On The Road Again

A Grey Area hit the road again recently and racked up over 3,500 clicks in a week. That’s not bad going for someone with attention deficit look over there! As usual though, such trips raise issues and questions that need addressing.

First, the planking craze has reached our wildlife. We saw hundreds of different animals planking on the side, sometimes even in the middle, of the road. When will the madness end?

Second, when are lambs supposed to appear? We saw thousands of little lambs and it doesn’t feel like spring to me. Has someone been telling me porkies about when lambs spontaneously generate? Is it like that horse’s birthday thing where someone just nominated a date but it’s not actually the day that all horses were born?

And talking of horses, third, how do you know when to put a jacket on a horse? I saw some horses that were fairly formally dressed with coats on, and others that were just standing around in their all-together.  What was the difference? Are these the horse latitudes I‘ve heard so much about? And what are ponies for? We saw quite a few ponies and I can’t work out what you would do with them other than maybe put a few of them on a skewer and make pony-kebab.

We saw quite a few llamas. One of them looked like he was wearing shorts. He was all white except for black hind-quarters and a bit down his back legs. Brilliant. The llama led to a conversation where nature helpfully pitched in with props to illustrate my point.

I mentioned that I’d read somewhere that llamas make good watch-animals for sheep. Apparently they’re inquisitive, territorial and not particularly afraid of stuff. Emergency Contact said, “But wouldn’t a fox just jump on a llama’s back and bite its head off?”

“They’re not wolves, they’re only that big,” I answered, as a fox ran across the road in front of us. It was the first fox I’d seen that wasn’t flat out planking and his timing was immaculate. Thank you, Mr Fox. Buon appetito.