Reflections on the moon

So pre-Copernican me is out in the fields, tending my flock on this minus-31-Celsius night (except I’m pre Celsius as well as pre-Copernican, so the best I can say is that it’s freakin’ cold) and I notice that the chariot driver is toting a full moon across the sky tonight.

Bonus, I think. That’ll make it easier to spot any sheep that haven’t frozen to death. (What do sheep do in the winter before barns are invented, I might ask if I had any idea what a barn will be a few centuries from now. I’m shivering but surviving in my sheepskin coat and knitted hat and mitts, of course. But what about those poor, naked sheep?)

Then I see that something, perhaps a wolf, has taken a bite out of that moon.

Sure enough, it begins to bleed, redness spreading across what remains of its acned face.

But by this time I’m huddled around a smoky fire in the ol’ cave, trying to thaw some mutton for a midnight snack.

Think I’m crazy enough to watch a super blood moon eclipse on a freakin’ cold winter night? No way.

I might get et by a wolf. Just like the moon did.

Putting the “missile” back in mistletoe

In a burst of fin-de-Noel enthusiasm, my local grandkids drew pictures of mistletoe and taped them about every doorway in my house.

This was not done to encourage kissing. For them it was an obstacle course; you had to sidle sideways through doorways like a commando trying not to be targetted by a kiss-flinging sniper.