“There’s something happening here. What it is ain’t exactly clear.”---Stephen Stills
It’s reassuring to know that if you go to the airport and get on a plane for Erie, Pennsylvania, sooner or later you will land there. Or if you ask nicely and promise her new nylons, Siri will directly you precisely into the heart of Kalamazoo. But what if you decided to go to the North Pole and it wasn’t there? Oh, the depot is still around and the Chick-fil-a across the street remains operational, but the Pole, itself, has hightailed it from its previous home in the Canadian Arctic towards Siberia at a rate of about 34 miles a year over the past 20 years. The other day, scientists tell us, it passed the Prime Meridian, whatever that is. We expect this sort of philandering from the Oakland Raiders but not the previously reliable North Pole. Maybe the Russians have something to do with it.
If you’re wondering why, and you certainly are, ask Mr. Science. We did and he told us this: “Earth’s magnetic field is produced by the churning of the planet’s iron outer core, which produces a complex but largely north-south magnetic field. For reasons not entirely understood but related to the planet’s interior dynamics, the magnetic field is currently undergoing a period of weakening and that’s why the magnetic north is drifting.” What if it drifts all the way to Sevastopol? “You’ll hardly notice,” says Mr. S. “Indeed, the North and South Poles could actually flip without any notable effect on biology.”
Maybe so, but all this geographical hubbub doesn’t seem right to us. What if Aruba suddenly decided it wanted to move to Baltimore? What if the Canadian Rockies wanted to spend a little time in South Beach? Like Major League Baseball, geography needs a good commissioner who’ll stand firm in the face of willy-nilly travel requests. We nominate Gordon Krantz, who has been serving as mayor of Milton, Ontario for the last 39 years and understands a thing or two about maintaining a steady hand. Told about the North Pole’s recent flights of fancy, Krantz frowned and tugged on his goatee. “Sounds like a job for the old ball-and-chain,” he smiled. “You got to teach these young whippersnappers the values of recumbency.”
They’re Ba-a-a-a-ck!
Your friendly neighborhood animal mutilation practitioners are back in action in the wild, wild west, specifically at Silvies Valley Ranch in eastern Oregon. Five young purebred bulls mysteriously showed up dead on the ranch this summer, drained of blood and with body parts neatly removed. Closely examined after the discoveries, the bulls, conservatively valued at $6000 apiece, show no signs of visitation by buzzards, coyotes or other scavengers. The latest corpse has a coat as red and shiny as any candidate at the county fair, but he’s bloodless and his tongue and genitals have been surgically cut out.
Colby Marshall, the ranch’s vice-president, is looking to the skies. “A lot of people lean toward the aliens,” Jenkins says. “One caller told us to look for basically a depression under the carcass. He said that the alien ships will kinda beam the cow up and do whatever they are going to do with it, then they just dump them from a great height.”
What is clear is that the culprit is not a common predator. None of the dead animals were shot or poisoned. Two years ago and 200 miles south, near New Princeton, Oregon, one of Andie Davies’ cows suffered a like fate. Andie and her husband drove concentric circles around the body but could find no tracks. This area of Oregon has had similar events dating back to the 1980s when one of Terry Anderson’s cows was found dead on a mountaintop near Pendleton, her udder removed by a sharp object. “And not one drop of blood anywhere,” said Anderson, who has never gotten over the macabre discovery. The Harney County Sheriff’s Office continues to field calls on the latest killings and Silvies Valley Ranch has put up a $25,000 reward for information which could solve the case. Rod Serling, where are you when we really need you?
It’s The End Of The World As We Know It. Again.
Bible thumper Greg Sereda claims humanity is now just one step away from opening the Seventh Seal, which will apparently mean the end of the world. For non-Bible afficionados, the Book of Revelation posits the Seven Seals as representing the apocalyptic vision foreseen by John of Patmos. The opening of the seals is told in Chapters five to eight, with several passages describing events occurring on Earth which will lead to the Second Coming of Christ. Preacher Greg warns we are now smack-dab in the middle of the Sixth Seal, described in Revelation 6:12, which says: “And I beheld when he had opened the Sixth Seal, and there was a great earthquake and the Sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the Moon became as blood and the stars of heaven fell unto Earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs when she is shaken by a mighty wind..”
Gee. I guess I missed it. I was probably Christmas shopping that day and you know how it is when you’re in the mall; you have no idea what’s happening elsewhere. But it seems like I would have noticed those figs. I mean, it’s not every day there’s a gigantic fig dispersal. Besides, in Matthew chapter 24:29 Jesus said “Immediately after the tribulation, those days shall be darkened and the Moon shall not give her light.” Not happening. Big full moon out there, go take a look. I hate to say this about such a learned expert but I think Mr. Sereda might be barking up the wrong fig tree here. Hey, it happens. Everybody picked the Yankees and the Dodgers to be in the World Series this year and neither one of them made it. Jean Dixon said the Russians would put the first man on the moon. Esmeralda, the Provincetown mystic, said Bill’s expired grandmother Celia was secretly operating a fruit cart on Staten Island but reliable sources insist it’s not true (she’s really on 57th Street in Manhattan). You can’t believe everything you hear. Even the Bible tells us that.
