By Bill Rauch
Living on a farm, I have learned, means just when you least expect it word will arrive of a pet pig or a pretty little puppy or a promising pony that needs urgently to be adopted, and we will adopt it. This open door policy has led to the formation of a household menagerie that now includes five house dogs, a barn cat, several horses and a donkey.
Those are the current residents. Then there are the occasional field hospital new admissions like the baby racoons who lost their mom, or the chicken who got mauled by a visiting fox terrier, or the fawn who got the worst of her run-in with the bush hog. They just stop by for a first aid pit stop.
If you can believe it, the hen made a full recovery over about a three-week period during which time she recuperated in a large pot in the corner of the kitchen. Herbert Hoover would be proud.
But the latest arrival has been the biggest surprise of them all. One afternoon last week an all-white pigeon flew in … and he has hung around all week. Yes of course, as the open-door policy requires, we encouraged “Pidge” to stay. We went out and got some birdseed. And we gave him a name. The hunting dogs were a little unsure about him at first, but now they’ve gotten used to Pidge, who walks comfortably around them while they are sunning on the porch.
A contractor came by to look at a job last week and he noticed Pidge. It’s hard not to.
“I guess he got tired of jumping out of birthday cakes,” the contractor speculated.
And I can’t say I blame Pidge. Suddenly the lights go on. You and your buddies flap your wings and now you’re surrounded by a bunch of screaming people who are waving their arms around. Then, before you know it, you smack your head right into the too-low ceiling. Tomorrow, the same gig. No workman’s comp; no health insurance for the headaches; substandard housing. Was it really worth it for a handful of crummy bird feed?
A financier friend came by and he, too, noticed the new arrival.
“I guess he got tired of all the hypocrisy,” the financier said.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Well think about it,” he said. “You’re the symbol of peace, but there is no peace. Israel’s fighting a two-front war. In the Red Sea, the Houthis are shooting rockets at any container ship that comes into range. The Russians and the Ukrainians continue to kill one another wholesale daily while they fight over inches of dirt. Thousands more people are getting killed every day in Nigeria, Myanmar, Ethiopia, Somalia, the Congo and in Darfur and Khartoum because they come from the wrong ethnic group. Peace? What peace? And if you think it’s gonna get better, you better take notice that the Chinese are building an unsinkable aircraft carrier!”
“I thought the doves had a lock on the peace thing,” I said.
I’ve got a writer friend – an investigative reporter — who occasionally takes refuge at the farm when tempers get overheated in New York. We take him in for a week or 10 days while tempers cool, and he mixes soulfully with our friends who have no idea he’s hiding out.
Yesterday, I noticed Pidge out in a nearby field enjoying a confab with four cattle egrets. You had to look twice to tell who was who. If Pidge is hiding out, the egrets didn’t know it.
But Pidge doesn’t hang just with the white guys. Since we’ve been throwing birdseed around, cardinals and wren and even a mockingbird have stopped by to sample the fare. (The mockingbird was uncharacteristically well-behaved.) And even Mr. and Mrs. Quail – refugees from the shooting plantation next door – stopped by for a bite.
As always, however, too much is too much. Or, as The Grateful Dead wisely intoned, “When life looks like easy street, there is danger at your door.”
When things get too cozy at Pidge’s Place, Mr. Cooper’s Hawk who is no peacenik will take notice. And if he crashes the party …
Bill Rauch was the Mayor of Beaufort from 1999 to 2008 and has twice won awards from the S.C. Press Association for his Island News columns. He can be reached at TheRauchReport@gmail.com.
