Memorial Day

A good spot for remembering.

Barnyard CSI, Episode 032215: Professor Poppy's Proof, or, Solving for X

Sometimes it is not possible to ask questions and so you must intuit or deduce using your faculties if you have any. Intuit is where you look at the half-finished puzzle and say to yourself, aha, the missing piece is in the shape of an ear of corn, so I intuit that it is an ear of corn. It is a kind of intellectual gymnastics where you add things up and arrive at an answer, solving for X, where X is the thing that is conspicuously absent.

Obviously if you are a Nubian you cannot do this.

But anyway we have been trying to solve for X in the matter of the tiny replicant now known as Eo 2.0.

There was a conspicious lack of volunteers when Poppy suggested that someone should ask Eo who was the father of Eo 2.0. Very conspicuous.

And so this led to a lot of wide-ranging deduction and intuiting, not necessarily in that order.

"It looks exactly like Eo," said Dinky, under her breath.

"Exactly," agreed Ivy the Crafty Dunderhead.

"It looks nothing like Chaos."

"No."

"Nor Lionel."

"Nor Jackie."

"certainly not Fred."

"Not Fred. Or Thomas."

"Look! A cloud!" (disregard - Part-Nubian comment).

This discussion went round and round until finally Poppy said, "I wonder if it is possible for someone to be the father AND the mother of a kid."

This had a goggling effect on the conversation as everyone considered the ramifications.

"Because we know who the mother is." Poppy went on. "And if it were possible, then this case would prove it."

"What you are saying," blurted my daughter Izzy, in a Barnyard CSI tone of voice, " is can X EQUAL X?"

There was a stunned silence as we realized that we had reached the border of a brave new world.

"Which of course it can," pronounced Poppy. "Because X IS X."

"And never the twain shall meet," one of the Butterball twins breathed, in a tone of awestruck admiration.

"X IS X," we all agreed. The proof is in the pudding. The answer is in the question.

If Dam = X and Sire = X, Kid = X

Eo is the  mother AND the father of Eo 2.0, because Eo is Eo. They said it couldn't be done, but they didn't know Eo.

QED.

Ivy the Crafty Dunderhead

Pebbles and her BFF Ivy got separated into different pastures and now Ivy has somehow assimilated herself in with the Butterball family and the Poppy clan. Not exactly IN, but they don't t-bone her any more unless she gives them some kind of reason for it. And once in a while she will even t-bone someone else.

So everyone kind of forgot that she is the new girl. It only took about a year and a half, probably because she is not from Oregon and speaks fairly intelligibly.

The thing about Ivy is that she has all kinds of plans and schemes, rows and rows of little saplings of ideas, but she cannot see the forest in front of her. Because she is a dunderhead. A crafty dunderhead.

How she got her name is every morning when the farmer comes to feed Ivy does the same thing. Ivy doesn't know it but she is on low-impact Friendlies which means that the farmer is going to pet her while she eats every morning and if she doesn't want to be petted she won't eat. So when the farmer puts the grain in the tray in the fenceline feeder and Ivy shoves her head through, the farmer pets her. This happens every morning. Ivy runs to her spot next to Crumpet and starts eating and the farmer starts petting her.

She squawks in alarm and pulls her head out and runs around to the other side of Crumpet, about eight inches away from where she started, and sticks her head in again. The farmer does not have to even move, the farmer just pets her with the other hand. She squawks and runs back to first position.

Second verse same as the first.

At first she kept doing this until all the food was gone, maybe 15 times per feeding. Now she has it down to three.

"That's very crafty what you're doing," Poppy said the first time she saw it.

 And that is how she got her name.

Mother of Dragons, or It Took So Long to Bake It

Eo is supposedly retired from everything except ruling the world with an iron hoof. She is twelve or thirteen or something like that, no one knows because she doesn't celebrate birthdays, but in any case she is a bona fide VCP. She is a miniature Toggenburg, which sounds very cute, but she isn't cute, and even though the Toggenburg is a Swiss goat there is nothing Swiss about her, no Heidi, no edelweiss, no Saint Penrose, no fancy chocolates wrapped in silver foil, no yodeladyhoo, no cuckoo clock, no colorful folk outfits or ten-foot-long bugle horns, she is more like a shrunken-down Polizei officer from East Germany before they tore down the wall, when you see her the first thing you do is to try to walk casually to the nearest exit, doing your best to look innocent, but once you start there is a terrible itch in your legs and pretty soon you break into a sweaty gallop and just as you get to the tall grass you yell "Fire!" or "Free Alfalfa!" to create a diversion.

