The View at Night

When your house is in the middle of several hundred acres and there is only one utility light in the back yard, it can be pretty dark everywhere around the house.  We often left a flood light on to light up the driveway, but only if someone was coming to see us or if one of the family was out.  Strange things and fun things happen in the dark.  Being a science teacher, I loved looking at the stars on moonless nights, especially in the fall when there was a chill on the air.  One August it was time for the Perseid Meteor shower so we invited a bunch of kids and moms and dads over to see what we could see.
Not often does an family outing begin at 10PM but I was making pizza for the crowd and we had kids all over the side yard craning their necks to see meteors.  Not much was happening except the mosquitoes were having a royal banquet on all of us.  About midnight we saw a few meteors, but not at all what we expected.  We had great fun, ate lots of pizza and fed a lot of mosquitoes.

The other night time happening was more serious, and after it was all over, I realized it could have been really dangerous.
If you remember, I told you that part of the farm was a holding lot for young beef cattle.  Sometime they would get rowdy and start bawling and moving around.  One night the cattle got active and may have been spooked by a fox or dog or something, but they pushed through the fence and started wandering over the yard and into the fields around the house.  I called the landlord and he came with a lot of neighbors with trucks to try to round up the cattle.  First thing I knew, the cattle were running and I was standing in the middle of the yard.  Can you imagine what it feels like to be standing in the dark, no lights, and sensing a very large beef steer running close enough to you to feel the body heat?  I could not see him but he obviously knew where I was or maybe the Lord put a hedge around me to protect me.  I decided the wisest place for me was to be on the porch, and not in the yard.  The guys ran the cattle until they were tired and opened the feed lot and put feed out and the cattle eventually gave up and went in.  If you can imagine a polar bear in a blizzard, you can probably imagine a black steer in a pitch black pasture.  Yes, the view at night was good too.