Judging from a Distance

We live in a house at the top of a hill. Fourteen acres of woods stretch down the hill behind our house.

When we bought the house, I thought I would walk through the woods every day, enjoying the privacy of the nature we had purchased. I fantasized about our kids exploring and playing every day after school so that I would have to call them in for dinner and they would whine about wanting to stay outside.

Then came the reality of the X-Box.

To be truthful, I don't think I've even walked the woods once a year. The hill is too darn steep to climb back up.

But the brook at the bottom is very pretty, and the field next door is very flat and inviting for exploration. If I didn't have to walk back up the hill again.

The wildlife enjoy the peaceful woods, though. This winter we decided to buy some corn to attract the deer to the backyard so we could see them from the house. We get six to eight deer coming by a day for a snack.

Then the turkeys discovered the food. We get a flock of about thirty, several times a day.

The turkeys go through a lot of "deer" food.

It is my eleven year old son's job to spread a bucket of corn at the edge of the woods every day.

This morning he came inside only a minute after he went out. His eyes were wide as he asked, "Do we have any bears in our woods?"

"I don't think so," I answered.

"Well, I saw something big and black with a big nose, and it moved!" I looked out the window. "You can't see it from here. It was pretty far back in the woods. Come look from the shed."

Dad and I went out with him to look at the big animal. It turned out to be a big stump of a tree that had a big hole in it that was in the shape of a "bear" head. I have to admit, from the shed, it did look like the animal head he described. And the shadows made it look like it moved from various angles.

Moral: Whether it is a tree stump or gossip, don't judge what you see from a distance. Either ignore it, or get close enough to see everything clearly.