"Is this how the lambs FELT?"

As Olive and I walked past the Livestock Auction in Hackettstown (not a joke) the other day, I noticed that the headless long brunette wig with auburn highlights that we saw flattened in the grass this past summer was still lying undisturbed in the same spot. Matted to the ground directly across the stall where they keep the cows that are auctioned off each Tuesday. Which leads me to wonder…where did it come from? Who tosses away or loses a wig next to a livestock auction? Perhaps one of the cows was wearing it as a disguise and escaped. Maybe a thief tossed it off after fleeing the nearby Quick Chek. The possibility also exists that a drunken teenager used it as a barf bag on Halloween. I am fairly sure that NONE of these thoughts run through Olive’s head. She’s too busy, nose plastered to the ground or pointing to the clouds, inhaling all the scents you might imagine that emanate from a Livestock Auction. Cow pies. Sweaty lambs. Chicken scat. Horny bulls. Weathered old farmers. And the overpowering scent of hay. The silver livestock trucks pull up early on these mornings, squeaking and creaking like a New York taxicab stuffed with fat tourists. They remind me alternately of a school bus for animals and the old-fashioned Airstream trailers from the 1950s. Olive remains in a state of high alert as we walk past what is essentially the livestock version of the Port Authority Bus Terminal in New York City. We hear the distressed sounds the animals make as they are marched from their trailers onto planks that deposit them into the barn. Olive senses that they are about to have an explosive gastrointestinal attack and can’t get off the planks fast enough. Back to the wig. It could also belong to the drunken old lady Olive and I encountered one mid-Summer morning. Oh yeah. 7am and this woman, talky as only a walking bottle of whiskey can be, rambled on and on about how her “baby” wasn’t on the train (and she wasn’t talking about a child) and why didn’t I have two dogs so they could “get it on.” Actually, what she said was cruder than that, but I try to keep this blog as PG-13 as I can. I blushed…for Olive. I wanted to cover the ears of my innocent puppy. So as not to piss off the drunk and initiate further interaction, I made some innocuous comment and walked away with Olive as fast as I could without making it seem obvious. Although why I thought anything would be obvious to someone whose blood alcohol level was more alcohol than blood, I have no idea.