This gorgeous painting is by Sidney-Moonchild.

The current score is:

Bobcat – 9
Me – 0

Last night I didn’t get home until well after dark. So that meant the hens and the lone goose hadn’t been locked up safe in the henhouse, because I secure the birds (you start talking like this after a few years of being married to a former Navy submariner) when I get home, which is generally before dark. After Dennis did the count, we knew that old bobcat had snagged another one of the Rhode Island Reds.

She was such a good layer, I mused, shaking my head, peering into the empty nests amidst the sole survivor goose who was marching back and forth with his chest thrust out like a prizefighter, honking, and the chickens twisting their heads to eyeball me, reporting cluck cluck cluck in a feather ruffled frenzy.

The tenacious heeler dogs were all rattled up. Lila couldn’t stop pacing the house. Something had gotten beneath her speckled skin, but unfortunately she couldn’t breathe a word. If I could let the heelers run at will around the place, which I can’t because of the road, I imagine they’d have run that marauder off by now. Sent his bobtail skittering across the railroad tracks and back to where he belongs.

This morning my draft horse Toby came plodding towards me, lifting each big hoof methodically and putting it down, one in front of the other, until we were nearly nose to nose, and I stood there betting that the 1,800-pound picture of placid domestication had been witness to nine heinous murders in my barnyard. He sighed. Heavily.

I had some friends in Santa Fe whose house was robbed years ago. And since they figured their yellow lab was the only witness, they called in an animal psychic. Well, actually, they had the animal psychic call their yellow lab on the phone (at this point in their story over dinner, I can tell you I was having a hard time maintaining my poker face), after which the animal psychic provided them with a detailed description of the robber.

Well, that robber was never caught.

Years ago I was riding my rawboned, cow-detesting appaloosa mare Lacey Jay down the Pojoaque creek when we came upon a woman who was walking alone. She had the contrived look of a Santa Fe seeker about her in her pressed gypsy skirt, too new cowboy boots, ruffled shirt and all that lustrous golden hair tied back in a fringey scarf. She was using a walking stick that was at least a head taller than she was. Kind of like Gandalf’s from The Lord of the Rings.

So I wasn’t too surprised, after we’d exchanged a few pleasantries, when the seeker woman placed her hands on each side of Lacey Jay’s polka dotted head, stared deep into the mare’s white sclera-rimmed eyes—which generally gave the uninformed pause, thinking the horse was some kind of bug-eyed bronc, which really wouldn’t have been all that far off—and then shut her own tight, for a good long time. I sat back in the saddle, slightly confused and not wanting to be rude, gathered up the reins, and hoping the testy mare wouldn’t bite during what looked like some kind of New Age mind meld. And just as Lacey Jay was about to get real annoyed (I could feel the piss and vinegar twisting right up her spine towards a mouth full of big yellow teeth), that lady let go and simply walked off.

If only they could talk.