Dietmar Rabich / Wikimedia Commons / “Dülmen, Hausdülmen, Sonnenaufgang — 2015 — 4952” / CC BY-SA 4.0
By Bill Stokes
Kickass, the doorstop dog, stayed home and rested as the keeper and Phyllis had an afternoon windshield lunch with the eagles and the crows in the snow-frosted Driftless hills of southwest Wisconsin.
Aged venison was on the menu for the birds as they cleaned up after inept deer hunters and unfortunate drivers. Meat was an obvious future fare for Phyllis and the keeper where a lineup of heifers hung their heads over a fence and eyeballed a waiting cattle trailer. The keeper warned them; “Don’t get on that bus, girls, it’s a one-way ride.”
The heifers didn’t seem to listen, and in the meantime, Phyllis and the keeper made do with Quik Trip doughnuts.
There is an exuberance of nakedness with the trees now, as their bone-deep nudity exposes the hills toward the end of yet another seasonal simulated, winter death dance.
Nobody or nothing is fooled: life, not death, is everywhere, and the great green prom dress of April and May hangs in a million Driftless closets with the promise to do something about the naked trees and to grow green pastures.
Everything and everyone “gets on that bus,” some dining on aged venison and some on doughnuts, and all as innocent as the heifers.