When she swivels her head and looks at you with her Robocop eyes you will understand the meaning of fear. She is one of the farmer's favorites, of course.

Anyway a few weeks ago Eo announced to everyone in particular, "I am going in the shed and no one else better come in." So we all went and stood bunched up against the fence, which is as far away from the shed as you can get, and we turned our backs for good measure just to prevent any stray accidental eye contact in case Eo came to the door and looked out.

After a few minutes it started raining and Dinky Dollarbird aka Little Drudgery who is thin-skinned wondered if it might be okay to go and stand under the overhang of the shed, not anywhere near the door, but just under the overhang.

"Go ahead if you want, " said Poppy drily, "But I will wait here." Rain streamed down her face and dripped from her beard.

Just then we heard two loud screams from the shed.

"I guess I will wait here," said Dinky.

It stopped raining and began pouring instead but we stayed rooted to our spot and pretty soon Crumpet started in humming. Ivy the Crafty Dunderhead joined in, and then one of the Butterball twins, and then Winnie. It was a low and mournful someone-left-the-cake-out-in-the-rain humming.

Then came another barking businesslike scream from deep in the shed, and a couple of minutes after that Eo appeared in the doorway. She looked from side to side, just like a character in a movie checking to see if the coast is clear, and then she went back in. The rain stopped immediately.

A couple more minutes passed, and then Eo strolled out into the sunshine. Hot on her heels came a tiny, exact Eo replica, its hair neatly combed, but still steaming damply.

"I wonder who that is," mused Ivy.

The tiny Eo replica flicked its gimlet eyes at Ivy, and Ivy actually took two two steps backward, gasping.

"I wonder." said Poppy. Drily of course.

Eo and the tiny Replicant performing synchronized maneuvers.

Ibid

Ibid

Ibid

Out of the Blue

Well for many years it has been promised that our ancestral home, the Cabana, located atop Goatberry Mountain, which we made ourselves through the fruits of our own rumens, the Mountain part anyway not the actual cabana, would be demolished and torn down and stricken from the face of the Earth and so on. "This place is an eyesore," the farmer would always say, "and it is going to be torn down."

"What place?" the Nubian crosses would say. "Not THIS place?" and then they would look around with all-encompassing looks of alarm, at the meadow with the frogs, the madrona forest on the other side, the hill leading up to the big barn, the buck shack, the willow trees along the creek.

"No," Wronny would explain for the umpteenth time. " Just THIS place."

"Oh." They would say. "Oh. Okay."

"Just this place," Big Orange would murmur.

"Okay then," Moony would repeat."Just this place."

Nubian crisis averted.

Anyway a few weeks ago after 12 years or so of unveiled threats a man named Charles arrived out of the blue and looked at the Cabana appraisingly with the farmer standing next to him, both of them staring with arms crossed and blank faces.

"So this is the place." he said.

"Yes." said the farmer.

He did not seem like the type for idle chitcat, certainly not of 12 years duration. He had with him a large black box on wheels.

"Ok." He said. "Let's get started."

He opened the box and took out a sledgehammer. And thus it began.

The Black Box

Inside the Black Box


The Eyesore Meets Its Match

So Much Things to Say

It was March 11th. Or possibly it was March 12th.

We knew it would happen. We all knew it. She knew it too, of course.

She wanted to go and lie against the fence at the bottom of the hill, looking out into the meadow. Whenever something important is going to happen, she likes to get away from the herd. She did the same thing last year when the Dark Secret came. I lay down next to her. We both went to sleep.

I did not know that I knew it, but when the morning came and she did not get up, I did not try to wake her up, the way I might have done when I was younger. Because I knew. I did not say, "not today," because I knew. I just waited beside her.

The sun came up slowly. It seemed to take forever. Maybe it did take forever, maybe that's what forever is. There was a blanket of fog across the meadow.

Finally I heard the farmer come outside.

I heard the chain clinking on the gate. I heard the grain buckets rattling. I heard everyone stampeding to the feed alley. I waited. I knew the farmer would come and find us in a few minutes. So I just waited with her. It was the only thing I could do.

My mother is gone. My mother passed over the border to infinity.

Herron Hill CJ Belle Pepper, 3/16/2007-3/12/2015.
when the rain falls, it don't fall on one man's house.

the Hill, the Fence, the Meadow, Infinity

the Hill, the Fence, the Meadow, Infinity



the Hill, the Fence, the Meadow, Infinity. And a Buttercup.