Walking in the woods recently, I walked up on a small clearing in the middle of a thicket. A hole was near the center of it and when I looked into it I could not see the bottom. There was no dirt piled nearby, no sign of any recent digging.

I dropped a small rock in the hole and listened for the sound of it reaching the bottom. No sound. I found a rock about the size of my fist, dropped it into the hole. No sound, nothing.

I dragged a railroad tie that was lying nearby and with great difficulty, I heaved the tie into the hole end first. I lost my balance as it disappeared into the hole and I fell to my hands and knees overlooking the hole. As I listened for a sound, my attention was grabbed by a billy goat bursting from the brush, head down and charging directly toward me. At the instant before he would have hit me, he suddenly jumped down into the hole, soundlessly.

Stunned and confused are not adequate terms for what I felt at that moment. For an undetermined amount of time, I just stood there in the clearing, deep in the woods, trying to grasp what I had just experienced. As they said about Mary, I was pondering these many things.

Finally, a man wearing a blue hat stepped into the clearing. Before I could say anything, he said, "Have you seen my goat? I roped him to a railroad tie somewhere around here."

(Message edited by blissman on September 28, 2008)

Very entertaining. And much more fun than watching our Congress swindle a bailout.

Jag