Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Escapees


My husband, let's call him Bob, has some completely adorable habits; at least, I keep telling myself they are adorable. He's a larger than life kind of person and everything he does, he does with gusto. He's passionate about so many things and could never narrow his interests to just one hobby. And when he takes up a hobby, he does it in a big way. He scurries to obtain every piece of literature ever written about the new activity, subscribes to all the appropriate magazines and acquires all the pertinent catalogs. Next he procures all the necessary equipment and "costumes" that are associated with these activities.

Hunting is one of the earlier interests that he took up and thanks to Cabela's, he owns camo costumes in patterns designed for every season and every region. In our old house his camo collection consumed an entire closet. Also, thanks to Cabela's, he owns a very impressive spread of life size goose decoys. These were items that he managed to obtain very quietly and over a long period of time and he managed to spread them throughout several different storage areas so I never fully appreciated the size of this gaggle.

When we moved to our new house a year ago, a small portion of the flock came with us, but the bulk of it remained in a storage unit that we'd rented in Pennsylvania. Just recently we decided that it was time to consolidate all the "stuff" that was spread amongst three different storage units and we towed our enclosed trailer to PA to round up the birds. That's when I really had my eyes opened! We spent the entire weekend shuttling goose decoys around with the ultimate goal of storing them all in the enclosed trailer and I was beginning to think they wouldn't all fit. Finally I came right out and asked Bob just how many decoys he owned. In an almost inaudible voice he meekly answered, "200." I almost couldn't speak, which was just as well.

We finally managed to incarcerate the gaggle within the confines of the trailer and get the door shut and then we parked the trailer in yet another storage yard and came back home. When we returned to the house I discovered, to my horror, two decoys who'd managed to escape their prison sentence. So, as you can see, they've been pressed into service for the holidays.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

OMG, I just had to read the entire story after seeing the birds in your yard. (They look adorable by the way). However, you should be extremely grateful that it is only 2 and not the 200. I would keep a close eye on that Bob of yours. I don't think he is finished with them yet.

Susan

Anonymous said...

Same here. Very festive! Judy