John holds a broom above the bristles and waves the handle in the air above his head and all around like he’s got hold of a magic wand and he’s trying to turn the flying dandelion fluff into ice cream bars.
He’s not afraid of spiders, in fact he gently escorts them out of the house and he knows the Brown Recluse Spider does not suspend its web outside in open where everybody can see, but a Brown Recluse got him a few years ago and he doesn’t want THAT to happen again.
What we see, and don’t readily recognize, we tend to immediately label as “BAD”. I’ve read the Plains Indians would break ice in the winter to bath daily, afterwards they’d rub rancid bear grease into their skin to protect it from the weather. They didn’t notice the scent but they certainly did notice the Europeans’ scent. Those crazy people’s modestly covered every part of their bodies, except hands and face, (to hold in all that smell?) and only bathed once or twice A YEAR!
Then there was a misinterpretation concerning cooking pots. A native person might be given a big old piece of buffalo, too big for his cooking pot so he borrows one. When he returns the pot it’s filled with a portion of that buffalo.
But if a pot was borrowed, by one of those light skinned new comers, it was not only NOT returned with a “thank you” portion of food, and it was not only empty (but to put the point across emphatically) it was scrubbed CLEAN, until it SHINED, INSIDE and OUT!
I blame my indoor cats for what my neighbors may see as unusual behavior. My cats need grass but they won’t eat the nice growing stuff I buy at the pet store. So I go outside and select new tender spears, pick them, washed them well, cut them up in bite sizes pieces with scissors and serve salad in little heaps on the floor. Picking grass during the day probably looks like I’m pulling weeds (all recognizable and normal to all those not in the know) but at night by FLASH LIGHT? Perhaps I appear to be having a hard time finding my pet earth worm again?nancymauerman.com