​Around here, in rural Pennsylvania. Quarantine often gets pronounced as “corn teen.”  And that isn’t the only linguistic anomaly here in the part of the state often maligned by outsiders by using the term Pennsyltucky. We drop Gs at the end of words, say “red up” to mean clean up, and say yinz as the second person plural.   Pennsyltucky is most of the state, everything except Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, and a couple smaller cities.  I like Kentucky and Pennsyltucky, so they can call us whatever they want.  My wife, Renee, is having a harder time than me.  She works full time at Penn State, and has been doing that from home lately.  She is a people person.  She is such a people person, that she thinks everyone else must be too.  One of the best things about corn teen is that I no longer have to blame the dogs for missing these play dates that she creates.
            I have always been the kind of guy that can run dogs by myself and hunt rabbits by myself and be happy doing that.  I have a few friends I hang out with once in a while, but I tend to find the social aspect of my vocation to be draining.  For instance, hospital and nursing home visits are very much the intentional insertion of a pastor into the difficult situations that people are facing, in order to help out.  When I go do a hospital visit, and see someone who is really sick, I find that to be a very draining process.  Don’t hear me saying that I do not like doing it, or that I avoid it.  No, I take this part of my job very seriously, but when it is done, I like to be able to retreat into my own solitude for renewal.  Maybe just me and the dogs in the field, or a quiet supper at home with my wife.
            Renee, by contrast, gains energy from being around people.  She can float like a butterfly in and out of conversations at a large gathering.  I will be in the corner talking to the other hunters and ignoring everyone else.  In non covid-19 times, she likes to think I need new friends and schedules these “play dates” where she makes reservations with her friends and their husbands to meet at a restaurant and engage in small talk over food.  Small talk isn’t my thing.  I often blame the dogs for missing these meals.
            “Sorry babe,” I call her on the phone when the dogs are chasing a rabbit right past me, so she can hear them.  “These dogs are just pounding the rabbit.  I lost track of time and now I am having trouble catching them.  I will be late, but I will make the supper.  What restaurant do I go to?”  At his point, I hope the pack doesn’t lose the rabbit and end the hound music, which is a big part of my cover for the excuse I am fabricating. 
            “Are you showing up in coveralls again?” she seethes.
            “I will put a shirt over top, so it looks like pants.”
            I usually arrive just in time to eat an appetizer as they are finishing up their main course, the dogs snooze in the dog box in the bed of my truck, as I make enough small talk to get me through the encounter.  It happens so much that her friends think I am some kind of professional trainer of beagles.  HA!
            In these corn teen times, I have been taking dogs afield twice per day, as doing visits is off limits.  I have been saving gas money by avoiding the beagle clubs and training dogs at my local hunting spots.  This also allows me to avoid the old timers who have been going to the beagle club a lot.  The last thing I want to do is pass this bug to them.  Restaurants have been closed, so we are eating at home all the time with no one else.  While listening to hound dog music, I contemplate a faith based offering that I can put on Facebook each day and generate ideas for our online worship services.  Hey, in some ways, this has been easy for me.  I take care of pastoral care by making a few phone calls to people each day.
            The other day the wind was howling and most of the state was under a tornado watch.  Rather than take dogs afield, I decided to play some hymns on my mountain dulcimer and work from home.  I did a little writing.  Then, I decided to work on converting insight from academic commentaries and publications about a bible passage into a sermon—something a little less dry than a commentary.  Some wit, a story or two to illustrate something intellectual, and a weekly research paper gets changed into a sermon. Maybe it isn’t much more interesting than the academic stuff, but hey, I try.  When I am working on a passage from home, my wife thinks that I am not working.
            “What are you doing?” Renee will ask.
            “Working,” I answer.
            “Ha!  Looks to me like you are laying on the couch and listening to music.”
            “I am thinking.”
            “Yeah, well come watch me and see what work really looks like!”
            Anyway, as the wind howled outside and the dogs were at attention anytime the screen door heaved against the doorknob latch, and the limbs from the trees in the yard shed twigs that were sent hurling into the house, I heard someone.  It was this pleasant, jovial, affable, accommodating voice coming from the kitchen.  She sounded so helpful.  My first thought was that we are supposed to be practicing social distancing and no one should be in the house—why do we have company?  My second thought was, how did this gal get into my house to see Renee without my beagle security system notifying me?  They bark at car doors 100 yards from the house, and had been barking at the wind all day.  How could this intruder get past them?  So, I walked into the kitchen to see who had dropped by.  It was Work Renee.
            Work Renee looks exactly like my wife.  Except she is kind, gracious, and always willing to help.  I have seen her be as patient as you can imagine when helping some tenured professor do something to convert a traditional classroom course into an online project.  Work Renee oozes compassion, and will explain the same thing four, five, even six times to a coworker.  What do you think happens to me if I cannot hear something she says and ask her to repeat it once?  I get the growl from Wife Renee, a very different person than Work Renee.
            Lately, during covid-19, Work Renee has been on the phone and the computer, working from home.  Her workload has doubled.  She expends this great burst of gracious, gregarious helpfulness, and when all civility has been drained from her at the end of her day, she transforms into my wife.  She has no sympathy then, when I can’t do very difficult things like find a particular pair of boots, locate something in the refrigerator, or remember the password to the internet.
            So, the best thing for me to do is get out of her way.  I wake her up in the morning, and make coffee.  Then, I load up hounds, and go to the woods.  I work on some little things that I can share with the congregation while we are not meeting, and return home.  I hear the pleasantness as she works, and then, around supper time, the transformation.  When her computer is turned off, her voice hardens.  Her vocabulary diminishes.  She breaks out a few words with just four letters.
            “Hey!” she yelled at me a few weeks into the corn teen, after supper.
            “Yes, sweetie?” I answered.
            “Is it just me, or are you wearing pajamas and bib coveralls and that is it?” Renee asked, in a tone that meant she was not happy.
            “Well,” I scratched my chin, “I think th--”
            “Stop touching your face!!”
            “Sorry,” I put my hands on my lap, “It isn’t pajamas or bibs.  It is either pajamas or bibs over pajamas.”
            “You’ve had the same pajamas on for days.”
            “Well, I am changing underwear and socks.”
            “That’s disgusting.”
            “Hey,” I said, “You put on a fancy shirt every day and do your makeup and hair, but you are totally in pajama bottoms for those online meetings that you are attending.”
            “They are different pajamas each day,” she sneered in that way she does to point out the obvious.
            “Prove it,” I said, “You have 20 pairs of grey yoga pants.”  Just then, her phone rang.
            “This is work!” she growled, “What do they want at this hour?”
            “I don’t know,” I said.
            She held her index finger up to me, indicating that I should be silent. “This is Renee,” she answered with kindness oozing from her voice. The transformation is faster than when Bruce Banner becomes The Hulk. I pulled some bibs over my jammies, pulled my boots on, and loaded a few dogs to go to the field.  Did the dogs I left at home get loud when they saw me break out the tracking collars and take a couple dogs out to the truck?  Oh, yeah.  Renee had to go into the back yard, on the phone, as I took dogs out the front door just so no one heard the protests of the older hounds I didn’t take. Old dogs run morning, youngsters in the evening.  Stay socially distant and spiritually connected during this time of corn teen.

