“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.
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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…