Wrinkly Bits
A Blog by Gail Cushman
Four calling birds? I’m not sure about that. We have several bird feeders and buy a lot of sunflower seeds and suet. It is common to see a dozen or more munching birds and if this song comes true, Cowboy is giving me ten more birds, and we still have a few more days. Four more would be, OMG, too darned many and I’d have to contract for bird seed delivery. I’m skipping the calling birds and am considering what I could possibly do with four of anything. I came up with a solution, although I might be sorry.
Gates. We need gates. We built a fence last year but with gaps where gates ought to be, it is useless. A gateless fence is well, not really a fence. It encloses nothing. Four gates would fill the bill, as well as filling the gate gaps and the fence would become useful. Great idea!
The problem is that Cowboy has a horse on his mind. The good thing would be a horse would munch down our pasture, including the very tall grass growing over the septic tank. Remember Erma Bombeck’s book The Grass Is Always Greener Over the Septic Tank. She was right. Without gates, the horse could escape from our lovely fence and chase down the other various critters in our neighborhood. As I see it, the only way to avoid Cowboy buying a horse, is to have gateless fence. While he is drooling over some horse, he mentions things like barns, shelters, watering tanks, saddles, reins, and other horsey things. You see what I mean: adding gates is a really bad idea. But, four swinging gates fits with the Montana version of the Twelve Days of Christmas song very well.
Here’s what I have so far from Montana’s Twelve Days of Christmas:
Red woolen socks and a set of Carhartt BVD’s.
Two gobbling turkeys
Three nimble deer
Four swinging gates (without a horse)
Tomorrow is five golden rings…whew! Now that’s something I can get my teeth into!
Book Five of the Maggie Monroe Series Murder on the Rez, written under Helene Mitchell, my pen name, is my latest literary creation. It is about human trafficking and the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women.
Have you ever seen a sign like this while traveling?
Are you May Rose?
Human Trafficking is illegal
If you are being held or moved against your will
Tell the clerk of this store that your name is May Rose
and Someone will help you
Your information will be CONFIDENTIAL.
Heroin/Sheriff Maggie Monroe sees this sign in a gas station bathroom on Interstate 90, and when she returns to her vehicle, she finds May Skyeyes, a teenaged Native American girl from the Crow Reservation huddled in her car. May says “He’s gonna cut me, he bought me.” Maggie is drawn into this story of human trafficking, seeking justice for May’s predicament.