​Well, here we are at the most romantic time of the year—Valentine’s Day.    In ancient, pr-Christian Rome, there was a festival that lasted from February 13-15 called Lupercalia.  They would sacrifice goats and a dog.  This was thought to purify the city, and bring health and fertility.  There was a big celebration of breastfeeding, much like you see when soccer moms gather in coffee shops today to talk about breastfeeding so loud that everyone knows that they had extracted a couple  pints of milk for the baby that they dropped off at daycare.
            Anyway, the ancient festival would also offer cakes as a sacrifice.  These cakes were made by a whole bunch of virgin women, called Vestal Virgins.  They remained virgins for 30 years, after being inducted at about the age of 10, and then they retired at the age of 40ish with a full pension.  It was considered a great honor to marry one of them, and noblemen would compete for the right..  So, after the animals were killed at the altar, two priests would then anoint their foreheads with blood left on the knife from the sacrifice.  That would then be washed away with a wool rag soaked in milk. These two priests would then laugh at each other, which must have been creepy.  Next, strips of the hide (they were called Februa, from which we get the word February) and these strips of goat hide would be carried by young men who ran naked in a circle around a hill.  They slapped people with those bloody strips, and this was thought to help women get pregnant or make pregnancy go well.  That was Lupercalia.  Later, we get Valentine’s Day, at the same time of year, which makes all of that stuff look somewhat normal.  Well, maybe not normal, but let’s face it, Valentine’s Day drives people crazy.
            Me, I try not to get too excited.  All you really need to do is send flowers.  If your wife works with other women, it is best to send the flowers there.  If she gets a bunch of them delivered in front of all the other gals, then you will have made a a good show.  It is also important to take her out to supper as well.  Here is how that is done best: make a reservation a few weeks in advance.  But make it for 8 o’clock.  When it comes time to take your wife for supper you simply say, “Whew, I really had to pull some strings to get reservations, but we have them.  Tonight at eight.”  My wife, Renee, then goes to work thrilled that I was able to get a reservation on such a busy day.  But, did you see what I did there?  Waiting until 8 o’clock means that I can hunt until dark!
            Alright, now that is a veteran move.  If you are a Newlywed, that may not work.  You will have to test the waters.  But once you have some years of service, you can get by with hunting a few hours in the afternoon and meeting her later.  I once officiated a wedding, and the gal that played the guitar for this outdoor wedding was really talented.  She writes her own songs, and sings.  She almost made it on TV for American Idol.  She just had to win one more contest or whatever it is called.  I don’t watch the show, but it was all over our local news.
            Anyway,, after I pronounced them as married, they kissed, and I sent the bride and groom marching down the outdoor aisle, which was a mowed path.  I looked to the musician, and indicated that she should play some sort of recessional music.  She launched into a very good cover, which she totally owned, and made it her  own.  She strummed a few chords, and I thought, “No” to myself, since I knew the song, but she did perform a fantastic rendition of Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues.”  I shrugged my shoulders, and enjoyed the song.
            “Sorry,” she said, “I do not know many love songs.”
            “Meh,” I answered.  Prison.  Marriage, They are both institutions and leave you institutionalized.”
            IF YOU ARE NOT INSTITUTIONALIZED, then you will not get away with hunting on Valentine’s Day.  Your wife needs to have other married friends for enough years that she realizes that spending time in the woods chasing rabbits is not the worst behavior that a man can display,  Let her hear about all the stuff her friends deal with.  Staying out late at night, chasing other women, that kind of stuff.  Once you have been married a dozen years or more, she will have no trouble with you going to the woods.
            “Say honey bunny,” I said last year on Valentine’s Day, “Since we aren’t able to eat the fancy steak dinner until 8 o’clock, would it be alright if I hunted the last couple hours of daylight?   I will  come home right after, wash up, and we can go eat.”
            “Yes, go ahead,” Renee said, “Oh, and I picked up those .410 shells that were on sale at the mall.  I was looking for gloves, and saw the good price.  I put them on your desk.”
            “Well,” I said, “Happy Valentine’s Day to me.”  That, my friends, is fully institutionalized.  She went to work and got flowers.  Am I saying that I pulled one over on Renee?  Nah, she probably knows.  February 14 isn’t the only day that I hunt the last hour of daylight.  I do it quite a bit.  And there are some things that you can do to help out even more.  When we first married, my refrigerator wasn’t domestic.  It was mostly mustards and hot sauce.  Maybe 5 of each.  And the fishing bait was on the top shelf (hey, the bottom was too cold).  That was in September, when we married.  In the fall, she come home to a common sight—dead rabbits soaking in a little saltwater.  Yep, right there on the top shelf.  All these years later it is no trouble now, but when we first married she wasn’t fond of the sight.  Especially if it was a great day afield, and I had her favorite Tupperware container filled with rabbit meat, right where she could see it.  What was my solution?  I bought a dorm fridge advertised as being for sale, in May, when the college kids went home.  I got my own fridge for bait and bunnies—and it was viewed as the kindest thing I could have done.
            Here is the last thing that makes the day go well.  You have to get one of those blank cards.  There’s a bunch in my house, because Renee went through a phase where she was making homemade cards for people.  For all occasions.  Congratulation cards for any achievement, get well cards, birthday cards (of course) graduation cards, and many more.  In case your wife doesn’t make cards, it is basically an art project that takes 4 hours, and Lord knows how much paper, glue, glitter, stamps, and stickers.  There is no cost savings, as I believe each card has a minimum of $10 worth of materials.  All the glue and glitter means that it will be cheaper to put the thing in a priority mail envelope than to pay for regular stamps.They are way too heavy for one stamp.
            Don’t worry about the glitter or anything.  Just get a blank card, and then wrote your own Valentine.  It doesn’t have to be that good.  It doesn’t have to rhyme.  It is. However, one of those things where quantity matter as much as quality. I just wrote all the things that Renee does to make me happy. Sometimes you have to start thinking about these things the day before to get a long enough list. Tiny things work. “You make the best pie” is okay. She is always noticing the tiny things.  Good and bad,
            See, and here is the thing, when 5 o’clock rolls around and it is time to be getting hungry, she will be home waiting while you are finishing up the hunt.  When you leave for the hunt, you have to leave this card where she will find it.  She will be delighted.  This then lets you be a little late getting home, if you hunted a good spot a bit further from home.  Leave the card with one fancy chocolate bar.  One candy bar is good—you buy the biggest box of candy you can find, and she will think you are calling her heavy.  One.  Expensive.  Chocolate.  That is it.  She will eat it while reading the card.
            I was sharing all this with a young man recently, who got married this past summer.
            “Man,” he said, “How did you learn all that?”
            In my best imitation of Morgan Freerman, from Shawshank Redemption, I said “Young man, I have been thoroughly institutionalized.  And it ain’t all bad.”

​I am seeing a little color in the trees, and hunting season is use around the corner.  The summer has been dry, and in my experience that is good for cottontails.  Naturally, dry weather isn’t as optimal for hare.  Wet springs and summers can be bad for cottontails, which have their young right on the ground, sometimes in the open. In lowlands, an all day rain can fill the small depression where newborn rabbits are nested with hair that the mother pulls out of her own coat.  It is no secret that I am not thrilled about cutting grass, and in my neck of the woods, July and August were months of  very infrequent mowing.  I have neighbors who roll their lawn, aerate it, add fertilizer, plant expensive grass seed, and even irrigate their yards.  Me?  I mow it when it is wet, letting the clumps smother future growth.  As a result, my lawn is populated by the hardiest of plants—weeds.  Oh, I have Queen Anne’s Lace, stinging nettles, and even burdock.  I know people that sow expensive grass seed, my dogs drop burdock in the yard that they collect while hunting.  When it gets as dry as we were over the late summer, then I have the only green lawn in town. We were under a drought warning and watering lawns was strictly forbidden.  My green lawn looks great from the road, where you pass it at 35 mph and do not realize that it is a well groomed lot of weeds with a little grass and clover mixed in.
            Lately, since the beginning of this month, the arrival of meteorological autumn, the grass has greened up, and my bumper crop of crabgrass and buckhorn plantain goes nuts, and I am busy in the field with the dogs.  The weather has cooled, and we have experienced the return of morning dew.  I love morning dew, and it can make an average dog look great!  Lately, I have been getting some screaming fast chases on morning dew in a big sorghum field on a farm.  The rabbits are found in the nearby thickets, and then they burst into the sorghum and proceed to run circles that are shaped more like mazes and Hebrew letters.  I was listening to the hounds run a big cottontail in the shape of a series of adjacent lameds, the Hebrew name for the letter that makes the sound of an L. Lamed is the last letter in ketal, the word for dew.  I started thinking of Psalm 133:3 “It is like the dew of Hermon, which falls on the mountains of Zion. For there, the Lord ordered his blessing, life forevermore.” Zion was a small hill in comparison to Mount Hermon, which is over 9,000 feet in elevation and is often snow covered.  Meltwater forms the beginnings of The Jordan River.  The verse reflects an idea that dew, often the only moisture in ancient Israel, must have dropped off the mountain, under the cover off darkness, and then covered the land with life giving water.  This is how they explained how water shows up without rain. Today, we talk about thermodynamics and the formation of water droplets through condensation, but I think the psalm is much more poetic.
            Lamed is the tallest letter in the Hebrew Alphabet, and is shaped like a shepherd’s staff, and the word lamed means to goad, like using a staff to move livestock.  I watched this rabbit zigzagging in overlapping lameds, running through dew drenched sorghum, and the dogs were absolutely locked on to the scent, as the wet crop held the scent, allowing the hounds to run with their heads held high.  Oh, don’t get me wrong, I enjoy watching good hound work, when dogs are able to solve tricks that the rabbit makes to fool the hounds and cease the chase in tough scenting conditions.  I appreciate a big nosed dog, solving olfactory riddles and sorting through the labyrinthine changes that a rabbit will make in order to optimize its chances of eluding pursuers by seeking dirt, gravel, rocks, and bare ground in the driest of conditions.  I really do like those chases, but I like a good driving chase even better, at least for the music!  This particular rabbit made his way to the end of the field and burst into the goldenrod of an adjacent property (did I mention I have some of that in my yard too?) and that resulted in big circles that looked more like rounded of squares.
            There is just something magical about dew.  I can’t say enough about it, when it comes to making things right!  Oh, and after those dogs have been chasing in the heat for months, this dew makes it look like their noses are attached to the rabbit by an invisible string, and almost all of the chases will be long, until the rabbit decides that it is in his best interest to take this endeavor to the subterranean realm, and hide out until the dogs have left. That can even be risky, I have a small dog that can get in there pretty far, too far for my liking.
            “Where are my boots?” I asked my wife, Renee, one night?”
            “You are kidding right?” She asked.
            “No.”
            “Oh, okay,” she sighed and moved her hands to her hips.  Never a good sign. “Well, you have a pair on the floor in the middle of the kitchen, another in the bathroom next to the tub, there’s a pair in the trunk of my car, I do not know why, there are three pairs in the closet where all the others should be, and there are two pairs beside the hamper.”
            “There’s a pair in your car?” I asked.
            “Yes.”
            “Are they my rubber boots?”
            “Yes,” she said.
            “I wonder how those got in there?” I asked.
            “Well, a few months ago you took my car to run dogs a few mornings when you were driving someplace far away.  You were scouting for rabbits at a place you drove by after leaving a cemetery for a funeral. Or something like that.”
            “Oh yeah,” I said, “That was back when we had dew, deforestation the heat wave! Are they in the car, where?”
            “Follow your nose,” she said.
            “I am not a beagle,” I replied.
            “You don’t have to be.  That’s a stink that no one can go ‘nose blind to.  I was driving somewhere and had to stop and move them to the trunk to avoid the stench.  I ordered groceries for pick up at the grocery store, the poor kid almost fell over when he put the groceries in there.”  Covid has ushered in drive through grocery pick up at the local market.
            “Really?” I asked.
            “I told you to get them out of there, and that I wa            sn’t going to touch them!  That was 4 days ago.”
            “I don’t remember that,” I scratched my chin.
            “Probably because you were too busy fussing with your tracking collars.”
            “Oh yeah, I had to get some crud out of the area where the collar slides into the transmitter. I need to get those boots, the dew has returned, and my other boots are waterproof but the moisture is hard on the leather.
            “Good,” Renee said, “And while you are at it, get those boots by the hamper put away too.”
            “I don’t know where the hamper is,” I said.
            “I guess that explains the blob of dirty clothes I keep finding in the bathroom closet,” Renee said, “Just get the boots out of the bedroom.”
            “Okay,” I said.
            I have been sloshing in dew ever since.  The only thing better is frost.  Oh, I love a good frost which is frozen dew.  When it begins to thaw and steam and the cool air makes for high scent and lots of great chases, with no need to worry about the dogs getting too warm. I better get those insulated boots ready too, thinking of frost.  I will wait a few days before I ask Renee where I put them.  My rubber boots had a pair of wet socks in them, which happened when I took off my boots to drive and then stepped out of her car before putting my shoes on.  I just threw those socks into the boots and then put my shoes on.  Whew, a few months in the trunk really ripened them up.  No matter, autumn is here.  Some see it has the harbinger of winter, but I see fall as the last climactic rush of summer.  Beautiful foliage, hunting of all kinds, lower temperatures, and that good old dew that coats the ground here in the Appalachian Mountains.  Dew is a blessing, like the psalms say, and hunting season is just around the corner.

