Narrow Misses

Recently we visited my niece - a lovely young girl, college graduate, newlywed and kindergarten teacher - in what will be my first, and probably last, visit to her new home. I admired the kitchen, the skylight, the hardwood floors...all the way to the basement where she proudly introduced us to her pets - a myriad of aquatic, amphibious and reptilian creatures stacked in cages and tanks - including three stingrays and nine snakes (both the venomous and the squeeze-you-to-death variety). It was a very brief visit.

Snakes, really? Why not a kitten or a goldfish? Even goats have their hazards, but at least they won't slither up the bedpost in the night and swallow you whole! The worst I've had to contend with is being head-butted, kicked, knocked over, slammed into the gate, pooped on, exposed to infectious parasites and punctured with razor-sharp hoof trimmers...oh, and last weekend I was almost run over by a combine.

(For those non-rural readers, that's COM.bine with the emphasis on the first syllable, as in a motorized agricultural vehicle used to harvest crops and approximately the size of a small house.)

I had taken Em and Ellie out to graze in what we call "The Delicious Field," a weedy area at the edge of our property which borders a cornfield. While they filled their bellies, I perched on a green plastic chair at the edge of the tall corn, soon absorbed in my book. (Anyone else read the Game of Thrones series? Goats? What goats?) It was Emerson butting my leg and a vague awareness of a honking noise that drew me from the fantasy world of Chapter 5 - what's wrong, crazy goats? Clearly agitated, they were prancing and circling in front of me, as far down the hill I saw my husband on his tractor waving his arms and sounding the horn. I have never understood why he and his brothers take such gleeful pleasure in teasing and creating commotion, just as he was obviously frightening the goats with his stupid antics. Annoyed, I reached to console the goats (just ignore him, babies!), then turned away in disgust (his wild gestures and horn-beeping even more ridiculous now). Ohhh! And that's when I saw what had so disturbed everyone but me - a gigantic corn-harvester with a twenty-foot blade, fast approaching my reading spot as I sat hidden by the tall corn.

Would the farmer driving the machine have seen me in time, and stopped? Would I have recognized the noise of the motor for more than wind? Would the goats have eventually worked together to push my chair out of the way? I'd like to think so...

Just maybe, though, I should trade in the goats for a nice, safe animal, like a boa constrictor...