Bogey

Cedar Waxwings in the backyard. Click for larger image.

Wouldja look at the color of the sky.Check out the waning moon.


Jeez.  As a reformed cursor ( curser?) I try to use words that sound like cussin' but aren't.  Shoot, fudge, sunken ditch, jeez, cripes, durn, darn, dipstick is my George Carlin list.   In a never ending quest for knowledge, I consult my concise dictionary of English Etymology for the derivation of bogeyman.  Don't ask me why that name came to mind.  Probably the same reason Carole King's song, So Far Away keeps running through the empty corridor of my cerebellum.  Bogey, by the way isn't capitalized, unless it's used as a golf term.  Both entries in the dictionary refer to a person or thing much dreaded. (Devil) . Next to Bogey(golf) it says it's the number of strokes a good player should need for each hole. The Bogey is an imaginary partner ? ?  I thought a Bogey was one over par.  Then again, I haven't played golf since Joe Garry and I got kicked off the Brown Deer golf course for arguing.  Ever since, I've subscribed to Mark Twain's theory that "golf is a good walk spoiled."

I'm turning over a new leaf.  It's not avoiding cliches or puns in my blog.  It's adding content more frequently without whining about how much work is out there waiting for me. The work load has diminished dramatically but I'm depressed that the growing season is over.  Shelling dry beans listening to NPR is my fun of late. In the fall the bogeyman follows me around like the dog.  The loss of fall color, impending cold weather, filling the iron jawed monster in the basement to keep the heating bill from increasing the national debt, gunshots echoing off the hills in yet another Great American Manhood Spectacle of slaughter makes me want to get out of Dodge on the next train..

Thanks to open season on pheasant, it's been four years since I've seen ring-neck pheasants walk underneath the fence on the east property line.  The sound of a cock pheasant skrawking ( my own made up word)  in the tangle of woods down by the river is just a memory.  The summer we lived in an apartment on the outskirts of Madison we'd see 17 turkeys walk the field below our patio.  That's because one cannot hunt in the Madison city limits.  Here, the turkeys are smart enough to stay well off in the distance away from the bogeyman's pea shooters.  When I do see one fly over Moore Road going over the ridge to my Amish friends, it's startling and impressive that such a large bird can fly. Yes, I'm pontificating. No I'm not opposed to deer hunting, just the bullfeathers that accompanies the season.  

Dawn's camera fits nicely in my L.L.Bean lined shirt-jacket.  I can take it with me to catch  Kodak moments that arise without warning.  Mandy and I walk the corn field perimeter behind our house.  When we near the neighbor's farm, the horses in the corral near the highway all walk over and line up by the electric fence. Standing side by side to gawk at us, I  can almost see a cartoon balloon over their heads as they gossip about these intruders. I'm not clever enough to figure out what they're saying.

I wish I had taken a shot of the coyote lying dead on the highway in front of our place. A coyote getting slammed by a vehicle is strange enough, but I shudder to think it may have been one of those nights Mandy was sleeping out in the breezeway with the door open to her backyard pen.