Llamas, Big Birds and the Amish

Llamas, Big Birds and the Amish

There are four things that I see while romaing my neck of Southeast Tennessee that I didn't see on a day-to-day basis when I was a kid:

1.) Llamas
2.) Ostriches
3.) Emus
4.) the Amish

The llamas, I remember coming in during high school. Nasty, awful creatures. I tend to think they have llamas instead of horses in hell.

The Ostriches and Emus people started raising for their meat, when that got to be the trendy thing to do. In the subdivision where I grew up, in a fenced area where goats used to be kept, there are now emus. I'd seen ostriches in the area, but I noticed one in a pen on a farm near my home yesterday.

It was either an ostrich or a very ugly, very deformed man.

The Amish moved in a few years back. Cheaper land brought a whole crew of them down. They raise the very best vegetables. They have God on their side, so that makes sense. I'm as heathen as they come, but I love a good old God Blessed Tomato or Cantaloupe as much as the next guy.

I will say that it's a new feeling to top a rise in my pickup doing 55 and have to brake or swerve to keep from running over an Amish dude in his black cart with the orange triangle.

I nearly ran down the Amish dude just after seeing the Ostrich. We could have combined all aspects of this post if the Amish dude had been hauling an emu in his cart, while it was being pulled by a llama or two....