​The month of July has been brutally hot here in Pennsylvania.  More than that, we have now reached almost five months of my wife, Renee, working from home, due to her office at the university being closed to the coronavirus.  She is online all day, and that tends to not like certain disturbances.  What kind of disturbances?  Well, for one, barking beagles.
            “Yes,” Renee says in her work voice to a gaggle of coworkers crammed into a zoom meeting, “I think we can install that module to the curriculum without too much diffi—”
            “Baroo! Howl! AWWWW!” the beagles interrupt her as they notice someone walking their dog past our house.  The dogs take turns, like sentinels on the wall at Guantanamo, perched on the back of the couch with their heads under the window blinds.  When an on duty beagle notices any violators—dog walkers, joggers, bicyclists, mailman, UPS, FedEx, neighbor coming home, neighbor leaving, squirrel (high alert) rabbit (red hot alert) bird, or a leaf blowing in the wind—he or she will then, as the on duty sentry, sound the alarm.  It takes about .2 seconds for the rest of the pack to start barking as well.  This has happened so much in this hot weather that my wife can react in .3 seconds.  She mutes her zoom meeting, then yells, not in her pleasant work voice, but in her marital voice, “Will you shut those blanking beagles up!?  I am in a meeting!”
            That is when I spring into action to get them calmed and quiet.  I yell at them, or distribute the dust.  What dust?  Well, I pulverize milk bones now.  This is what I have been reduced to doing with my wife at home all day in meetings that need quiet, and me being stuck at home working from the phone.  It is bad enough that she has to but a fake background behind her, so that no one sees the random beagle bouncing through the background.  I like the miniature Milk Bones, but they are in short supply, as well as everything else.  The massive Milk Bones, made for giant dogs, are always around and seemingly always on sale somewhere.  I put a bunch of them on a towel, cover them with another towel, and pulverize them into near dust with a hammer.  This, as you can imagine, makes a bit of noise, so it has to happen at night, after the meetings.  Once pulverized with a hammer, I smash them further with an old woods dowel, rolling it over them.  The dust goes into a plastic container.
            When my lowly mutts shut down online higher learning, I spread a palm full of dust on the kitchen floor.  It takes them awhile to find it all, and they normally forget what they were barking at.  A new duo of sentries takes a watch.  This happens several times per day.  The real problem has been the high heat, and the fact that it has been in the 90s during the day and only cools off to 70 or so by dawn.  Oh, and the bulk of my job, hospital and nursing home visits, has been cancelled.  I have a Regal dog box with fantastic insulation against heat and cold, and I would typically load those dogs up in the morning, run them for a few hours, and then go to work.  They stay cool in the dog box, travelling from one hospital to the next during the work day.
            “Are they worse than usual?” Renee asked?
            “Oh yeah,” I answered, “Way worse.”
            “Can’t you do something?” Renee switched from her marital voice to her work voice.
            “They need some time on rabbits,” I said, “It has been over a week.”
            “What do you do about that?” she asked
            “You won’t believe me.”
            “Why?” she asked, “Is it illegal?”
            “No,” I said, “Just weird.”
            “What is it?”
            I grabbed my phone and opened one of my weather apps.  I have a few of them. “See this,” I said, pointing at a blob of red in Ohio.
            “Yeah,” she said, “You driving to Ohio?”
            “No,” I said, “But Ohio might come here.”
            “What?”
            “I may not use computers as much as you, but I have a few things that I have figured out.”
            “Forecasting the weather?”
            “Nope,” I said, “But close.  You know those guys that drive vans into storms, looking for the tornadoes?”
            “Yeah,” she looked at me.
            “Well, when I see rain coming, I try to get there about a half hour before the rain starts, and the rainfall will keep the dogs cooled down.  Depending on the rain, I can get a pretty long run.”
            “How long have you been doing this?” she asked me.
            “Years.”
            “Is it dangerous?”
            “Nah, if it rains too hard, I sit in the truck.”
            “It works?”
            “When it rains, which it hasn’t done lately.  One day, last year, I ran dogs in the morning at Beechton Beagle Club before it got hot.  Did visits at the nearby Dubois Hospital, then went to Mountain Laurel nursing home.  After that I had to go to Williamsport Hospital. When I left the hospital, I saw rain coming, and got the dogs dropped at West Branch Beagle Club before the storm started, they got another good chase.  Two clubs in one day.  That’s rare.”
            “I am impressed,” my wife said, “Here I thought you were not good with technology.”
            “I ain’t very good, but I can see where rain is going,” I said.
            “Oh Yeah?”
            “You don’t have to be a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.”
            “Who said that?”
            “Dylan.  But it is true.”  The Ohio rain never made it this far.
            A day later, I heard the work voice coming from the kitchen.  I mean, home office. “Get in here, please!”  I have to admit, I was perplexed.  Yeah, we had two squirrels and a UPS lady already, but at the moment the beagles were sedate, most of them sprawling themselves on the cold linoleum in the home office.
            “Now what?” I said.
            “Look at this radar!”
            “Let me see,” I said.
            “What do you think?” she said, her bottom lip quivering as she looked at the dogs, fearing they would erupt again.
            “Are you in a meeting?” I asked.
            “I am logged in,” she stared at the radar, “I don’t have to talk, I can hear them with my ear buds.  My wife has these massive, ugly ear buds.  They look like some of her earrings, so I often don’t realize they are ear buds with her hair down.
            “You know that spot where I went hunting when the guys from Outdoor Life came to town?” I asked her.
            “I think I can get there before the rain if I leave right now.”
            “Here are your tracking collars, I took them off the charger and put them into the duffel bag.  Don’t hurry home.”
            “I guess I am a storm chaser,” I said.
            “More like Rain Man,” the marital voice was back.

