A buddy came over to Honey Lake and brought his little dog with him. We were at the plantation Smokehouse, and across the road from it is a pasture that houses our donkey herd. I noticed his little dog had crossed the road and was heading towards the donkeys.
Much the same way some folks think of whitetail deer as being Bambi and having a family and talking about stuff over the dinner table, my friend treats his dog like it is a human being too. He loves this mongrel with all his heart and actually allows the thing to sleep with him and his wife in their bed.
Yuk! I love my little dog Coopie too, but tend to think of him as an animal and not a human being. He has his own bed thank you very much.
Sorry, I digress this morning.
Back to the story, I looked at my friend and told him that he probably should call his dog back. He glanced at the dog, which by this time was getting closer to the donkeys, and he just smugly smiled and nonchalantly said, “Oh he’s all right, he’s just having a little fun”.
About that time, Darby, our oldest donkey who is a jack, (male – short for jackass), noticed the dog. Old Darby let out a bray that would stand your hair on end and went into full attack mode and charged after that dog like a laser guided cruise missile. I never realized that old donkey could run that fast, and I immediately noticed that Darby’s legs were much longer than my friend’s little mutt and old Darby was closing on him fast.
It was a race to the end, but fortunately for my buddy’s dog, he shot under the fence just as old Darby, whose teeth were fully bared, tried to bite him. My friend was mortified and quickly put his little pooch back in his truck where he should have stayed in the first place. He realized that he very nearly made the worst of mistakes and let his dog get eviscerated by not listening to this old country boy’s sage advice.
You see I know things – things like farmers put donkeys in with their cattle because they run off hungry coyotes, (that are intent on killing the young calves in the herd). Dogs look a lot like coyotes and I’m sure old Darby didn’t give a hoot that my buddy’s dog ate table scraps, slept in his owner’s bed, and was “just having a little fun” by examining Darby’s harem and children. Darby rules in Darby’s pasture.
I call this knowledge, “lore” and I always advise city boys not to “ignore the lore”. I gave another friend of mine some sage advice, (lore), about growing alfalfa. Florida is not exactly an ideal climate for growing alfalfa. Most folks grow it in cold and non-humid climates; nonetheless it is very high in protein and whitetail deer love it, so it is a very desirable crop for food plots for whitetails.
Against the odds my team and I grew a very successful stand of alfalfa and another of my buddies asked my advice as to how I did it. I told him that it had to be planted in the fall when it was cool enough to survive and went ahead and gave him some other assorted and sundry “lore” about growing alfalfa in Florida. Like my friend whose dog nearly got stomped and chewed by Darby, this guy decided to “ignore the lore” and he proceeded to plant his crop in the spring instead of the fall.
Of course when the hot Florida sun shone brightly and scorched his freshly planted crop into oblivion, his expensive seed couldn’t stand the heat and died. He was sad that he lost all of that time and money on his futile efforts, but perhaps the worst thing of all that has happened to him is that I now (obnoxiously) remind him of this mistake at every opportunity, (and if an opportunity does not present itself, I create one and remind him anyway).
So I suppose the moral of the story is that if we don’t want consequences, we should not “ignore the lore”.
Wait just a minute. When I first contemplated planting alfalfa, all “the powers that be”, advised against it, and told me that I could not grow alfalfa in Florida. I thought about that one day as I was standing knee deep in the prettiest Florida alfalfa field one could ever hope to see.
Hmmm…Not all advice is lore and we must beware of poppycock vs. certified lore. How do we tell the difference? The only sure treasure trove of lore of which I’m aware is the Holy Bible. It contains certified lore and every word can be trusted 100%. If you want to be wise, I urge you to read it daily and trust in it. The Lord loves us and this is His direction as to how to live a fruitful life. Don’t ignore the lore! Read your Bible today and every day.
Psalm 107:43
Whoever is wise, let him heed these things and consider the great love of the LORD.