The Grass is Always....Hmmm.
Like so many people out there, I LOVE animals. It’s almost a sickness. Once, in trying to rescue a spider, I ended up killing the poor thing. I vowed then to never interfere with Mother Nature again. I did anyway, trying to save a baby cricket from my cat, Einstein. That time I succeeded. Of course I have friends who make fun of me because, after all, they are just insects. "It's not like the have feelings."I just don’t see them that way. Recall the IKEA commercial about the red lamp? (Yes, an odd segue, but it will all make sense soon.) Click on the title of this post if you want to view the commercial.
A woman in a rather IKEA-looking apartment unplugs a little red lamp. She hauls it outside, where the weather is windy and wintry, and leaves it on the sidewalk, with the trash, as pitiful music plays. The lamp looks oddly human. As it starts to rain, the lamp seems sad and pitiful, particularly because we can see the woman in her warm apartment above, enjoying the company of a new lamp. Viewers see through the eyes of the lamp, which mourns its demise while a spiffy replacement glows in the window. This goes on for a while. Eventually you want to weep. Right then a man appears out of the darkness and addresses the camera in a silly-sounding Nordic accent. "Many of you feel bad for this lamp," he says, as the rain soaks him. "That is because you're crazy. It has no feelings! And the new one is much better." He departs. The ad ends with the IKEA logo.
Did you notice that the lamp is standing straight up at the beginning of the spot but it’s looking down at the end? Yes, I almost cried, too. And I was one of the people who felt sorry for the lamp. So you kinda get the idea.
This brings me to the deer on the PA Turnpike (back to that topic again). I’m VERY concerned about them. They get WAY too close to the road in the morning when they are eating. And I really don’t understand why. There is plenty of grass between the road and the fence that they come through. Why can’t they eat that? It does beg the question of how animals know the good grass from the bad grass. It makes sense to me that the mums in my garden at home taste better then grass (which is why they keep eating them, bad deer!)….but what differentiates good grass from bad…especially grass along the Turnpike where the stuff closest to the road has all the soot, smog and road grime on it? It’s madness, I tell you. I wonder if it has anything to do with people peeing on the side of the road. They don't pee right near the edge of the highway, they go back off the road a bit. Might be onto something there.
As you can tell, this bothers me a great deal. The adult deer are teaching the little baby deer bad habits. To me, it’s like a parent teaching a child to cross the street without looking – and why would anyone do that?
Now these deer in the picture are wandering safely in Valley Forge Park, where they should be. I don’t know how to communicate with these let’s-throw-caution-to-the-wind deer who stand right next to the highway. I’m reduced to screaming at them each morning as I drive by, “Get back from the road, you silly animals, you’re going to get hurt!” If they are behaving and eating a safe distance from the road, I just say good morning to them.
Life on the Turnpike, it’s more involved then you thought.
posted by Cherry Indigo (Cindy) @ 8/05/2005 09:45:00 PM
1 Comments:
LOL! The air horn WOULD be funny, wouldn't it? I have a small one from New Year's....I need a Turnpike size airhorn. GREAT suggestion!
But I play my iPod in the car all the time....if 1500+ songs can't distract me, I'm not sure what else can.
:)
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