Wild Animals

My husband is really clever, very creative and can be quite funny when he chooses. Tonight's offering is about his "Herd" in Montana. Check out the zebras:

Every year my husband goes up to Montana to spend time on the "Ranch"--28 acres 50 miles outside the East Gate of Yellowstone Park and 20 miles west of Livingston, Montana, in the Paradise Valley. Emigrant, Montana is a sweet place to land. There is a post office, a monument to Mary (as in Mary who is Jesus' mother), a resort, and a bar. The property lies along the Yellowstone River. You can look across the river as you are driving down the highway and gaze at the house.

Last year my husband and his friend, Paul, went up and made a giraffe out of wood that stands in the grass and as you drive down the highway, you see this giraffe grazing. One lonely giraffe. As all really intelligent people know, giraffes live in families of three--not one. Our giraffe is lonely. While I don't have a picture of the giraffe, I do have pictures of the friends who will be joining him this year. Look at the zebras joining the herd. Now they aren't giraffes, but they are two more wild animals. Do you think the giraffe will notice???? The zebras are only paper now, but in August will make their debut after being made of wood, just like their giraffe friend. The paper images are up on our garage wall--you can partially see the bear.

The bear is real, although it is now a rug mounted on our garage wall. That darn bear prevents us from going to one of those electronic garage doors that everyone else has. If we changed the garage door, where would we put the bear???? It is a genuine black bear, protected here in California. Our cousin, Debbie, was married to Steve, the sheriff. He went out hunting and shot the bear and had it mounted on brown felt. They got a divorce and Steve moved to California (from....Montana--how did you guess??) where he couldn't find a job and was running out of money. Steve decides to sell the bear. He put an advertisement in the newspaper and someone called. It was a guy from the Department of Fish and Game who shared the information that the bear, while being hunted everywhere else, not only couldn't be hunted, the poor bear couldn't be sold here either. My in-laws inherited the bear, Steve got a job as a prison guard at Pelican Bay Prison and we all lived happily ever after, until my in-laws sold their cabin and had no place for the bear. My husband was overjoyed to have the bear. I know from experience that bears are not soft--their hair is really coarse.

The only "problem" with all of this is that we will have to wait another year to see what else might pop up!