WORKS

There’s nothing quite like peering up at the rear end of a mama bear descending from a poplar tree, or rousing a sleeping sow and her cubs, coming nose to nose in the dark. The veteran bears wear yellow collars, watched a big ole’ boy tracking my hiking partners up ahead, had to go around him. Late one night driving home a black bear leapt over the hood of my car; that old boy had come down the hillside like he’d been chased by a ghost and went sprawled out over my car! Watched him as he hit the ground runnin’ and didn’t stop till he got to the river.

Have had lots of encounters with black bears (Appalachia) and never felt the least bit threatened, just respectful.

Outside of seeing children wearing face masks, about the most shocking image in my memory happened while doing a walkthrough of the farmstead before leaving on travel. One of the buildings has an upper floor with mounds of old hay bales. Something was buzzing up there, its sound was unfamiliar and its location beguiling. After much looking around there appeared a large cavity burrowed into the hay bales against an outer wall. This was a lair, and something was buzzing inside it. What happened next very nearly took me off my feet as a huge white ball with the head of a dinosaur came at me within inches of my face, gaping beak and hissing like a demon from hell, wide-eyed and crazed. A fledgling turkey vulture. Never seen one.

For some more animal antics, check this out, or re-read if you’ve seen it before…give a guy a break.

Photo by Dev Leigh on Unsplash

Now, hillbillys like a little banjo and six string:

And what better than Bela Fleck with Billy Strings, let’s call it psychabilly.

And with luck this’ll satisfy ya’ for the week, cause’ this one’s taking a breather.

Oh, and be sure to check this out:

Favorite protest songs of other Substack writers passionate about music