Minnietoe’s Story:

Alas, we had moved again. This time to a large farm outside of Fort Smith, Arkansas.   My brother was 8, I was an even smaller grommet of 6.  Truth is, we were both pretty small and skinny then, and laughably, it was recommended to jump in a ditch if a strong wind came through.

We had come from another farm in Washington already equipped with both a dog and a cat to pal around with, no such luck here.  And this time, the house allotted to us was a smaller one just outside the thicket of trees that separated the outer property from the inner green pastures where the owner’s family manor stood.  Mom worked as their secretary and bookkeeper, we worked at being boys.

While the farmhands were happy to entertain my brother and I around the main barn area, generally, when they left for the fields, we just ambled around looking for fun on our own. Mark found that in a rooster which our mom would eventually name Minnietoe. One of the chicken coops was near our house and also just outside the thicket and so Minnietoe became a pet . . . really Mark’s pet.  Personally, I didn’t think Minnietoe was especially good-natured and mom wasn’t happy that he couldn’t wait until dawn to start crowing.  But apparently Minnietoe and Mark clicked, and that rooster followed Mark around like his pockets were leaking feed.  I guess I must have learned then, though it didn’t sink in, that perhaps all animals, no matter how standoffish or obstinate they appear, can relate to the right human when and if they want to.  And had we a dog, maybe Mark and that rooster never would have found each other.

One night, however, in one of the many storms that blew and still blow through Arkansas, Mark thought to check on Minnietoe.  It was already dark, it was already raining hard.  After a short minute Mark came running back into the house yelling that part of the coop fencing had opened and some chickens, with Minnietoe, were gone.  There was no way of telling if the fencing was compromised by a coyote, a bobcat, or the weather.  Mom told Mark that we’d hope for the best and have to wait until the morning to look for them. But Mark wasn’t having that.

I don’t recall there being any argument, but I do recall mom crying on the phone that she needed help from the farmhands because Mark had just entered the thicket of trees looking for Minnietoe in the storm.

Maybe all trees are beautiful, but these were certainly less so.  The thicket was a large barrier of skinny and overgrown pines many trees deep, each cluttered with the fallen and dead branches of yesteryear between them.  Nobody entered the thicket, there was no point because there was no room to move.   Furthermore, it was understood that there, among other things, was where the bobcats and probably coyotes made their home.   So, though Mark was already 4-foot tall, mom could easily imagine him getting attacked if he stumbled into some beast’s home.  Immediately after mom’s cry for help, she rushed to the thicket to find Mark.  I was firmly told to stay inside.

Somehow, even with the loud and windy horizontal sheets of rain on that dark night, Mark emerged from the thicket with Minnietoe about thirty minutes later.  Mom was relieved, but only for the time it took for them to get back into the house after everyone secured Minnietoe and the chicken coup.  What followed was an angry German mother, an apologetic brother, and years of mom re-telling the story of how she almost lost her oldest son because of a “dumb rooster”.

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