October 2014 - Rodents in Motion

The wet cloak of Fall sits over our valley, stifling light and sound. We wake to a dawn that can’t break, muffled chirps of birds, and the air so full of cold water that invisible droplets tickle our faces. Trees that were blazing with colors look muted now, their leaves suspended in the heavy stillness.  

Another sure sign of Fall: the rodents are in motion. All summer they have been hiding in the grass, leaves and hollowed trees, content with food, but now frost nips at their backsides and tells them to find a new place. The scent of a skunk drifts through our windows at night. A porcupine shakes its spears in the middle of the road. Squirrels scamper back and forth. One morning, we find a pink and grey possum on the lawn, a victim of our shepherd’s vigilance.  The rodents search for their winter dens as we stack firewood and load a year’s cache of sweet second-cut hay. 

Only the grass in our East pasture doesn’t know. A long, glossy green velvet, it sends tender shoots into October. The sheep watch us and bleat as we set their fence around the perimeter of a new pie-slice of field. Let us at it, let us have one last taste of summer.  We secure their shelter against the hurricane winds of autumn and wonder how far we will be able to get across this field, how many weeks of rotation, before the frost yellows this grass too and the sheep will have to return to the barn.