PHHH #1011.9
Sunday, October 24, 2004
Weather: Nicely occluded
Location: Princeton Montessori School to Waldorf School via Bedens Brook
Hare: Count von Count
Hounds: Hand Solo, Ice Blue Balls, Sonuvabitch, Ouipee, Forrest, Hey YO! Paully
Time: 1:30 for Hand Solo, Ice Blue Balls, and Sonuvabitch; 
      1:40 for the pack; 1:55 for Hey YO! Paully

Jeanette MacDonald Had a Farm, Hey YO! Hey YO! Hey!

And on that farm there was a hare,
Hey YO! Hey YO! Hey!
With an on-on here, false trail there,
Here a beer, there a beer
Everywhere a beer beer
Hey YO! Hey YO! Hey!

And on that farm there were some hounds,
Hey YO! Hey YO! Hey!
There's a duck, why a duck?
Where's a check, there's a check
Everywhere a mark mark
Hey YO! Hey YO! Hey!

And so on. The highlight of this festive fall romp 'n' wade would have been the 
great blue heron pondering the vicissitudes of life in the reflective waters of 
Bedens Brook as we observed it from on high on the bank, or the unusual assortment 
of golfballs and toy footballs accumulated by Wheepi, or the warmly received 
return of Ice Blue Balls and Sonuvabitch, Tropical Depression staying home to get 
that radon out of the basement. But it emerged that Forrest made his mark in his 
first encounter with a landowner.  Count von Count sent us traipsing along the 
edge of a field before entering a small wood where a checkmark confronted straight 
on a number of houses, leading Wouepy to sensibly spot the trail heading right 
toward Mountain View Road and get out of sight of the white-bunned, red-cheeked 
woman sounding off in the backyard below.  IBB, Sum'bitch, and Forrest, however, 
somehow plunged straight into her curious and potentially cranky view, IBB having 
a soothing chat developed from years of telling distraught petowners of the 
virtues of euthanasia.

"I'm so sorry, we were just out for a run--" she began in that beguiling 
Anglo-American accent she puts on for owners of Norwegian blues and farmsteads 
conservatively appraised over a million two.

"Yeah," interjected Forrest, in that soft accent usually reserved for fellow 
moonshiners on the banks of the Ohio, "we were following the trail."

At that the farmer's eyes bulged like ostrich eggs, leading the tyro to try 
recovering adroitly, "Um, the deer trail. Yeah that's right, the deer trail, 
we were following the deer trail."

But his Gump-like naivete was too little, too late, and the trio were summarily 
dismissed from the property and left bereft of trail.  Huipee spotted her angry 
SUV running back and forth on Mountain View in a Richard Pashtun-like effort to 
track down the rest of the interlopers while he mulled Count von Count's risky 
set forward along the backyards of goose pate-gobbling Princetonians.  Eventually 
everyone regrouped and called it a beautiful day, Hand volunteering that 
travelling west on the brook had proved as scenic as the eastward trail and Paully 
carrying the radio that climaxed with a 50-yard field goal for the Iggles in OT 
just as he arrived at the on-in.



Next week: Hand Solo sets the Halloween Hash: Wear your best red dress, bunny suit, 
Britney mask, or pret a porter!