic flowers in a weird way, even though I am not sure I should....
The thing me and JuJu like the most though, is the forest in general. The bigger picture, the adventure, the all encompassing balance of it, the safety & the dangers, the sounds, the peace, the tall trees, the wet bark, the weather, the wild plants-
the feeling that things are completely right.
Xoxoxox
Can hardly see it huh? Neither could I. As I was walking I began to stare to my right at the smooth clay & silt where rain had drained down the side of a mountain road, I imagined how nice some tracks would look in that perfectly smooth mud...
A bobcat moving upward along the road, moving towards some turkey feathers and...
...wild turkey tracks (see pic below)! You can almost see the scene unfolding, like a dream of something to happen, already happened, to always happen. The hunt. The cat trailing the bird in hunger, in play and power.
Xoxoxo
