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Home on the Range
“Where are we?” whispered three sheep in a horse trailer.
“Home,” Magnificent offered from the stall next to them. Not even the magnificent Mel knew where they were when the tailgates of the trailers in which they were being transported opened and ramps lowered. Men and boys from the parade, still wearing robes and turbans, led the animals, one after the other down the ramps and out into the late afternoon sun. They were staged in pairs off the shoulder of a winding, two-lane blacktop road as if disembarking Noah’s Ark. The smell of fresh manure rose above the smell of asphalt as both warmed in the sun. Because this was Kansas, the Great Plains, and the heartland of America, men not from the morning’s parade and wearing street clothes, blue jeans, cowboy hats, and b