Deuteronomy 18:22: “When the prophet speaketh in the name of the Lord, if the thing follow not, nor come to pass, that is the thing which the Lord hath not spoken, but the prophet hath spoken it presumptuously: thou shalt not be afraid of him.”
We at The Flying Pie are, of course, always properly respectful of holy men. Otherwise, we might tell Preacher Greg to put that in his hash pipe and smoke it. But then again, maybe that’s how all this got started.
The Circle Game
Police in rural England were all atwitter in 2019 as those mysterious crop circles began to reappear throughout the British countryside. The first of them. a series of concentric circles ringed by two spheres on the end of each hemisphere, suddenly jumped up without warning in a field near Norridge Wood, Warminster. Then, a few weeks later, a pair of the little devils appeared in Gloucestershire, just 70 miles to the north. The first was a crescent-shaped line dotted with small solid circles, the second looked amazingly like Star Wars cutie droid BB-8. Both crop circles abut a pair of walking paths which offer easy access to the middle of the field. The Gloucestershire Constabulary Rural Crime Team is scratching its several heads trying to figure out whether this new incursion is “art, criminal damage or some stranger goings on.” Like the logical suspects, the poor old UFOs.
The modern crop circle phenomenon exploded in the 1960s and 70s. During those years, dozens of massive crop circles began appearing throughout the English countryside, attracting attention from the international media and all manner and make of paranormal investigators and Unidentified Flying Object enthusiasts. In the early years, many believed the circles were the work of unknown forces or supernatural entities. As time went by and the occasional fraud was proved, the general public became gradually convinced that crop circles were invariably a clever and often hilarious hoax, though that theory often didn’t explain the difficulty and complexity of many of the incidents.
One of the few people ever arrested in connection with the crop circles is Matthew Williams, who created a bit of a fuss in Wiltshire, England. Williams claims to have experienced a wealth of weird phenomena in circles that he, himself, has created, including seeing small, aerial balls of light zipping around, detecting unexplained animal-like presences and even experiencing significant periods of missing time. Matt thinks crop circles are the 21st Century versions of Stonehenge or the Avebury Stones, alternative temples which can be instilled with extraordinary properties than can cause unusual effects. Williams neglected to say whether psychedelic drugs plays any part in these shenanigans. While Matt’s adventures appear to be relatively benign, however, a crop circle at Chartley Castle in Staffordshire showed clear evidence of occultist behavior and even animal sacrifices.
In any case, the Gloucestershire constabulary is putting a fleet of drones in the air, hopeful of getting to the bottom of the problem. So far, no luck, but everybody remains optimistic and the cops promise to reveal the truth, whatever it happens to be. We’re not so sure. Say one of those UFOs shows up, carves a little design in the field and the captain pokes his head out the door and tips his cap. Will they show us that? The Truth is out there.
So Long, Pal
There are many ways to wean a thoroughbred foal from its mother, most of them less than stellar. Some prefer the direct approach, collecting up the mares six months after delivery and hauling them to a separate property and leaving the foals to fend for themselves. Others leave the mares on the same farm but take the babies as far away from the moms as possible, leaving open the possibility that mother and baby can still hear one another’s plaintive calling. A few fences have been jumped in the process and injuries are not unheard of.
One of the better notions is to remove one mare at a time over a period of weeks, leaving the abandoned babies with a decreasing crew of nannies. The bereft babies will occasionally attempt to nurse off someone who is not their mother but a little bit of discipline usually cures the problem. Eventually, of course, there is no mare left but by then only one foal expresses any regret.
Here at the fabled Ellison Horse Properties, we incorporated a different method. We inserted a full-time nanny, either an old mare or a gelding with the herd, who would remain permanently on guard duty. One day, fresh out of nannies, we asked around about borrowing another. We got a positive response at our then-training facility in Williston from a woman who said she could no longer afford to feed her gelding. His name was something akin to Shamar and he was allegedly a stakes horse in England. Siobhan never got the name right and started calling him Shamu.
Shamu arrived one afternoon via the Lorraine Horse Transportation van. The driver, Danny, looked at Bill and told him this was the best day of his driving life. Why so, asked Bill. “Because this horse has been starving to death, he’s a rack of bones. And I know he’ll be taken care of here. Tell you what, though, if you ever want to get rid of him, don’t call me. I won’t take him anywhere else.”
To make a long story short, Shamu lived happily ever after. He hung around for over 15 years, always polite, took good care of his charges and taught them their manners. He was never too rough or impatient despite the occasional insults of callow youth. When we phased out the breeding program, he remained with our last mare, Cosmic Light (“Dot” to the locals), and he was ever a deferring companion. To his last day, he always licked his lips when he saw the feed buckets coming. Despite the infirmities of age—and he was over 35—we kept him around as long as he kept licking those lips.
Nothing lasts forever, though, and Shamu gave way to the inevitable a little more than a week ago. We buried him where he went down, mourned by Dot, his constant companion and everyone who knew him. We thought we should make one phone call. We called Danny and told him it was finally safe to come back now.
That’s all, folks….
bill.killeen094@gmail.com