​When I was a youngster there was a chunk of the year when it was illegal to train dogs in the wild.  It lasted from spring into part of the summer.  For some reason April through June sounds plausible, though I am not sure.  Currently, we can train all year in the wild, as science has demonstrated that a baying beagle is a lesser threat to baby rabbits than weasels, hawks, owls, bobcat, fishers, fox, snakes, crows, or even lawn mowers.  Certainly, the game commission could reinstate a prohibition on training in the wild at any time.  Loss of habitat, in my opinion, is one of the biggest threats to all game species, as strip malls, housing developments, and roads appear as quickly as mushrooms after a rain.  It seems like I lose rabbit spots every year to progress.
            Running in the wild was a great joy for me as a kid.  This was because in my adolescent years, before I could drive, it was very easy for me to walk a couple hundred yards and be in an area that held bunnies.  This was an especially great thing in the summer, when I wanted to train dogs and listen to the hound music.  It was in July, perhaps, that we could return to the wild if we so desired.  Naturally, there were beaglers that preferred to run inside the fence all year.  The irony of that peculiarity was that most of the guys that wanted to run inside the fence all year had very slow dogs that could never go missing.  Perhaps the concern was also related to the fact that these were guys that found rabbits for their dogs.  Even today, I see gundog brace trials where the shaggers (guys with sticks to shag rabbits out of the brush) are as important as the dogs, and the judges sometimes have to stop walking so as to not pass the beagles.  I know people who never hunt with their field trial dogs, preferring to keep them in an enclosure.
            Anyway, late summer is a hot time of year, and it makes it difficult on the dogs.  Night running was more common then, as the coyotes did not own the woods after dark as they now do.  Incidentally, the Pennsylvania Game Commission printed a study in the book of laws that accompanies your purchase of a hunting license a few years ago detailing that the eastern coyote is larger and stronger than the western coyote, and therefore eats a larger percentage of deer.  The reason for this increased size is that the eastern coyote is a result of migration, wherein the western coyote arrived hear via the Great Lakes region, and interbred with wolves.  Our yotes have a sizeable percentage of wolf DNA.
            When I was a teenager, our biggest night time worries were skunks and porcupines.  My father would let me stay out all night long in the woods, and only imposed a summertime curfew if I went in to town.  I knew that if I violated this trust, I would be in big trouble and may not be allowed to go out in the woods for a long time.
            “Dad,” I said one morning after he had his coffee, “Can I take the dogs out tonight to run them.”  I never asked him anything before coffee. 
            “Why?”
            “Because its hot now,” I held out a thumb, “And we can run in the wild again,” I held out my index finger to count my second strong point.
            “How you going to get to wherever you plan to do this?  I am working second trick today,” he scratched his stubble.  Trick, in this case, was interchangeable for shift.
            “I am going to walk,” I said.  I could tell he knew my intentions right away.
            “You plan on running a hare?” he grinned.  It was a facial expression that combined an appreciation for my plan with a heavy dose of skepticism.
            “Yep,” I said, “They won’t go in a hole. And they go in huge circles.  The dogs will fly!”
            “You better get there before dark,” he sighed, “Because those hemlocks have as many deer as they do snowshoes.  You will want to know what you are chasing before the sun sets.”
            Training collars and GPS were not even close to being used in the beagling world then.  We used compasses to get around in the big woods, and it wasn’t uncommon to come out of the hemlocks onto a dirt logging road that you had to walk for a mile or so until you saw a landmark that helped you determine where you were. Getting lost could easily happen.  I had an old coon hunting light that I planned on using, the helmet barely adjusted small enough to fit.  An old lensatic compass was my guide into the timber.
            Modern hunting is different.  For instance, last fall I was catching dogs at dark in Maine, a place where getting lost is a much more serious issue.  I had to work very hard to trust my handheld GPS.  It was telling me that my truck was parked 90 degrees off from where I felt it was positioned.  Oh, it was a half mile away too.  For reasons that I cannot explain, I trust a compass more than the communication between my handheld and the satellites.  I had to resist the urge to trust my instincts rather than my technology, I got my compass out and confirmed that the blasted machine was right.  Of course it was correct, and it even compensated for the angle of declination that demarcated the difference between true north and magnetic north.  So, off through the cedars I went, struggling to keep the leashed dogs from getting entangled in the ubiquitous, identical cedar trees, each ten inches in diameter.  This was the forest that replaced the last clear cut—perfect habitat for hare.
            I digressed.  Let’s go back to Pennsylvania in the 1980’s. I was using a compass and a second hand coon lamp with a battery that attached to my belt, or should have.  The battery may as well have been from a Buick it was so heavy.  An older gentleman that retired from hunting gave it to me.  I cut his grass every week and I saw the relic in his garage.
            “Jay,” I asked, “Can I buy that light?”
            “I thought you had beagles,” he poked the light with his cane.
            “I do, but that could be handy,” I said.
            “If you can pick it up, you can have it.”
            It was heavy, and I wondered if many other kids had attempted to lift it, but failed like so many that tried to pull Excalibur from the stone in the King Arthur stories.  “I got it,” I moaned, pretending that it wasn’t too heavy. “Thanks.”
            “You better get some suspenders for that thing.  Take this adapter I made to charge it.”  Jay worked for Ford Motor Company in Buffalo before retiring and returning to Pennsylvania.  He could build and design all sorts of things.
            Suspenders were no help, as the battery was pulling my britches to the ground.  I used a backpack to throw the battery into, and I am still not entirely certain that he did not build that thing.  The charge seemed to last forever.  The only drawback was that I had to carry a lot of water to stay hydrated from lugging the massive thing up and down the hills of the Alleghenies.
            I can’t describe to you how wonderful the chases were.  Those two beagles thundered through the hills, and the only time I had trouble was if they got onto a cottontail that ran close to houses.  People tended to not like the barking at midnight.  At least three nights each week I would do this.  I came through the door one morning at 7:15 or so, just as dad was coming home from work.  He was working third “trick” that week.  We had a little breakfast together and chatted about our night.
            “I was busy,” dad said, “We were a man short and we had to hustle.”
            “Dogs crossed the creek,” I said, “I got soaked crossing it.  Real soft bottom, I sunk knee deep.”
            “You sure it wasn’t the weight from that contraption on your back?  I think that battery is tearing the seams of your backpack.”
            “You might be right,” I said.
            “The seams on your pant legs are not doing well either.”
            “Yeah,” I poured some juice, “My legs are a lot bigger from that backpack battery.”  My mother shook her head as to indicate that sanity was sorely lacking.
            I look back at all of this amazed that I was allowed in the woods, alone, all night long at the age of 15.  I was instructed to avoid people if I saw them, which I never did see.  Then it happened.  My light burned out.  Of course, it was the bulb.  The battery could probably have powered a small village for a week.  I felt my feet wanting to run north, and get back home. But I remembered what I was told weeks before when this hare chasing began.  If you run out of light, build a fire and sit still until the sun comes up.  I caught the dogs in the dark—not easy as all I had was a small flashlight in my backpack.  I tied the leashes to trees, and built a fire.  I won’t lie, I was a little scared, and for some reason I would have felt safer if I was walking rather than standing still and sitting by the fire.  Tiny critters in the brush sounded like monstrous bears, and screeching owls made me think panthers were surrounding me.
            Catching the dogs in the dark was a disorienting process, and as the pre-dawn sky brightened I realized I was closer to my cousin Ray’s house than I was my own.  I trod up to his house and sat on the porch until the kitchen light came on.  Then I went inside for breakfast and called home.
            “Yeah,” dad answered.
            “Light burned out, I am at Ray’s house.  Can you come get me?”
            “I’ll take you!” Ray yelled.
            “Never mind, I got a ride,” I said.
“Okay.  See you later,” dad hung up.
Back here in the present, I hear coyotes all the time now, and if I am running dogs after dark it is accidental.  That was one glorious summer of running, and the cooler temperatures after dark were fantastic for conditioning the dogs.  The following rabbit season was the best I had ever experienced to that point in my life.  I never did have another great summer of chasing hare at night with such regularity.  I was 16 years old the next summer, and hanging out with girls seemed to make more sense.  I am still thankful for a father that let me roam those hills.  Happy Father’s Day. 

“How long have you been married?” I was asked by a guy while rabbit hunting.
“Well,” I said, “A few months ago, my wife was away for a two-week business trip.  I picked her up at the airport, at 8 o’clock at night, and before she told me that she missed me or anything she asked me if we could go to a restaurant, since she had been on a plane over the supper hour.”

“What did you say?” the guy asked me.

“I told her that I already ate supper, but I could eat a small snack.  Then she told me that she loved me.”

“Ha!” he laughed.

When it comes to marriage, there are some things that are just realities, and when you have hunting beagles it can get even more complex.  For instance, my wife, Renee, now accepts that there will be dismembered rabbits in the fridge, soaking in salt water, for many of the days in November, December, January, and February.  Was it easy when we first got married?
“What in the world is that?” I remember being asked the first time it happened, a few months after our wedding.

