Sheila O'Riley
Buck and Tom
This is not a garden story, but it does have a couple good lessons.
You might remember back in August when two crop dusting planes crashed in the area on the same day. One crashed at the Creston Airport and the other in a bean field north of Lenox. Husband Kirk and I happened to have supper that same evening with the two young, unfortunate pilots. Yes, both were, thankfully, unharmed. The owner of one of the planes, Bob Blair, also supped with us.
Bob is a sportsman from Southern Missouri. He is a story teller with a charming southern drawl and the looks of Dale Earnhardt. He told two particularly comical stories about wildlife in the area that I want to share with you.
Bob said he was spraying a field that a 12-point buck claimed as his own. Sorry, hunters, he didn’t divulge the location. This buck stood in the middle of the field with his 12 points held high in the air as Bob made the first pass with his plane. Then Bob turned the plane and came in for the second pass; this time straight towards the buck. It was a game of chicken between the 12-point buck and the
2-winged plane. I don’t know how close they got, but evidently it was close enough for Bob to count the points on the buck’s antlers. In the end, the buck was the chicken because he turned his white tail and it bounced away.
The other story was about wild turkeys. Bob said he has seen this humorous scenario happen several times. He’s noticed that the hens will gather in a field and the Tom will be between the hens and the cover. When the hens see or hear his plane coming in over their field, they run towards the cover. The Tom, seeing all of those hens running towards him, sticks out his chest, puffs up his feathers, and struts his stuff. That is--until the hens run right past him.
Lesson:
It is not always the one with the most points that comes out the winner.
Or is it…
Don’t count your hens
before they’re catched.
