An Eventful Twilight.

This evening’s stroll was remarkable for being surrounded by uncharacteristic busy-ness. I don’t usually see anybody in the evenings, but tonight there was a lot of traffic about, both vehicular and pedestrian.

I was curious to know why a man who lives at the bottom of the lane was sitting in his car with the engine running at the top of the lane, poking and stroking his smart phone. Why didn’t he wait until he got home? Was he, perhaps, texting the Other Woman, or am I projecting my own disreputable nature onto some poor innocent?

Why was the woman I frequently see in the morning out walking her dog approaching me at 7pm instead on the same errand? She said it was because the dog was becoming a bit loopy in its old age, but you can never tell, can you? It’s possible she was just trying to avoid me and failing miserably in the attempt.

Why did the unfamiliar woman in the unfamiliar car smile and wave at me as though she knew me when I hadn’t a clue who she was? And there was the man out walking his two unfamiliar dogs who did the same thing. I hadn’t a clue who he was either. Same with the woman riding a horse – the smile, the wave, the nice-to-see-you ‘hello.’ Who was she? I don’t know.

And it all started when I found myself following a woman I do know walking down the lane ahead of me. She waddles quickly on very short legs, but her gait is only about nine or ten inches so she looks like a cyclist peddling frantically in low gear and only managing about ½ a mile an hour. I had to stop three times and pretend to be studying the trees so as not to catch up with her.

But the best was the deep, surprisingly loud bellowing sound I heard coming from a field on the other side of the little wood at the top of the lane. It was a sound I’d never heard in these parts (or any other parts, come to that) and I really did entertain the notion that it might have been a bear escaped from captivity somewhere in the surrounding area. (It does happen, you know. There are people who keep exotic, and quite dangerous, pets at their homesteads, and there are plenty of relatively remote farmhouses in this area where such an animal might go unnoticed.)

But I had to find out, didn’t I, so I went through the wood to investigate. Now, it is a fact that creeping through a wood in the near darkness of advanced twilight can be a little unnerving when you’re entertaining the notion that there might be a bear on the other side of it. But I decided it was unlikely and so my nerve held. I discovered that it was nothing more than a horse in a field which hasn’t entertained a horse since old Ben died several years ago. Mystery solved, but why was it impersonating a bear instead of whinnying nicely as horses usually do?