Attribution: Scot Campbell, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
By Bill Stokes
Kickass, the doorstop dog, passes along the keeper’s observation that as he and Phyllis and the rest of the voters await election day they might consider themselves as a great herd of sheep waiting to see if the Border Collies take them to greener pastures, the sheering sheds or the slaughterhouse.
There are other pre-election natural parallels: a field of noisy, feeding geese about to take off and follow an unidentified leader either to a fresh feeding area or the firing lines of heavily armed hunters. Or how about a mass of lemmings all running like hell toward the edge of the suicide cliff.
The keeper likes to think of himself as part of nature, and from now until the votes are counted, he will entertain a self-image of being an owl sitting on a limb and hooting “Who, who, who?” He would hope that Phyllis would be perched next to him, but knowing her, she might be off as a fox, chasing mousy voters toward the polls and getting the burrow ready for a vixen victory party.
