This morning on my way to work, I had to swerve to miss a chicken as it darted out in front of me. It came out of nowhere and seemed to be in quite the hurry to get to the other side of the road. It would have been funny if it hadn't startled me so. There's something comical about seeing a chicken run full speed.
All the way to work, I thought about all the critters I encounter on the road to and fro. It's not uncommon for something to be running out in front of me. On a regular basis, I see deer and turkey and bunny rabbits, an occasional chipmunk or squirrel. Even raccoons in the evenings.
One morning, I came around a bend in the hollow and there was a cow, right in the middle of the road. Yes, a cow! She was just standing there without a care in the world about getting out of my way. I had to wait until she moseyed on over so I could get by. It's quite startling to see a cow that's nearly as big as your car, standing right in the middle of the road.
The same lady that owns the cows, also has llamas. And yes, they escape the fence once in awhile too. One morning there were two of them running up and down the hollow. When it rains, you have to swerve for turtles and frogs. One year, we had a terrible time with these little green frogs whenever it rained. You couldn't get down our road without running them over. Try as I might to dodge them, I just couldn't avoid smooshing a few as they went hop-hopping and boing-boinging across the road. Luckily, frogs don't hold a very high place on my cute scale, so I didn't cry like I would have if it had been a fuzzy bunny I had run over. It made for a very cringe-worthy ride for me though.
One night, Hubby and I were coming home from town and he was lecturing me about my driving skills. You know how men are, they think they know everything when it comes to driving. He was scolding me about how I'm always swerving and gasping when critters run into the road. No critter is worth driving into a ditch for, or worth hitting another car, he said. I sat there meekly, taking it all in. "Yes, dear. Okay, dear."
As we rounded the last curve toward our house, we came around and there was a Mama skunk and her three little babies waddling right down the middle of the road! Guess what Hubby did? He said a bad word and he SWERVED! I gasped (not because of the bad word, but because I thought he was going to hit the skunks) and when we got safely by, I looked over at him with the hugest grin on my face. "What was that you were saying about not swerving for critters?"
Neither of us stopped laughing for the rest of the night!
