Road Kill

A group meets in our home sporadically to discuss life’s issues. After centering, we go around the circle and take turns sharing one current thought or situation each. When everyone has had the opportunity to contribute, our leader guides us into what she believes would be a good starting topic and we open the floor to discussion. I suspect it’s like AA without coffee and cigarettes.

I love it. So many perspectives, each allowed to openly state their ideas while others listen. No interruptions jar the spirit, and all is received with complete objectivity and possibility, which isn’t to say we completely agree. We come from different walks of life, religions, states, and party affiliations, yet we receive others’ input respectfully.

Our group is an offshoot of the Institute of Noetic Sciences [noetic.org], whose mission is “advancing the science of consciousness and human experience to serve individual and collective transformation.” Or as I put it, “We work to positively change things from a globally conscious perspective.”

We don’t always talk about deep, growth-oriented issues, though. Our fearless leader, as I call her, had just returned from a jaunt to Mississippi to meet her soon-to-be husband’s family. He was also at the meeting on this particular eve, so when his betrothed started telling a story about one of their experiences with his redneck, hillbilly family, he was right there to pile more details onto a crazy heap of a tale.

He added to her beginning, “Well, my brother and my cousin [which I presume was the same person] were driving back from town with some odds and ends my mom needed for supper [they don’t say dinner in the South]. As they rounded a curve, they hit a deer.

“Well, the deer was killed right away, so they sped back to the farm and got one of the trucks. Then we went back and loaded the deer into the truck. And that’s what we had for supper,” he concluded.

“You ate road kill?” I blurted.

Laughing right along with the rest of the group, our fearless leader nodded her head and said, “I’m not sure I’d had venison before, but it was pretty good.”

I suppose…if it’s fresh.

copyright © 2009 by Auntie Eartha. All rights reserved.

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Corvids

(Puzzle piece number 3 of 38.)
Have you ever thought that something was other than it really is?

Like taking a sip of your friend’s water at a fraternity party, only to spew it out because it’s really vodka? Or reaching down to pick up a quarter, when it’s really a punched-out piece of metal? Or scratching yourself when you think you’re all alone? (More about the camera in the corner and that topic later.)

The other morning, my daughter and I were slowly driving south near her high school when we saw a murder of crows gathering. (Who makes up the names of animal groups, anyway? At least a skulk of foxes and a crash of rhinos make sense!) As most know, corvids often gather because road kill is in sight. You can just hear them talking.

“Hey, Mel,” one crow says to his buddy in a New England accent. “Looky over there. Lunch.”

And Mel cranes his head in the direction where Harry is gazing and replies, “Great! I haven’t eaten good carrion since that skunk last week. Man, my eyes are still burnin’. Let’s gather the group and grab a bite.” So Mel, Harry, and the rest of their horde fly over to check it out.

They’d gathered on the east side of the road and were starting to fly over the dark elliptical shape on the west side of the road when they saw us driving toward it. I sorrowfully said to my daughter, “Aw, how sad. Some animal must have gotten hit.”

Typically in our neighborhood, it’s deer that have the highest fatality or injury rate, but today the target was more the size and color of a cat. As we drove closer, one of the feathered cleanup crew members swooped near us, as if to say, “Don’t run over my lunch!” But my daughter looked down and said, “It’s a muddy, rolled-up sweatshirt.”

We came apart laughing, now imagining what the corvids were saying to each other after trying to take a bite.

“Blech! Ew! What is this?” Harry says in his Bostonian tone. “Who played this dirty trick on us? Here I had my appetite soarin’, and what do I get? A chunk of cloth one of those big, featherless things wears. That’s it! I’m aiming at some windshields.” And off Harry flies with the rest of his parcel. And here parcel means a “group of…animals.”

So next time you think you’re taking a sip of beer, smell it first. It may not be what you expected.

copyright © 2007 by Auntie Eartha. All rights reserved.

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http://auntieeartha.blogspot.com/2007/11/corvids.html