Week 21 entry...
When driving in rural Minnesota during the early morning hours, there are things you expect to see. Deer have the prized spot at the top of that particular list, of course; the state slogan should really be changed from "The Land of 10,000 Lakes" to "The Land of 10,000 Lakes, Each With 183 Deer Putting Their Little Deer Lips Down to the Cool Water For a Drink." (Random My Cousin Vinny moment out of nowhere there, sorry.) Besides the deer, you also often see dogs out running around, cows off mooing in the fields, random joggers on the side of the road, and the infrequent rabbit or other small creature hopping about.
You certainly don't expect to see something so completely bizarre on your morning drive that it makes you honestly wonder if someone spiked your Diet Coke with large quantities of various hallucinogenics.
During my previous residency in Minnesota (before moving to South Dakota and then back to Minnesota several years later), there was a point where I had about a 45-mile commute to work. The first half of the drive was rural; various two-lane paved county roads that eventually led me over to the freeway and on down into the Twin Cities. My work day started a little earlier than most other people, and so I generally didn't have a lot of traffic to contend with until I hit the freeway. I just zoomed along through the woods and fields each morning, sipping my Diet Coke and watching for those ever-present deer; my morning drive was in the gray portion of daybreak after the darkness lifts but before the sun is truly up and shining.
So one morning, I was about halfway through the rural section of my drive when I noticed something way up ahead of me, probably more than a half mile away, moving along in the ditch on the left side of the road. When you drive where there are deer and other animals likely to run across in front of you at any time, you learn to automatically start categorizing any moving shape as soon as you see it. My mind started having a conversation with itself as I kept my eye on the strange entity.
"Dog?"
"No, it's got too much height to it. Plus, I wouldn't have even noticed a dog yet at this distance."
I took my foot off the gas.
"Hmm. Deer?"
"Nah, it's way too wide."
I cocked my head and squinted a bit.
"How about a cow? Cows are wide."
"Yeah, but this thing doesn't seem to really have a head that I can see -- it's all body, which is really weird."
I rolled down the window and leaned to the side as I continued to coast slower. I had closed the distance to probably a little less than a quarter mile at this point.
"Maybe a person? Some dude out on an ATV or something?"
"Eh... I don't think so. It's jerking up and down quite a bit, like something running. Even an ATV on the trail wouldn't have that motion."
I was now actively starting to brake a bit, slowing down as I tried to analyze what I was seeing. The thing moved steadily along in the ditch, never varying its speed or motion.
"You don't think it could be a moose or something, do you?"
"I've never heard of a moose around here, no. This thing... it's like it's only got two legs or something. I mean, god, it looks like... seriously, WTF?"
It was at about this time that my brain identified what the creature actually was, but it just couldn't reconcile the input. (If my brain had been a computer, it would have started printing out the line "Does not compute" over and over while slowly starting to waft up smoke at the edges.) I pulled alongside the creature, my speed matched to its speed. I simply stared.
It was a full-grown ostrich.
Running in the ditch, calm as could be. In Minnesota. I shook my head a bit and blinked several times, but there he remained, about twenty feet to my left.
Even though ostriches are about 8 or 9 feet tall, we were actually at eye level with each other due to the ditch. So as I kept looking over at him, he was doing the same to keep his eyes on me. We were completely in synch, our heads turning and our eyes meeting every few seconds as we each kept glancing over at the other. It was like we were caught in a really bizarre inter-species mating dance of some kind. If he flared his wings, was I supposed to pop my trunk lid up -- I wondered what the ostrich equivalent for "How you doin'?" would sound like.
I honestly couldn't tell you how long we continued like this -- a half mile? a mile? I really don't know. I can tell you it was long enough for me to be absolutely certain I was truly seeing this and was not in fact the victim of some drug-induced hallucinatory trip.
At last, with one last look at me (I swear I saw him wink), the ostrich began to veer away, taking a long curving arc into and then across a large meadow. A few moments later, he disappeared from view as my vehicle passed back into a wooded stretch of the drive.
As I wondered what his final destination was, I could hear my mind slowly penciling in ostrich onto the animal identification list, just after cow but before moose.
(I later learned someone had just put an ostrich farm in that general vicinity, and the facility was still working on their fencing issues to keep the birds contained -- apparently, my ostrich incident was not the only one experienced by the local residents.)
This is my entry for the twenty-first week of therealljidol. This was an intersection week, where participants pair with another writer and then choose from a set of two prompts -- participants are free to choose whether or not to thematically 'pair' their entries. My prompt was an 'open topic', which means no specific prompt is given. My partner was the ever-talented agirlnamedluna, whose prompt was 'playing the odds.'
As always, thanks for reading!