flapping

At the beginning of a recent walk I startled a deer, evidently it was at the pond even though I didn’t see where it came from until it bounded across the driveway in front of me and flashed down through the woods. I say flashed because it showed the backside of its tail in typical white-tailed deer fashion as it departed. A bit later in the walk a flock of geese took off from the pond and during my next lap, another flock departed in like manner – about 30 geese, counting both groups.

With a flock of geese being more correctly called a gaggle while on the ground and a skein while in flight, I’m not sure what the process of taking flight is called, if indeed there is a name for it, other than the obvious. Then if they started to take flight and changed their little geese minds, how long would they have to be in process before the name of their group would change and change back?

The pond is down to a mere mud puddle of its former self, albeit a rather large one. It started out at about 3 acres and is now down to just over half of that. Many trees and stumps that were semi-buried on the bottom for fish habitation are now showing their scraggly, knotty selves. Nonetheless, the wildlife continues to gather there and do well.

A new day started and the first event outside of the norm was to go over to a nearby fast-food restaurant to meet some old friends for coffee – even though I don’t drink coffee – possibly that should be friends of long standing - - OK, let’s face it, they were old. We caught up on many past and current events, swapped yarns and stories and just generally had a good time flapping our jaws.

The last of my phone company friends were leaving as another friend from my high school graduation class came into the place. We yapped a while and I excused myself to go on to Wal-Mart to pick up a few necessary items. Even though I did spend almost 42 dollars, the people wandering about the place offered some interesting entertainment.

One main entertainment came from taking note of the folk’s many shopping styles. These were observed in the grocery end of the store and the first noted was the “get-out-of-my-way” kind and I managed to avoid cart collisions with several of these. Then there was the “I-don’t-have-a-clue-my-cart-is-in-the-way” type, leaving their cart in the middle of the aisle as they wander off on a search.

Another would be the “where-am-I-and-what-am-I-doing-here” kind – those who wander around looking at the aisle signs hoping this will key something in their memory as to why they came in the first place. None of these described me as I methodically went up and down each aisle for my basic list items and anything else that struck my fancy – which at times is easily stricken.

I savored the experience of gathering the items and enjoyed the assortment of entertainments I encountered and finally headed for the area of the cashiers. When one can feel joy while headed for the Wal-Mart cashier, he is either a bit wacko or he has a joy from a much higher source. While I don’t deny a bit of the wacko part, my source of joy is God – He is good, all the time! ec