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Books About Life on a Farm Written Especially for People Who Like to Read! "Highly recommended reading." The Midwest Book Review Reviews & Readers' Comments |
LeAnn R. Ralph Rural Route 2 Author E6689 970th Ave. Colfax, WI 54730 (715) 308-6336 |
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by LeAnn R. Ralph When storm clouds gather and thunder begins to rumble in the distance, I start to get nervous. I suppose growing up in an old farmhouse where fireballs exploded from outlets during thunderstorms has something to do with it. Our two dogs don't like storms, either. I guess that's not so strange, though, because many dogs are afraid of thunderstorms. But no dog I've ever met comes close to predicting an approaching storm the way our old farm dog could. Needles, the Cocker Spaniel/Spitz mix we acquired when I was six, possessed an uncanny sense about storms. As an inside/outside dog, Needles usually went outside with Dad. However, on one particular morning - a bright, clear summer morning with not a cloud in sight - he stayed inside when Dad went out to finish the chores after breakfast. While Mom and I cleared the breakfast dishes, Needles sat under the table, bolt upright, panting and trembling, a worried expression on his face. He kept glancing back and forth between Mom and me. "What's wrong with the dog?" I asked, as I observed his behavior. Clearly something was bothering him. "I don't know," Mom replied, as she moved to the sink and began washing the dishes. Needles looked at me. Then he looked at my mother. He crept out from under the table and followed Mom to the sink where he positioned himself between my mother and the cupboard. He peeked around Mom's knees, still panting, trembling and looking worried. The end of his long, fringed creamy-white tail twitched ever so slightly. My mother moved her foot to equalize her balance and accidentally stepped on Needles' toe. The dog yelped. "Needles!" Mom said sharply. "Get out of the way!" But instead of moving away from Mom and the cupboard, Needles pressed himself more tightly against the cupboard doors. "You know," I said, "Needles acts nervous like that just before it's going to storm." "But - there's not a cloud in the sky," Mom replied, looking out the kitchen window and then down at the dog. The kitchen window faced west/southwest, the direction from which storms usually came. I glanced out the window, too. All the way to the horizon, at about 9 a.m., the sky was clear, cloudless blue. Now - my mother and Needles had a - shall we say - tolerant relationship. Mom always swore she didn't really like dogs. This was in spite of the fact that when Needles was a tiny puppy, she made a warm milk and hamburger mixture for him because she worried he didn't eat enough. She worried about him in the winter, too, when it was extremely cold outside, which is how he became an inside/outside dog. Still, Mom wasn't really a "dog person." She tolerated Needles going in and out of the house because he was a family pet. The dog stayed out of Mom's way as best he could, too. He seemed to realize Mom couldn't get around very well. And he didn't care for housework, either. The vacuum cleaner made him nervous. And he always stayed well away from the broom. No. Needles didn't like housework at all. He would much rather be with Dad, supervising the field work or riding in the pickup truck. Unless, of course, it was about to storm. Then Needles abruptly decided he'd rather stay inside. Housework or no housework. Just before a storm, my mother became the person Needles sought out. He would sit by her chair in the living room, or stand in the kitchen to be near her while she worked. We could never figure out why Needles thought being right under Mom's feet was the safest place during a storm - especially since he really considered himself to be Dad's dog... For the rest of the morning and on into the afternoon, the sky remained a clear, cloudless blue. And Needles stayed by Mom's feet. When she moved to the bedroom to make the bed, he stood in the doorway and watched. When she went to the living room and sat in her chair by the picture window to read her daily devotions and to work on some embroidery, Needles laid down by the chair. When she went back out into the kitchen to make dinner, Needles laid under the table again where he could see her. She couldn't take a step without the dog following along. I went outside several times that morning, but try as I might, I couldn't coax Needles to come outside. Later in the afternoon, just a hint of angry-looking blue-gray clouds appeared on the horizon. And thunder began to rumble in the distance. The sky grew darker and darker, and then the thunder came in loud claps, preceding sharp bolts of lightning that travelled from the clouds to the ground in the hills around the farm. A brisk wind started to blow, lashing the tree tops and causing small twigs and leaves to litter the lawn. And then it began to rain. Not just a steady rain - but torrential rain. The water ran along the ditch and down the driveway - making it look like a river we had a river running through our farm. It was a beauty of a storm. Not perhaps the worst storm I can remember when I was growing up, but ranking right up there among the top ten. Our respect for Needle's ability to forecast storms grew immensely on that day. Needles knew it was going to storm about twelve hours beforehand. And when the rest of us scoffed and told him he was being silly, Needles kept right on believing it was going to storm. Needles died in the late 1970's. And since then, weather forecasting has become an extremely sophisticated science. Weather radar can track approaching storms and tell us how fast they're moving, which allows forecasters to make some pretty accurate predictions based on the information at hand. However, weather forecasters are still only able to predict the probability of storms. Even if it's an 80 or 90 percent chance, they still cannot say with 100 percent accuracy whether a certain area will actually be affected by a severe thunderstorm. Needles could. He KNEW when it was going to storm - and he was always 100 percent accurate. |
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