“Three rabbits, soaking in water with a little salt.  I will freeze them in a couple days.”
Years later, she routinely moves the rabbits around.  I use quart spaghetti jars, Tupperware containers, or even the empty, plastic containers that held the Chinese takeout food. “I put the rabbits from today behind the rabbits from Wednesday.  Make sure you freeze those first.  I will cook the rabbits in the door tonight,” is the sort of thing that Renee will often say to me now.  But we took a few years to get to this point!

Do we still have misunderstandings?  Yeah.  Often, it is because I am not paying attention.  Now, don’t get me wrong, I am not trying to ignore her, it is just that I often don’t understand what she is talking about.  She does a lot of work on the computer, and most of that stuff eludes me.  One time, a person in her department had to be taught how to make a PDF file.  She talked the guy right through the process.  She was so kind and sweet.  She will help me too, but often I get the sharper comments from her. “I can help you, but not right now.  You have to wait!”  Then, she turns on the sweetness and helps somebody do a really easy thing on their computer, talking them through the whole thing.  Then I call her back in a few hours, “Hey, did you forget about me?”

“Just unplug it and turn it back on,” she said.
“I thought you said that was not the proper thing to do,” I said,
“It isn’t.  But sometimes it is the only thing that works.”

Anyway, when she is talking to me about servers and internet connections at her office and how bad things went, I often just do not know what she is talking about. Oh, and I have learned the hard way that asking for clarification, which seems like a good way to show interest, actually frustrates her, because she can’t believe how stupid I really am.
And offering old fashioned ideas is no help either.
“UGH!” she said after supper one night.

“What is wrong?”
“This link is not working, and I am trying to set up an online meeting for tomorrow.”
“Oh,” I said, “Does everyone work in the same building?”
“Yes,” she said as she hammered on the computer keys.
“Then why don’t you just meet in a room?” I suggested.  She looked at me like I was a complete moron.

“It makes sense to me,” I said.

“Well,” she looked at me over her glasses, “That won’t work, because we have to share files and analyze them.”

“Or you could print the files, and have them in the room for everyone to see.”

“Oh yeah?” Renee said, “Would we do that while we watched a presentation with a VCR?”
“You guys still have a VCR?” I said, “Nice.  Don’t you miss going to the video rental store and looking for a movie to watch.”

“You can look at all the movies on the television screen and pick one.  Never have to leave the house.”

“Yeah,” I said, “I know.  They got rid of all the fun.”
So, I zone out when she is talking jargon and mumbo jumbo.  I do not ask her to explain terms.  I do not give ideas.  I just nod my head a lot, and say things that indicate that I am aware she is talking.

So, recently, I was out in the field with a pair of beagles and really having a good hunt.  The chases were going great, I was getting good shots, and the beagles were sounding awesome.  My cell phone rings.  I was waiting for the rabbit.  I looked at it, and saw it was Renee.  She was on a trip for work.  The phone was on vibrate, and I did not want to talk and spook the bunny.  I ignored it.  The rabbit comes around in a bit and I miss the shot.  I saw it too late, it was beyond me, and offered no shot other than in the back.  I relocated for another opportunity. Buzz buzz buzz the phone rings again. Renee.  I actually silenced the phone this time.  I shot the rabbit and called her back.
​
“What’s up?” I asked.
“Did you not get my text that I was landing early today?”
“Today?” I asked.  My calendar says tomorrow.
“I told you on the phone the other day that I was coming home a day early.  I told you that I was landing today at 5 o’clock.
“Oh, yeah, that’s right,” I lied after I looked at my phone and saw that it was only nine o’clock in the morning. I will be there early.”
“Early?  You are late.  I texted you yesterday that my flight changed and I will be in the airport by eight o’clock this morning!”
“You did?”
“Yes!!”
“You want the good news or the bad news?” I asked.
“I am sure the bad news is that you are hunting, since it is a Saturday morning in hunting season,” Renee sighed.
“Hey, you are good.  Really bright.  But they already know that.  That is why you have to travel so much.”
“Stop the kissing up.  What’s the good news?”
“I am at a hunting spot close to the airport, so I can pick you up in just about a half hour or so.
“Wonderful,” she said.
“Say hon,” I paused to think of something to say, “I bet you were flying during breakfast time.  I bet we can get right into a breakfast place easy right now, the early morning rush is over.”
“Today is Saturday, so right now is the rush,” Renee replied.
“I’m going to hang up and come get you.”
“That would be wonderful.”
I whisked over there and got her luggage loaded and she jumped into my truck.
“I can’t believe you didn’t get my text about the flight change.”
I handed her my phone. “Is it there?”
She scrolled through the messages “You have like 20 unopened texts in here”
“Group texts,” I said, “I get lost in those.  Too many texts that are just a thumbs up sign.”
“Here,” she said, “I texted you at 4 o’clock yesterday.”
“I was hunting then,” I said, “It is hard to text in the winter.  My hands get cold.”
“What about all these pictures you take of beagles chasing and dead rabbits and videos of beagles retrieving rabbits?”
“My hands get really cold!” I said, “But the pictures are nice.”
“I will get you a pair of gloves that work on a phone touch screen.  Then you can answer my texts if I am in a meeting and can’t call you,” she said.
“Do you really think that is going to make me text more?”
“Probably not.”
“Want to stop at the Waffle Shop?  I will buy late breakfast.”
“I love you.”
If I am honest, she gives me all the information in texts, or email, or some other electronic way.  She gives me more than I can keep up with.  She is Miss Communication, but in my brain, it all becomes miscommunication sometimes.  I think I have a VCR in storage somewhere….

The thing I remember most about Thanksgiving, as a kid, was the fact that my father and I would disappear until it was time to eat.  I was born when he was 45 years old, and he was the youngest of nine children.  His mother passed away not long after I was born, but my mother’s mother always came to visit.  Not only that, she had a son and another daughter that lived within close proximity.  One way or another, my gram would find a way to make it to all three Thanksgiving meals.  My mom’s sister seemed happy enough to just let my grandmother do whatever she wanted in her kitchen.  There was no way Gram was going to be able to tell my uncle’s wife how to do anything in her kitchen.  Then, there was my childhood house, where gram would show up to help my mom cook.

Gram would do everything at my aunt’s house, and simply give a few orders to my aunt or her kids.  They didn’t get lazy about the meal, but they basically functioned as her hired help.  If hired help worked for free.  And couldn’t quit and go home.  That meal was early, sometimes closer to 11 than noon.  After eating a small lunch, she would drive a mile to our house, where she would begin to take over the meal that was already in process.

“What do you need me to do?” gram would ask.
“Nothing,” mom always answered, “You can just relax if you want.”

“Okay,” gram always sat down in the kitchen.  “You are doing that all wrong,” she would then stand up again and start whisking or pouring or mixing, or basting, or whatever.  She would then stay at our house until we ate at supper time.  If you got hungry before supper, there were always pies or other snacks available.  She would then eat a small supper with us, before going to her son’s house, where she would eat dessert.  That way she visited all three of her kids.  I mean, she had a couple other kids, but they all fled the area—a son to Connecticut and a daughter to the suburbs of Philadelphia.  When you live in Western Pennsylvania, Philadelphia is like another state.  It is the outskirts of New Jersey, as far as we were concerned.  The relatives from Philly would come visit the day after Thanksgiving and stay for a few days. My uncle Lester had no places to hunt deer in the suburbs, and his family would stay at my aunt’s house and they would deer hunt with us.  The rifle season for deer always began the Monday after Thanksgiving. 

“Let’s go hunt rabbits,” dad would say to me, “And avoid all the commotion.”  Commotion was the right word too.  It wasn’t conflict.  Not exactly.  Though, dad wasn’t far off in saying, “Only your grandmother can turn three houses on its head in one day.”  Most of my memories of Thanksgiving are in the woods, at least after I was old enough to hunt.  Rabbit hunting with my dad always seemed to be a time to relax and be centered.  My father did not have a career.  He had a job. Those were his words. He got paid by the hour, took all the overtime he could get, and dealt with foremen that he referred to by anatomical references rather than their names.  At least they were always parts of the anatomy when he talked about them at home, and more often than not at work too.  When things were bad enough, he would let loose with all the bad words to his boss.

“Get a career,” he would tell me, “Don’t spend your life at a place that makes you miserable and treats you like equipment.  Stick to the books.”

