The school where I am currently working is rural – very rural. So on my way through the back roads to get to and from school, I often encounter wildlife of some kind.
On two days I have been joined by a buck bounding alongside my car – safely on bank that lines the road. But a surprising and delightful sight nonetheless.
Another day, I encountered a squirrel that, unfortunately, couldn’t make up his mind and just as he reached the roadside (almost safely) he darted back into the road in time to encounter my tires before I realized what he had done. I almost cried.
The very next morning- in the exact same spot – a brother squirrel was waiting for me. He stood firm in the middle of the road, staring me down and daring me. Thankfully I saw him and stopped in time. I had to honk the horn repeatedly to make him move – he refused to take more than one hop at a time.
And then there was the day that I encountered an old joke- a whole line of chickens crossing the road. Most of them looked like roosters, but that seems odd since I’m fairly sure that I was once told that you only wanted to have one rooster because otherwise they would fight.
But there was one that was obviously a biddy- and she stood smack on the middle of the road, looking both ways over and over before deciding to go back to the side from whence she came. I stopped the car and waited (What else could I do?) for her to make her decision and laughed aloud at finding myself in the midst of a real-live joke in progress. I truly don’t know why they were crossing the road in the first place, but apparently, it wasn’t a good enough reason for that particular hen. Perhaps she was simply acting as the crossing guard for the others since she did stop in the middle and look both ways to see where the rest were going.
Who knows, but I sure am having a ball on my daily drives into and out of the deep woods.