Scared chickens and haunted houses.

Wonder of wonders, we had some rain today. Not much out here-- just enough to get everything wet a little bit -- but the rain just poured in town. I was on my way from town when I literally drove underneath a huge gray cloud and the sky opened up. Pouring down rain. Pouring so hard that I reduced my speed from 60 to 40 on the main road. I was hoping that hard rain would be falling into our pond, but no such luck. All Spring, and for half of the Summer, the ponds were filled nearly to the top here. Now, without rain for the past month, and temperatures over 100 degrees for about the same amount of time, the ponds are getting low.

As I drove down our road, I could see that it hadn't rained here yet. Nothing was wet, but the sky was getting darker and I could see lightning up in the sky. As soon as I got home, I went into the house to get some bread for the chickens, planning to get them to follow me into the coop so they would be safely in there before the dark clouds got to the hills here. The chickens, however, looked at me with those yellow eyes, and their heads cocked to one side, as if to say Well, just who are you and why should we follow you anywhere? I kept showing them the bread-- none of them would take it from my hands, which they always do.

I wasn't going to stand out there waiting for the chickens to realize that I was me, so I brought the grocery bags in, ran upstairs to get out of my "into town" clothes and back into my "around the house clothes." The sky was still gray.... no rain yet.... so before putting the groceries away, back I went outside with the bread, to see if the chickens had come to their senses. I had hardly walked down the porch steps and they were coming up the steps to meet me, clucking and cooing with all those sweet noises they make when I have bread for them.

It dawned on me that maybe, just maybe, they wouldn't come near me before because of the clothes I had on. Could chickens be that sensitive to color? I had been wearing a black top and white slacks when I came back from town--- the chickens have never seen me wearing anything black. I don't go into the coop in clothes that I wear into town, and all the "around the house" clothes for the summer are beige, white, light green, light blue. Could they really have been afraid of the black top that I was wearing? I have no idea, but it surely seemed that way.

The hills here never did get the pouring-down rain that fell in town today, but the little bit of rain that did fall was just enough to let the grass know that there's still water up in the sky. We just have to be a little patient, is all.

As for the haunted house....... one of my errands today was to get my hair trimmed. While the girl was cutting my hair, she was asking me about our house. She knows it's an old one that used to be a Bed & Breakfast for years, but she didn't know that the house had been moved here from another town by the previous owners. She got to talking about other old houses in the area, and she asked me about the home of one of our neighbor's... she wanted to know if it really was haunted.

I knew right away which house and which neighbor she was talking about, because that neighbor herself has told me that she's well aware of the ghost who lives in her house. She knew about it before she bought the house, and she didn't mind. We've heard stories about workmen who have run out of that house because they heard something strange or saw something unusual. We don't know if those same workmen ever went back. The hair-stylist asked me if I'd been inside that particular house, and I told her I had. "Did you see the ghost?" she wanted to know.

No ghost-sightings while I was there, but I was only on the first floor of the house, not the second floor, where that particular ghost has been known to make an appearance from time to time. The neighbor says it's a friendly, serene ghost, not a screaming, wild sort of spirit. I don't know whether I believe in ghosts or not, to be perfectly honest. It would make sense that the spirit of a deceased person would be quite comfortable to remain in the home where most of its life was spent. Unless that life ended horribly, I can imagine a "ghost" just quietly roaming the rooms, looking around, just sort of hanging out from day to day to see what's going on in the house that once was theirs.

However..... until I actually see or hear a ghost, I'm not going to swear to their existence. I would certainly like to see the second floor of that particular neighbor's house. It's an interesting house, to say the least--- built in the late 1800s, I believe, and the inside has been lovingly restored and preserved. If I were a ghost, I'd be quite happy there. Or right here, for that matter. Come to think of it, if I were indeed going to "haunt" a house after my time on this planet is over, then I'd be picking a house with the most books. I'd have the rest of eternity, and then some, to just read everything I could get my ghostly hands on.