Looking back, it was the sort of misery that brought some satisfaction.  There were years that he made more money than some of the management, simply because he worked so much overtime.  Sometimes it was 80 hours per week for what seemed like forever.  One time, a guy got hurt at work, and it meant he got a couple months of sixteen hour days, seven days a week.  A favorite topic was how many more hours he had put in than anyone else in his department.
When we were afield with dogs chasing rabbits, he was a different person.  He would laugh when I missed rabbits, and he would cheer when I got them.  He wouldn’t even shoot at a rabbit unless I got my limit.  On two separate occasions during my childhood, he took rabbits from my vest and put them in his game vest.  “Go on,” he said, “Go get another one.  We will pretend that I shot this one.”  He would sit on a stump and listen to the chase, puffing on his pipe.  He told me that he could have shot all kinds of rabbits that he let go.  Sure, there were days where I would get my limit and he would shoot one or two.  More often than not, however, he would pull down on my game vest and say, “Four rabbits getting heavy?  That’s enough for today, your mom cooks them for us, but it ain’t her favorite.  I have had enough overtime that she probably won’t cook these ones until you beg for them.”  There were plenty of times that we would have rabbit night.  My dad would invite buddies over from work, some of them had rabbit dogs too.  Rabbit night was always in the backyard, cooking over an open fire.  The guys could drink a beer and tell jokes that were not appropriate for their wives to hear.  The wives were inside having dessert.  A cast iron Dutch oven was utilized as a big frying pan and the rabbits were quartered and cooked in lard or Crisco. The rabbits were breaded and deep fried.  The rabbits shot on Thanksgiving were often eaten this way, after deer season was over, but before Christmas.  We would have a few other big “Bunny Fries” per year too.  It was like a fish fry, but better.  My mom breaded the rabbits in the kitchen.  I carried them outside and got to cook and serve the rabbits to the guys as.  We cooked a few at a time.  Then talk, then a few more rabbits into the pan.

“I just bit into a pellet in the hind quarter!” my uncle Tom, dad’s brother, once yelled, “Bobby, you didn’t lead that one enough!  You shot a bit behind it.” the guys all got a big laugh.”

“That’s not true,” I took my time grabbing a couple hind legs with tongs from the Dutch oven, so I could think of a response, “My dad told me that he shot that one in the butt on purpose, and I was supposed to serve it to you special.”  That got another big laugh.

Dad got burned bad at work once, spent a lot of time in the hospital.  He was hospitalized for bladder cancer a few times too, before his bladder was removed.  Mom cooked rabbit and venison to stretch the money in those times.  I have those memories of rabbit suppers as well.  The “Bunny Fries” and the stretching the money times.  I am not sure my father ever knew about me eating rabbit to stretch the money.  He never went to the bank.  He just gave mom his paycheck, and she signed his name and deposited it.

I came home from college my freshman year for Thanksgiving.  Of course, we went rabbit hunting.  Those were first dogs that I ever owned and were in their prime at five years old.
“Your gram is coming early tomorrow,” dad said, “So we have to leave early too.  You college boys sleep all day?”

I had heard my dad use the term “college boy” countless times in my life.  It was never a compliment.  It referenced guys at work.

“I will be up before you,” I answered.

I could tell that he was happy to see me.  It had been almost three months since I had been home.  I was one of those kids that went to college without a car.  We left at first light and started driving up the hill.  He told me about how well the dogs were chasing rabbits, and all the inside politics of the local beagle club. We went to a place where we had always gone, Gordon’s farm.

“You shoot this place out yet this year?” I asked.
“I haven’t hunted yet this season.  Waiting for you.  Working overtime.” 
I had forgotten how much I missed that hound music over the previous few months.  The first rabbit circled big, into the pines, and back.  It paused along a fence row to look backwards, and I put it in the hunting vest with one shot.

“One circle?” my father yelled, “What are you going to do next, jump shoot them?”

“Let’s do a Bunny Fry Saturday night!” I yelled across the pasture, “But we will need more than one limit of four rabbits!”  I heard him slam the action of his Ithaca pump.  Dad just loaded his gun after one rabbit!

“I thought you only carried that to balance yourself on logs while crossing the creek!” I yelled.  He laughed so hard I could hear it like he was next to me.  He shot the next two rabbits.  I got another one after that.  He shot two more--both were long chases where I had repositioned myself because it never came near me.  Both heard me and ran past my father, The Statue.  He now had his limit.

He walked over to me. “Want me to put one of your rabbits in my vest?” I winked.

“I want you to learn to be still,” he said.  “You should be able to get two more.  Stay still, son.  Statues shoot rabbits.”  That was advice he had given me countless times. 

“I will be back,” I said, “I am going off the farm and into the pines.”

“I will be listening to the dogs from the big log below the pasture.

“The woods rabbits ran big, but they also tended to be less tricky.  My goal was to get in the pines where I could see down an entire row.  The trees were sort of planted in straight lines.  I missed one rabbit on two separate instances.  Then it holed.  The next rabbit fell after one circle.  The fourth rabbit ran back to the farm.  I walked down to the edge of the pines and stood.  I saw dad walking around the groundhog strewn fence line, stomping his feet, to scare the rabbit away from the holes.  I saw the dogs get close to dad, and then they were coming back at me. I got still and was looking into an opening when the rabbit emerged slightly to my left, a good follow through, and I got it.  I leashed the dogs and headed back.

“Thanks for the assist,” I said.

“You scared rabbits to me twice,” he said.  We returned for Turkey, but we were both thinking about rabbits on Saturday night.  Saturday came fast. “College boy, get me a rabbit leg!” and “College boy, grab me a beer!” was yelled by all the guys.  I hunted one day of deer season, without luck, and went back to school.  As it turns out, that would be my dad’s last Thanksgiving.  He died the next August.  I didn’t know the cancer was back, and neither did he.  The doctors thought he had back pain from the arthritis that showed up on the X-rays better than the tumor did. Before he died he said, “Hey college boy, get a job better than mine.  Don’t break your back for people that don’t care.”

He died at 64 years of age.  He quit school at 16, worked for a year, then enlisted at 17 years of age to go to WWII.  He returned to work almost 46 years for the same factory and never got to retire.  Thanksgiving, for me, is bittersweet, laced with joyful nostalgia and overwhelming melancholy.  He never got to see me finish college or seminary. I am not sure whatever happened to that Dutch oven, but I think I am going to buy a new one.  I will invite some friends, cook some rabbits in the yard, and wonder what he would think if he knew I had beagles in the house.  I can hear it now.

“College boy, why are them dogs in the house?” 

“I get free rent but the bishop could move me and my wife anytime.  I can’t move a kennel!”
​
“Well, I guess all that book learning never did give you common sense.”

It is peculiar how often we hound owners find ourselves doing something that the rest of the world sees as a lack of accomplishment.  What am I talking about?  Well, I will illustrate the point with a recent phone call.

“Hello?” I answered.
“What’s going on?” A friend, Mike, asked.
“I just picked up dogs and I am headed out of the field,” I turned off the narrow dirt road and onto the wider gravel road, using my cell phone on the speaker function, like I was talking into a CB radio.
“How did you do?” he asked me.
“Man, them dogs just kept running in circles!” I explained as I neared the hardtop road, and debated which way to turn, and which errand to run next.

“I’m sorry to hear that you spent your morning running around in circles,” Mike said.

“No way man,” I decided to turn right and get some more .410 shells before heading to the office, “Running in circles is a good thing.  I got my limit of rabbits.”

My passion is rabbits with beagles, but unless a houndsman is pursuing certain game like coon or bear, which will tree, we are all looking for the dogs to keep running in circles.  It is just that some critters run bigger circles than others.  Where I live, it is not uncommon to get the dogs on what the old timers always called a blue belly rabbit.  They are a little bit smaller, but actually tend to run bigger circles.  When they get out to 400 yards I am always waiting to hear them turn back, hoping they are not on a deer.  These little rabbits are found at higher elevation, within the Appalachian Mountains, and are actually a subspecies of cottontail known as the Appalachian cottontail, Sylvilagus obscurus in Latin.  It just so happens that I live at a higher elevation in the middle of their range, and they are not that obscure in these parts.

Running in circles is one of the best things about the hunt, for me.  I get to hear that beautiful hound music.  I sometimes bump into a certain rabbit hunter that lives close to me, and we never hunt together.  I suppose it is because we have a differing philosophy on the hunt.  He has a beagle, and I am sure that it barks a little bit on rabbits, and it may even keep one moving for a while, but it is not a hound that can consistently circle a rabbit.  That works out for this guy, because for the most part he is jump shooting rabbits as the rabbit is just beginning to run.  When he hunts with his friends, he has them line up in a straight line, walking through the brush shoulder to shoulder, so that when the rabbit emerges, everyone can get a safe shot without shooting each other.  It would seem that the safety of the dog is a distant concern to the opportunity to spend and all afternoon digging lead shot out of the hind quarters of the rabbits.

I remember being a little overzealous to shoot as a kid.  When I was first old enough to hunt, I bought a shotgun with paper route money. Dad had to authorize the purchase. After vetoing a few choices, he approved a bolt action 20 gauge, made by Western Auto. Remember Western Auto?  It was a used gun and cost me $60.

“Why this?” I asked.  Well, maybe I was just downright complaining, now that I think about it.

