A few years back, Linda, Chelsea, and I went on a fall hunting expedition up to the Peace River country in northeastern British Columbia. Each […]

Ahhhhh! Wood tick!

The scream sent the three of us for separate parts of the travel trailer, stripping off jeans and shirts as we scampered to do body searches and shake out our clothes. The trailer was rockin’ and rollin’ as the three of us were soon jumping on one leg trying to extricate ourselves from tight sweaty jeans. By the time I had managed to strip off my jeans and t-shirt, the shower was already running. One of the girls had beaten me. I got relegated to shake out clothes and to stand last in the shower line. Chelsea and Linda got the task of fine combing Bud the Lab. In the end, we found over a dozen of the eight-legged little beasts on us, three embedded in flesh, and still more slinking around the trailer days after our initial episode. And all this from just a half-hour walk on the trail around Kiche Manitou Lake in southern Manitoba’s Spruce Woods Provincial Park.

I know it will seem a bit odd, like a guy dressed in jeans, Pendleton wool shirt and a Stetson hat listening to Mozart. But I can’t help it; my favourite spring pastimes are bird watching and bear hunting. I guess you could call me oxymoronic, a word I concocted to describe myself as a character of contradictions. But to me, bear hunting and bird watching are completely compatible. I always do them together. And so early one May morning, I found myself sleuthing around the edge of one of my favourite meadows, bird-watching binoculars slung around my neck and bear-hunting cannon slung over my shoulder.

“What on earth was that?” said my son Halden. He had his head sucked into his shirt collar like a turtle.

“I am not sure,” I said. I was in the act of desperately trying to collect my thoughts along with a spilled glass of shiraz and a particularly good bit of sharp cheese that was scattered all over the deck. I carefully raised my head to peer over the railing of the sundeck just in time to watch the author of our dive-bombing pull off an unbelievable aerobatic manoeuvre. He veered right and then left before bashing a wee sparrow to the ground. Instantly swooping up, down, and around in helicopter-like fashion, he grabbed the stunned sparrow with his talons and proceeded to wherever he was holding his dinner party. We had just been had by the grim reaper of the bird feeder.

[caption id="attachment_2979" align="alignnone" width="445" caption="illustration by Barry Falls"][/caption]

A year or so ago, as in-country missionaries, Linda, Chelsea, Bud the Lab and I were asked to do two weeks of mission deputation to parts of Ontario. Our task was to share our mission work with the church and to promote Presbyterians Sharing. Not being one who relishes anything that smacks of a boondoggle in the name of Christ, I found the deputation tour ended up being a real eye-opener. I thought it might be time, in an attempt at being prophetic, to share my journal entry upon our return.

“Oh my goodness!” exclaimed Chelsea. My eyelids slammed open with such speed and force that they momentarily shifted my eyebrows high enough up my balding pate to qualify them as hair implants. I looked across the bed at Linda, who was desperately trying to get her eyes open and free herself from Bud's embrace so she could run into the living room to see what on earth was the matter. Both Linda and I were trying to speedshift our minds through every possible emergency that could happen in and outside of our house. And then Chelsea continued: “What's a moose doing in our back yard?”

Moments later the four of us were peering out of our picture window through the soft winter light of dawn at a large cow moose. Obviously heavy in calf, she was standing in the middle of a grove of Saskatoon berry bushes just a few metres from our deck. Bud uttered a low guttural Lab opinion concerning the propriety of the situation. “Shut up, Bud,” I said. “You'll spook that old swamp donkey and we are not through spying on her yet.”

I got the call on Monday. She said her husband had passed away a couple of days before and she couldn't find a preacher to come out to her rural community to do the funeral. Her sister-in-law had told her about me.

Saturday found me and Larri in the local Legion set up on a stage opposite the bar. As a troubadour for the Lord, most often it's just me and my guitar representing Christ and his church in these rural, remote Cariboo communities. There was a sizeable crowd out, about 150, a good portion of the surrounding community. I had worked hard over the past days travelling out to the community, getting to know the deceased, his family and some of his friends, and developing the service. In true Presbyterian fashion though, most of my efforts had gone into my sermon. I was convinced that my exposition of the biblical text was just what everyone needed to hear. And so Larri and I launched into the first hymn, country style.

“How come you're eating two bowls?” Linda scowled at me over the top of her half-reading glasses. “You don't usually eat even one full bowl of my pea soup.”

"That loony chick ain't going to make it!" I said to Linda. It was a cold November day and I was watching a particularly small teenage loon out of our front room window. It had been born late in the spring; hence its diminished size and my concern.

Last October, we were driving home from our house church in Williams Lake on a Sunday afternoon. Just before we got to our turnoff on Highway 97, just before the infamous 127 Mile corners, two brand new Smart Cars came up behind us and passed us. They must have been doing at least 120 kilometres per hour because we were sifting along pretty fast ourselves. Each car was painted with logos of several different sponsors. Their little motors were screaming as they passed us on their way to some promotional event. Each driver seemed to be pumping on the pedals for all he was worth. And they were travelling about three Smart Car lengths apart too, which is really close.

The young cowboy looked like death warmed over. His face was pale, his eyes sunken into black holes, his walk revealing constant pain and his facial expression locked somewhere between terror and dread. That's not what made him stand out though. Lots of rodeo cowboys look just like that, particularly before getting on their ride. What made this guy stand out were his superstitious incantations, which made him a bull rider.

"That's strange," said Chelsea. "

A couple of years back, a red squirrel moved into our doghouse. He is a charming, cheeky little fella and I like him very much. Shortly after moving in, he filled our large, insulated doghouse with cones and twigs and built a tunnel system under the entire fenced dog run. I think the tunnel system is filled with cones as well. I am not sure why he did this, because he appears to dine out almost exclusively at our perpetually stocked bird feeders.

I am not one prone to enjoy what I consider the trashy touristy things in life, so it was with a real sense of reluctance that I agreed to visit there at all. However, She Who Must be Obeyed (both of them) insisted that we take the time during our Ontario deputation tour to visit Niagara Falls.

I am not sure if it was all the unresolved pastoral concerns we were leaving behind, or if we were all burned out from months […]

March comes in as winter and then it goes to the birds, at least in our neck of the woods. Ever since my pubescent period, […]

Grandma was raised an Anglican; Grandpa not so much. He was raised a Methodist but I don't think Grandma ever held it against him. All […]

WHAM!

Just before Christmas, as executor of my late father's will, I started the process of making application for compensation benefits for armed services veterans who were used as human guinea pigs in a top-secret chemical warfare testing program. The program went on in this country from 1941until the 1970s at two locations. As a soldier, Dad was used as a human guinea pig several times at Suffield, Alta., during the Second World War. Acknowledgement of the top-secret program was forced on our government after a class action lawsuit by victims seeking redress for illness related to the testing. Dad died in 2000 after a tragic battle with ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease. It was the last of many diseases that plagued him, particularly in the last 15 years of his life. (Were they a result of the chemical testing? We will never know. In the legal world you have to surrender a lot in order to win.)