Christmas Eve and Cows

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

What signs of Christmas did we see on the day before Christmas? Well, there was a bunch of decorations, like the Nativity scene at Penhook Methodist Church.

Gotta love the Holstein! But keep in mind that there are a couple dairy farms nearby.

Cow yard-art also lends itself Christmas decorating. The one next door sports reindeer antlers this year.

Speaking of yard-art, a little further down the road is a couple of strange bedfellows—Santa and a snowman.

That lawn has a wonderfully eclectic display with something for everyone. Here's just a small part of it:

Not all the neighborhood "decorating" was intentional. Someone—no doubt under the influence of too many Christmas spirits—lost control of a vehicle and hit our barbed wire fence at Polecat Creek Farm. 

A pretty good hunk of bark was scraped off the fence post.

Here's a closer look. The red spot above and to the left of the scrape looks like blood.

On the other side of the fence were parts of the vehicle's trim and a piece of yellow plastic that must have covered a light. The vehicle no doubt also has some impressive barbed wire scars along its side. This is not the sort of thing that makes for a Merry Christmas, but—given that around the corner and down the road a ways—other tracks swerved toward the ditch. Perhaps the driver had been partaking of some, er, spirits.

The accident must have happened about an hour before we came along. The tracks in the road were so fresh that no one else had driven over them. We'd been past the farm a couple of times during the day. When we delivered some Christmas presents around one o'clock, the fence was fine. When my husband got a couple of rolls of hay from the farm a little after two, the fence was still fine. However, after we fed the outside critters at four, we decided to check the farm. That's when we saw the damage.

As we headed home, we saw some cows "decorating" the road. These are some of the ones who escape their pasture on a regular basis. When they saw us coming, they headed for home, too.

A few minutes later, I saw a strange shape in the western sky. Was it just a cloud, or was it a pink blurry outline of a sleigh pulled by reindeer?

I'm pretty sure it wasn't cows.

As a Christmas present to those of you with Kindles (or Kindle apps on your tablet, phone, or computer), my novel Patches on the Same Quilt will be a free Kindle download on Dec. 26 and 27: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00B8X0MOM

~