“First of all,” he patted me on the shoulder, “It fits you.  Secondly, you have three shots but you can’t shoot them too fast.  I was going to make you get that single shot, but this will work too.  It will teach you to be a more selective shooter.” 

This line of thinking made almost no sense to my 12-year-old brain.  Surely a pump gun would be better.  Rabbits are fast, and I was certain that a faster rate of fire was just what I needed.  I still remember my first successful rabbit hunt.  I was waiting, and it squirted out of the goldenrod and ran past me, I turned and tumbled him with one shot.

“Congratulations!” Dad made a big fuss, “You got your first rabbit.”  Soon the dogs were there too, to join in on the celebration.  At the end of my first hunting season, while relaxing in the evening and getting ready to eat fried rabbit, dad asked, “Do you like listening to them hounds?”

“Oh yeah, that is one of my favorite things.”
“What happens if the rabbit passes and you fail to see it?” he asked.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Well,” he sipped his beer, “What happens when you miss?”
“I guess I just wait for another shot?” I scratched my head, wondering where he was headed with all this talk.”
“Exactly,” he slapped me on the back.
“Okay…” I sat confused.

“One more circle,” dad said, “That is what happens, one more circle.  You’ve become a selective shot, and you do not miss all that much, because you have learned not to shoot too far with that bolt action.  It reloads a bit slower.  Next year, I want to see you go the next step and be selective not only in how far you shoot, but avoid those shots where the rabbit is close but has gone past you.  Keep the shot out of the meat.  One more circle isn’t bad.”
Dad rarely killed a rabbit until I got my limit.  In other words, he didn’t shoot too often!  When I turned 16 years old I was legally permitted to hunt by myself, and told my dad that I might like to upgrade my shotgun.

“Fancy autoloader?” he asked.
“I was thinking about a side by side.”
“Ah, he said, that is a wise choice.  First barrel is more open, and you can put different loads in each barrel.  More pattern in your right barrel, more punch in your left.  If the rabbit is a little further, do not be afraid to start with the second barrel.”  We made the trip to the same gun store and I got a double barrel 20 gauge.  It wasn’t the fanciest, but it was my first double barrel.  I have added a 16 gauge A.H. Fox to my collection, which I used for years, and I still do if I anticipate getting into pheasants.  Then, a few years ago, I realized that in the early season, before the frost would knock down the high cover, there were plenty of hunts where I didn’t even see a rabbit.  I could hear them hopping in front of me, but no shot was available. I bought a side by side .410 and I have not regretted it.  I do well, and I just live by the motto of “one more circle” when the rabbit presents a shot that is too far for the .410 shotgun.

On the opening day of this year’s rabbit season, I went to a spot that is very thick, but often gives good chases.  The only way to get a good shot is to stand in the mowed hayfield, and look for the rabbit as it briefly emerges from the brambles, and runs along the edge of the field for distances up to 50 yards or more, and then dives back into the thicket.  I was fully prepared to shoot the rabbit, as it had been running for over 45 minutes and I had not seen it yet, because there are hayfields on either side of the dense cover, and I had setup on the wrong field.  The bunny had been into the open grass on the opposite end of the brush a few times. All at once, I could hear the dogs coming my way.  Suddenly, there was the rabbit, right at my feet, and it ran to my right.  I mounted the shotgun and watched it run straight away, taking big bounding leaps along the border of the field and the briars, sometimes moving further away from the thick cover, zig zagging to attempt to fool the dogs or at least slow them down. I was running two hounds, a father and daughter duo, Duke and Diamond, the little girl being two years old and fully grown, but only 11 inches tall. “One more circle,” I said to myself, and walked all the way down the scent line that the rabbit had run, parallel to the brush, and set up to shoot pictures of my hounds running right at me.  I got a great photo of a beam of morning sun right in front of the dogs, both hounds were in full cry and tonguing on the line.  I then relocated at another location along the border of brush and field and stood statue still to wait for the rabbit. Twenty minutes later, a three inch .410 round delivered a load of # 4 shot and the bunny went into the game bag.
​
I got to thinking about how we never know how many circles there are.  How many more solar circuits do we get?  How many more circles around the sun, and how many more hunting seasons.  I lost my dad to cancer when I was 19, and I still think about him when I run my beagles. I also think of other rabbit hunters who I have known that have gone on to the big briars in the sky.  And the great hounds too.  A long time ago I decided to not have regrets about things left undone.  I have hunted swamp rabbits, mountain cottontails (found only in the Rocky Mountains), New England cottontails, Eastern cottontails, Appalachian cottontails, and varying hare.  I ran a jackrabbit, but it didn’t circle. None of this would make sense to my dad, since we have plenty of rabbits right here, but we never know how many circles remain. So, I have given myself some advice for living:  Give up cable for a year, and get the good gun. Give it up every year, and there is a good hunting trip to be had. Buy the pup.  Let it in the house.  Pack a lunch to work and save the money that will purchase clothes to hunt in any weather. Scratch the dang truck.  Take the vacation. Take a kid hunting.  Let the kid get all the shooting. Oh, and Let it run one more circle.

​I was recently in a hospital waiting room, which is an interesting place to study human behavior.  Let’s face it, no one is there because they are having a great day.  You go there for health concerns.  Frequently, I will travel to do a hospital visit and the parishioner that I am intending to see is having an MRI, or a CAT scan or some other test.  So, I wait in the lobby, rather than not see the person after travelling all that way.  Sometimes it can take a while.  I try to ignore the television, which is often on a channel that features reality TV or some other divisive thing.  People will offer live commentary on the program on the television, I think as a way to reach out to others.  It can be a full living room, and each person is utterly alone as they wait for the doctor to come out with news about their loved one.

“Who in their right mind would do that?” someone will say.

“How about it?” another will answer.  Boom, strangers become friends, or at least social to one another and can fill the time with small talk that temporarily relieves the mind from a downward spiral that is destined to contemplate the worst-case scenario. I try to help people in the waiting room in this fashion.  On this particular day, I picked up a copy of State College Magazine, and browsed the contents.  State College is home of The Penn State University (they insist that you capitalize The) and the town is an interesting mix of academics and what I call regular people.  There was an article on goat yoga.

Now, I am no yoga expert, by any means.  I was challenged to try it once, and it was a series of poses that are held for a length of time.  Eventually they get difficult to hold, because although you aren’t lifting weights, there is a limit to how long you can hold your own body parts in a position.  Remember raising your hand in school, and they would count the hands, and eventually your arm got tired?  Perhaps you have had to do the “dead cockroach” as a punishment on a sports team, where you lay on your back, and hold your arms and legs in the air. I don’t know how long this punishment is supposed to last, but coaches tend to keep you in that position until all four of your limbs quiver, turn to Jell-O, and collapse to the ground.  Then they make you do push-ups. 

So, a yoga expert I am not, but I know that the exercises can be difficult, and like any exercise, you feel relaxed at the end. This article, however, mentioned some summer activities that the State College resident might want to do, and one was a trip to Carlisle, Pennsylvania, where you can do yoga with 10 miniature goats running around you.  The article quoted an expert on Goat yoga, and she said that it is just like regular yoga, except you might have a goat sneeze in your face or poop on your mat.  Get this, you only have to pay $35 to have an hour of goat mucus in your face and turds under your body.  So, that sounds like a real deal there.  That one hour experience is limited to a class of 30.  The article didn’t say why the class was limited to 30, but I would presume that each goat probably has a limit of snot and poo.  30 would make a 3 people to 1 goat ratio, and that probably ensures that each person gets to really smell a goat and get their full $35 worth of goat yoga.  The owner makes $1,050.00 in that hour, which is a good wage.

I only know a few people that do yoga regularly, and both are prone to go on an all juice diet at times. They will make juice out of any combination of things, often vegetables.  I tried the juice once, when a gal that works with my wife, Renee, stopped by at supper time.  We were having a cookout, but she was a vegan and brought her own food.  The juice was part of a cleanse.  She was kind of an evangelist for veganism, and brought samples for everyone to try.  Have you ever drunk V-8 Juice?  This stuff was nothing like that.
“How is it?” She asked me.
“What is it supposed to taste like?” I asked.
“What do you taste?”
“Garlic,” I said.
“Yeah, that helps the taste a lot,” she said, “It is cabbage, celery, lettuce, and spinach.”
“Those things all taste good,” I said.
“But it can be kinda tasteless once you remove the pulp.  You get mostly water on the other side.  I had an onion infused version for lunch.”
“Good thing you and my wife do a lot of work online, with all the garlic and onions, you might really stink up a room,” I said.
“What?” she looked perturbed.
“Not me, I love garlic.  But it can be hard when I visit people.  I used to eat raw leeks as a kid.  They grew right next to the school.  They taste like a mixture of onions and garlic.  At recess, we would go the woods line, eat some, and get sent home from school for smelling bad.”
“I have had leeks from the store, and they do not taste like that.”
“These grow in the wild, in the spring, and are sometimes called ramps,” I explained.
“I need some of those for my juice.”
“I will give you some next year.”
“Can I go with you?”
“I don’t know.  I try not to share the spots where they grow.  If they are over harvested, they will not grow back.  People that use then as a side dish will often pick too many.  Why, you are basically planning to live on liquefied leeks for a month.  I will get you a good batch.  Nothing personal.”  Needless to say, she took it personal.

