Rural Sundays

On the way down our long drive today as we headed to the "early" Mass, we startled three deer. The horses across the road were out grazing amongst our neighbor's machinery and vehicles. The goats around the corner were playing "king of the round bale", as usual. The donkey was nuzzling the bull in the pen on the other side of the drive from the goats. The cows were foraging across the road from them.  Shortly thereafter, we passed an owl that was dead on the road. Who has ever seen owl road-kill?! Then I spied a coyote, aglow with early morning light, standing in a freshly harvested soybean field. All this in less than 5 minutes! That's how it is here. 

On the way back from Mass, we passed a tractor pulling a hay wagon. Some cows had been turned out into a recently harvested field of corn. The draft horses were near the road. The buffalos were out. And across from the buffalo farm, there were some new "oreo/pig cows"(otherwise known as belted Galloways.) 

This afternoon when my husband took the three middle kids out for a hike in the woods and a paddle on the lake, there were deer bedded down in the hay field near the house. Shortly thereafter, my oldest son came to tell me that there was a possum next to the house. I went to look out the window, and sure enough, there was an opossum munching away on something next to the patio. My boy tapped on the glass, but it didn't flinch. Later I learned that he had some fun trying to get its attention and generally messing with it. He said that it pretty much ignored him, even when he stood near it and threw things at it. (He had asked to go out on the screen porch to snap a photo, which I okayed. I didn't know at the time that instead he decided to go stand next to the thing to get a better shot, etc.) 

If we had turned the other way at the end of our road this morning, instead of heading toward town, we would have seen the donkeys. I snapped this picture of them last Sunday. Everyone was still sick and we were all recovering from the big storm that blew through and left us without standard power for 30 hours. So I took the early rising baby out of the house so that his noise wouldn't bother anyone and we went to the "late Mass".

It was a particularly striking morning  because it was foggy. It was a freezing fog in places, and gave everything an otherworldly tinge. Ordinary cows were shrouded in clouds. 

The rolling hills and dales wore wisps of fog too. And if you look closely at the picture on the right, you will see a young buck and a doe who were frolicking in the pasture when I snapped this shot. Shortly before this the buck intermittently stood in the road in front of my vehicle looking at me in an annoyed way or sauntered down the road until finally he jumped the fence.