You Probably Don't Want to Read This

This morning, I was reminded of a story about a farmer up on the edge of the Sierra Nevada foothills near my hometown of Challenge, California. One morning he heard noise outside that shouldn't be there, and found that the young sheep had gotten loose and were nibbling on the ivy that he'd gone to such trouble to grow on the side of the farmhouse. He shooed them away, only to discover that several of his goats had been eaten, apparently by a bear that had broken down a fence in the night (which explains how the young sheep had gotten loose). Hearing a disturbance in the barn where the horses should be, he carefully looked inside (not wanting to tangle with the bear that might have gone there after eating the goats), and found that a bunch of deer had taken advantage of the broken fence as well and had gotten into the barn where they were helping themselves to the oats that he'd laid in for the horses. Of course, none of this should have been a surprise, because, as everyone knows...

( Don't say I didn't warn you )