Renee knows another yoga enthusiast who is not a vegan.  She will eat eggs, and at times fish.  She will occasionally eat chicken, the way that some people will occasionally eat a steak. Her name is Sue.

“You do the juice cleanses?” I asked her.
“No,” she said, “I prefer salads and utilize a coffee cleanse.”
“I hear ya.” I said, “Coffee has that effect on me too.”
“You don’t understand,” Sue said.
“I do too,” I said, “It isn’t a polite topic for adults to discuss, but a lot of people have to go do number two after having coffee.”
“It is a coffee colonic cleanse,” she said.
“Pardon me?”
“It is a coffee cleanse utilizing an enema,” she said.  I was speechless.  “What are you thinking?” she asked me.
“I am guessing you have to let the coffee cool off first,” I said, and that was the end of the conversation.

But, I got to thinking about it, and I could probably start a Beagle Yoga. I wouldn’t be as greedy, I would only charge $20 per person.  However, anyone that knows a beagle knows that they can easily give attention to 5 people at least.  So, my class would still have 30 students.  They would set their mats on the ground inside my fenced yard.  Next, I would pulverize 4 bags of the Snausage dog treats.  My dogs love those.  I would then scatter the Snausage dust all around the yoga mats.  That is going to guarantee some face to face time with a beagle. Heck, it might even ensure some massive tail wags against your face if you are in one of those positions where your head is on the ground.
​
The overexcitement from the favorite treat would no doubt induce some reverse sneezing that beagles are known for.  The reverse sneeze would be just as amazing as the goats’ forward sneeze, but you would not get your face wet.  While I doubt that the beagles would poop on a mat, I can obviously just not clean the yard on the day before the class.  This might ensure that a couple random yogis would put their mats on top of some processed Purina.
The goat yoga website also mentioned that they have a goat yoga/wine tasting event as well.  That involves hauling the goats to a winery, and they can combine goat yoga and wine.  It costs $50 each.  Again, I think I can come in at a better price.  For $40, I will take you to the woods and you get to listen to the beagles chase rabbits.  The sound of hounds chasing would be the elevated version, better than watching them eat snacks.  The $40 is a steal, because everyone knows that I will be there for more than an hour.  We will do this yoga class at dawn.  When we get done running dogs, I will have coffee for everyone.  Use it however you want…   

 
Last may brought a revelation to me.  May is the last month of school in many places, though it may continue into June a few days. I was surprised to learn that it is also Teen Self-Esteem Month.  The reason that I was surprised, is because when I was a teenager the presumption was that teens had too much self-esteem, also known as hubris.  Let me give you a for instance.
            When I was a teenager I would carry four bags of dog food at once.  This was back when all dog food companies sold it in fifty pound bags.  I would put one bag on each shoulder, and carry one in each hand.  It was easy.  Just for the record, they were probably 55-pound bags. Anyway, I would do that at the beagle club of my youth and the old timers would say, “You are doing good, but any kid your age can do that.”
            Do you see how that is not a compliment?  It just means that any buffoon can carry dog food.  This was back when a kid like me, who didn’t make varsity sports, was still forced to do tough time in chores. My dad was a firm believer that kids should work. Firewood was a big part of my life. Naturally, I appealed to my mom for help.   “Mom,” I said, “I have split enough wood for this winter and next.  Can’t you put a good word in for me?  Maybe dad will let me get a break?”
            “Sure,” she said, “I already cleared it with him.  You are free from wood.  You will work for my mom.”
            My gram was a tyrant.  She always had a plan to survive the next Great Depression.  She lived through The Great Depression, and was convinced that it was coming back to wipe us all out.  So, she made her grandkids gather food.  There were fiddleheads in the early spring, wild leeks in April, and berries all summer.  By the time I was 15 years old, she had acquired 3 freezers.  These were all kept full of food. In the spring, I was sent to catch trout.  Trout were both wild and tame.  The tame trout were stocked by the state for people to catch with ease, and the wild ones were found high in the hills.  She would send me to catch the tame ones first.
            “Don’t come home without a limit!” she would yell.  The tame trout were fed pellets all year where they were raised, and I would catch them with cork, cut to look like the pellets the fisheries fed them.  I would go to the neighbor and beg for his corks, and cut them into the same shape of the pellets that were fed to the farm raised trout.  The pellets looked like Tylenol capsules.
            “Hey George,” I’d yell from the porch.
            “What?” George would yell from inside his house, his screen door locked but letting the wind inside.
            “I need some cork!” I would yell.
            George walked to the door.  Actually, he staggered. “Is there enough on the porch?” he said.
            A quick look showed dozens of wine bottles strewn across the porch floor.  A closer examination revealed the corks, which he had thrown into the far corners, and stepped upon.
            “Yeah,” I said, “I can use those!”
            “Good,” he said, “Come back later. I need you to deliver some things.”
            “Okay!” I yelled.
            I took the corks, made some “feed pellets” and caught trout.  I caught my limit, and returned home.  My gram said, “Well, not bad, but they are all barely big enough to be legal.”
            Fast forward to my early days as a step-father.  My stepson, Wes, caught a trout. “Nice job!” I shouted.
            “What?” my wife, Renee, standing next to us, said to me.
            “I congratulated him,” I said.
            “Not enough!” she fumed.
            “What do you mean?” I asked.
            “He has been trying for three weeks to catch that trout,” she whispered in my ear.
            “I know,” I said, “I think the fish he caught might be brain damaged.”
            “You need to make a bigger fuss,” she whispered and waved her arms. I looked her in the eyes.  Her stare were serious.
            “Gee whiz, lad,” I exclaimed, “That is the biggest fish I ever saw!”  I grabbed the 8” trout and put it on the bank.
            “Really?” he yelled.
            “Sure,” I said, “I have never seen one like it!”
            Back in my youth, the tame trout would be caught, and the weather would get hot.  The only remaining trout were found high in the hills, in spring fed streams that stayed cold all summer and remained ice-free all winter.  Gram sent me there next. One shadow across the water scared them away. I tried an assortment of bait—corn, crawfish tails, worms, and live minnows.  Minnows worked best.  I would come home with three wild, savvy trout.  Maybe just two.  Sometimes, only one.  It was tough to get a limit on those wild browns and native brook trout.
            “Not bad,” she would say.  That was high praise.  She would fillet them and put them in the freezer.
            “I see you got all As and a B on your report card,” My mom said to me one time.
            “Thanks,” I said.
            “What’s up with the B?” mom asked, “It was in Reading class? You read all the time.  You should’ve got an A there too.”
            Self-esteem was seen as a sin, really.  You should always do better.  That was what confused me when I got married.  My stepson went to high school with constant monitoring.  Had we wanted to, we could track what classroom he was in, what tests he took, and where he went wrong.  I never tracked him on the computer, as I could have done, in part because I did not know how to do it.  But the school called at times.  And sent emails.  One day, I got two emails.  One said he was flunking two classes at the midpoint of the grading period.  The other said that He owed money in the cafeteria.  He was eating $7 dollars of food per day, and apparently flunking classes where he was testing well but not doing his homework.
            “School sent emails,” I told my wife.
            “What did they say,” she said.
            “Apparently, his best class is lunch,” I shrugged my shoulders.
            “Well,” she said, “You support him and say something nice.
            “Okay,” I said.
            Wes got home from school, and I said, “You’re a good eater lad, that’s good   Keep getting nutrition.”  This was also when he got certificates every day, celebrating every achievement.  He got ribbons too.  I took him fishing one day for stocked trout, and I tore apart an old cork bulletin board to make bait.
            “What are you doing?” he said.
            “I am making a lure to look like the food they feed tame fish,” I said.  I took him out and he was catching fish left and right with the cork.
            I started to think about George.  How he made me go back to his house after I took his corks.  When I got to his house, he gave me bottles of homemade wine to deliver to people in the neighborhood.  They gave me money, and I took it back to George.  There was grape wine, dandelion wine, strawberry wine, and others.  It took three hours to do deliver it.
            “Here’s the money,” I told George.
            “Thanks,” he said, and gave me $10.
            It seems surreal now.  A little kid, delivering wine, and catching trout.  I was still thinking it over when Wes tugged on my arm, “Look at that trout!” he said.
            “Man, that is a whopper,” I said.
            “Biggest you ever seen?” he grinned a smile that lacked a few teeth.
            “You bet,” I said.  I am not sure where all this self-esteem is leading us, but seeing a kid fishing makes my day.