Trip to the countryside

So, nature boy, what have you seen?

I have seen a fox. I startled the fox, but it didn't seem very startled. The fox looked more as if it was calmly retimetabling a dinner appointment.

I have seen the bunny that the fox wanted for his tea. The bunny looked like Thumper but deader. Prepped for Reynard, a crimson medal proud on his puffed chest; a transfer of lippie on cotton wool. If you caint say nuthin nice, don't say nuthin at all, unThumped his last. Reynard said nuthin at all: actions, words, volume.

I have seen pylons linked across the landscape, noticed their shiny bits, not just their matte grey bits.

I have seen swans and their ugly cygnets. I gave them no chance to break my limbs with a single beat of their wings.

I have seen butterflies, that I played chicken with. I am the king of butterfly chicken, but I don't always win. Some butterflies force the lose-lose/win-win/tie, like the computer playing noughts and crosses in WarGames: Mutual Assured Indestruction. Nick Berry plaintively sang 'Every Loser Wins'. He was wrong.

I have seen dragonflies, but dragonfly chicken is different. Dragonflies, even the flirty blue ones with their winking lingerie wings, exist in a different temporal plane, flitting, jaunting in and out of vision and space. They have probably visited far off times and places in other dimensions in the time it takes one oaf-stride to land desire-pathwards.

I have seen a mallard that, effortful flapping, rushed skywards, said 'Duck!' and thought of Groucho Marx (me not the mallard).

I have seen Wind-in-the-willowsy riverbanks and checked them here and there for submerged bodies, peering up at me, naked probably (the bodies and me), but didn't see any. I didn't have the dredging equipment or the dredging inclination to explore deeper, more thoroughly.

I have seen horses (2). One trying to open a fence, failed. The other trying to eat grass, succeeded. This is nearly a joke, but isn't one. Except of the 'it's funny cos it's true' variety. Not all true things are funny, ask unThumper.