Every day, in the midst of storm after storm, frigid day after frigid night, a small struggle has emerged in our pasture, one of those farm struggles that has little importance to the outside world, but is critical to the life and the farm. We’ve seen many of those struggles, one of the most painful was Rocky’s struggle to survive Simon, only one male equine would dominate.
Another struggle is underway between Liam, a proud and willful ram, and Red, an experienced and very dominant border collie. Liam is challenging Red almost every day, and it is a struggle a border collie has to win, because it will determined who has to obey the dog in the pasture and who does not.
Every day now, Liam tries to walk around Red, or ignore him, or challenges him and tries to butt him. He tries to get to the hay feeder and then the grain buckets, he tries to walk around Red on the snow paths. The two are knocking heads almost every day and although Liam has backed down eventually every time, he seems to be challenging Red more and more. Red is an experienced and professional dog, mostly he has backed Liam down by using his powerful eyes, the way border collies usually control sheep.
Liam has been gentle ram so far, but at this age, rams get their testosterone up and decide just how nice they plan to be. Red will respond to this, he will do what he has to do.
He nipped Liam on the nose once – the acceptable way for border collies to deal with recalcitrant sheep – and got him to back down quickly, I suspect these two are heading for a bigger confrontation one of these days. By Spring, one of these two will be dominant, the other will have submitted. I will put my money on Red, I leave it to him to figure it out.
Most people tend to see my wife as a sweet, quiet, even shy and very creative artist, a saint, really, an animal lover and nature lover and gentle spirit. I suppose this is true in many ways, I have written that about her. She is certainly quite creative and very good to all animals. But there is another side to my wife, she is, after all, part Sicilian, she has a fiery temper and feisty spirit rarely seen beyond the confines of our little farmhouse, where we have been holed up like Siberian refugees in the snow and cold for weeks now.
I suppose some conflict was inevitable, being cooped up day and night for many frigid days together, although that has it’s rewards also.
Last week, this came to a boil, and I have proof. We were outside, shoveling snow, and I was in trouble with my wife. I said something that angered her – I remember, I suggested she move her little (I call it the toilet bowl) car out of a big snowbank and into a clearer spot so it wouldn’t be stuck in the next historic storm that was on the way and due to arrive shortly.
I was trying to call our friend and neighbor Jack Macmillan to ask if he knew anybody who had seasoned firewood, but the call was interrupted (or so I thought.) Maria had taken my suggestion about moving the car as my telling her what to do, a capital offense in this relationship (worse than drinking or being a typical male lout – she and her dog do not like men much.) She was muttering, glowering, waving her hands at me. She knew where to put the car, she didn’t need anyone telling her….
I looked up from my shoveling, and I saw that she was yelling at me from inside the car, which was moving. I couldn’t see her but I could see her face in the mirror, and I did notice the car was backing up towards me at a good speed, I think she was either cursing at me or waving at me to get out of the way, which I did. But she was heading right at me, and fast.
I then accused her of trying to run me over, which she didn’t actually deny to the degree I might have hoped for. And she had that black-eyed Sicilian look, a Joe Pesce kind of look, she was cursing and mumbling darkly, waving her arms. I could see it clearly in the mirror, the look means run and hide. I jumped out of the way and I suggested again that she was trying to run me over, or at least back into me. Her little car might have bumped me, but it probably could not have finished the job. I think I weigh more than it does.
She claimed I had been annoying her all day (it was early morning), telling her what to do. I remember she was telling me what to do.
By then, the black Sicilian cloud had lifted a bit, she was sweet and conciliatory and smiling again, talking about quilts and birds and the spirits in the forest. And she had actually moved the car as I suggested, although refusing to concede I was correct in suggesting it. I told several friends later that she had tried to run me over, and Maria was there, and she just laughed, oh-that-silly-man-and-the-stories he tells. They all laughed too. They don’t believe me, I thought.
This morning, our friend and neighbor Jack Macmillan called up, he wanted us to know that my phone had not been turned off, the call went through, he had answered it and listened to the whole argument, and the part with me shouting that Maria was trying to run me over. Evidence! Jack heard the whole battle on his cell phone, I told him to save it as evidence, to store it up in the Cloud, so that the next time she tried to run me over in her little toilet bowl of a car, there would be some proof of what it is like to be married to a hot-tempered Sicilian.
(I’m saving the Iphone photo of the tire tracks on my forehead.)
I have to admit that I am happy in my marriage, it is exciting, mostly very loving, and we are well suited to one another, especially when she is not trying to run me over. And the truth is, we are both strange and can be excitable, although I would never try and run her over. I told Jack to save the recording, (we are lucky it didn’t end up on Twitter) one had to watch out for these Sicilian women, and he said he knows, he is married to Maria’s pal Kim, she is one of them.
The White Hen peers out in the cold and the snow, she doesn’t like to come out of the coop if she doesn’t see green grass or dirt. We have shoveled a path around the coop, so after much thought, the white hen came out and walked into the barn, and laid an egg there.
Well, I can’t help but notice this morning that almost all of us are still here, still standing after historic storms, unthinkable blizzards, unprecedented cold. Red is still watching his sheep, they are at the feeder, the sun is peeking up over the horizon through the polar mix. As I suspected, we are all alive. This weekend has cured me of eyewitness weather channel weather, I’m back to the government at weather.gov. Just tell me how much snow and cold is coming, I will figure out how upset I wish to get about it.
The morning was beautiful to me, we have plenty of wood, a good tight house, an electric blanket, I am close to finishing my Anne Tyler novel, I do need more cheese popcorn and will go to my gym after a full day of writing. I’ll take it.
