Bang! Bang! Shoot 'em up!

The only bad thing about Flake bars is that tiny pieces fall onto your clothes, melting and leaving tiny little stains. This happens often on British trains, or when you're lucky enough to get a few International treats in your Easter basket, and you're lying in your childhood bed while pretending to be in the office.

I woke up yesterday to the sounds of an owl. A high "hoo" followed by three lower pitched "hoos". I kept listening to it. There was no rhyme or reason, as far as I could tell, to the times at which the bird would decide to "hoo," but when it did decide to, the four calls were eerily perfect time and time again.

I was walking around olde towne Franklin last week, while my mother was in town visiting, and thought that I saw an owl on a roof. It seemed to be glaring at me. I began to feel nervous when I realized it was just a weathervane.

After hearing the calls of the owl yesterday morning, I finally got out of bed and headed downstairs to tell my father how eerie it was to be woken by an owl as I had not heard that noise for as long as I can remember. Not to mention, thinking I had seen one just days before.

Perhaps they don't actually inhabit Tennessee. I grew out of knowing interesting animal facts when I was in grade school, so I really have no idea. I am pretty sure, however, that they do live around Richmond. There was this kid that lived down the road from me when I was in elementary school, and probably through high school. He was one of those kids that was the butt of everyone's jokes and at some point just seemed to dissappear, even though he hadn't gone anywhere at all. Maybe it was the fact that at some point, middle school happened. I wasn't in charge anymore and instead of being the right-hand man to the kids who made fun of the other kids, they all turned on me and made my life hell. At this point I felt for the kid, and once I gained my dignity back in high school, I felt bad for the kid and probably just ignored that he existed as to not feel bad for badgering him as a child. Anyway, this kid's mother was a local park ranger, or something of the sort, and to add to his list of things to tease him about, his mother would often visit our classrooms bringing in stuffed owls. I'm not talking toy store stuffed, I'm talking dead and mounted. She'd also bring along samples of their droppings. At the time, it was kind of fascinating, but at this point in my life, when I should have grown to have more respect for science and our environment, I know there's no way in hell that you'd get me to touch, or dissect, owl shit!

My father laughed at my assumption and informed me that it was no owl that I was hearing, but a dove. Apparantly doves frenquently sit on the roof above my old room, and only on that side of the house. As far as I could remember I had never seen a dove in my life, or a live owl for that matter. For a moment, I felt blessed.

I began to research the calls of a dove to find out if this one was trying to tell me, or another dove, something important. I soon found out that doves are a hunted animal. I dunno, I mean, I know wild birds are often hunted, but hunting a dove to me is like hunting a butterfly. Not that I particularly support or protest hunting of any sort, really. 
Deer scare the hell out of me. They are probably one of my most feared animals. This fear dates back to a childhood story about a deer ramming some man's small Gremlin and kicking him to death. Living on a road with many deer sightings, I've always been unusually afraid of the animal. Deer heads make good props for FOB videos. That's my extent of appreciating the deer. Hunt them. But, a dove? Isn't there at least some Holy law that forbids this kind of sport? Do people eat them?

I came upon a restaurant last month, during an evening when I was determined to eat someplace that I had never eaten before, since we tend to stick to the same locations. We came across the Sportsman's Lodge. Now, the name and the fact that i was entering a giant log cabin should have tipped me off, but for some reason I was okay with the choice when entering. Smokey Bones looks like a log cabin, the Arby's, which also houses a delicious Mexican restaurant, near my house, looks like a ski lodge, hell, it even reminded me of Disney World, but the more I sat in this restaurant, the more disgusted I became. As I slowly ate my French Dip, I couldn't help but notice the abundance of wildlife staring at me from the walls. I felt as if that elk was saying, "Hey, you think that's cow you're eating, but it's really my rear end." Half way through the meal, I stopped eating and eagerly awaited the check. My friends began to stare at one another with a look of fear in their eyes, accentuated with a slight grin, and I knew they were feeling the same way. Once we paid, we booked it out of there.

A few weeks later, as I was driving home from work, I was passing the restaurant. It's in a high-traffic mall area, and sits very close to the interstate. There is a thin wire fence and a few sparse twig-like trees that separate those businesses from the interstate. More into my music than the road, something suddenly caught my eye. Standing there, between 8 lanes of rush hour traffic and the tiny metal fence that separates the road from the wilderness lodge, stood no less than 5 deer. For a moment, of course, I feared them darting toward my Jeep. For the other half of that second, I felt safe, as if that restaurant would have their heads mounted on the wall before they'd have a chance to ruin my paint job.

I didn't hear the dove when I woke up this moring, just my phone vibrating to let me know the work day had begun and I slept through my getting ready time. I'll let you know when I come across an olive branch.