yes, we buried a buffalo; it was the neighborly thing to do

Once upon a time, many years ago when the children were all under 10 years old and we had the stamina to actually do things with them that required sunshine and the outdoors (a magical time before X-Boxes, Wi-Fi and iEverything) we had a little plot of land — five sprawling acres filled with pear trees and peach trees and beautiful tall grasses.

And a bunch of old tires, a rusted refrigerator, and a dilapidated house from like the Civil War or something.

My husband, handyman extraordinaire and embracing country living (I was still wearing my pearls, and let me tell you, he had plenty of fine 3-piece wool suits in the closet a la Eddie Albert), thought it would be a lovely family outing and adventure to go clear our land.

There’s a reason I’m not Pioneer Woman. No delightful lunches packed in adorable red-checkered cloths. No homemade lemonade in mason jars. Nope. I was good to remember some water in an empty milk jug and the bug spray.

So here we are, picking up junk around the property while He-Man drove around on a back hoe doing the hard stuff. I’ll stop here and note that it was pretty cool to watch the house shack come down.

Anyway, I digress. It was hard sweaty work in the Georgia heat which pretty much means we were not justing baking, but possibly poaching ourselves due to the humidity. This is an important point in the story because you know, things tend to decompose quickly in such an environment.

Back to the story…it was very hot, and in the midst of our own work, one of our neighbors, a very nice lady, came over to introduce herself and ask for our help seeing as how we had a back hoe and everything out here in the middle of nowhere. There’s not a lot of farming out where we live because there’s a lot of granite in the ground, but there were many many dairies back in the day.

It turns out, she had some cows…and a dead buffalo. They’d managed to dig a grave for the huge animal right next to where they found it, but they were hard-pressed for figuring out how to get it in the ground.

Enter Farmer John and his back hoe, and his trusty side-kick, Vicky, who was riding shotgun with Daddy.

They came back green, gagging at everything.

I knew better than to ask.