The Turkey Trail

It has been decided.

With less than a month to go before Thanksgiving, I am going to make the trek to the next farmyard, Maude's farmyard.

What we are hoping is that I can find support and assistance to remain hidden with Maude and her crew, but I cannot leave just yet.

After staying with Maude for a day to rest, the idea is for me to head straight to the farmyard beyond hers that Ben found, with the hope that the message has continued to spread and there would be more farmyards beyond that one to travel to.

The turkey trail.

And if I wait to leave for just a few more days, perhaps there will be more links in the chain for me to follow.

Eventually I hope that the farmyards lead somewhere safe before Thanksgiving because I do not want to be on a farmyard near Thanksgiving, that is for sure.

But whatever the road holds, I am ready for it and I am going to look to leave a week from today.

My friends, I know I have said this before, but it is looking like our time together is coming to a close.

I will come on here to say goodbye for sure, and from there I will be in the hands of the COA in the farmyards beyond.

I love you all. 💓🦃

The farmyard beyond the farmyard beyond

Sally started to show Maude the little map she had been carrying with her and as Maude started to earn more about the COA and about our message trying to get people to eat less meat, she grew very interested in becoming a part of the cause.

"People will always eat meat," Sally told her, "we have come to accept this, but they have been eating more and more meat per person than ever before and we are trying to slow that down a little bit."

Sally gave all the statistics I had given during my stump speech. She said she knew turning all people into vegans was not realistic, but did they have to eat SO much meat?

Sally remembered her talking points well.

Maude had a small group of animals of her own that she confided in and they agreed to send a scout towards the direction further on from where Sally had come from, the farmyard beyond the farmyard beyond her home.

They agreed to help form a chain of farmyards to try and spread the message and unite the animals of the county. Next steps were vague as to how they would influence actual humans but the first step was clear: to get as many animals to understand their place in the food chain as possible.

They sent a brave duck named Ben with the message to the farmyard beyond the farmyard beyond, Sally told me, and it was at this point that she had a decision to make.

She could either return to us and report back as promised or wait until Ben got back from the next farmyard on with his report and she'd have even more to say.

She decided to stay and Maude agreed that it was not safe for her to return to our yard and then risk another whole journey just to learn what Ben had learned.

So she stayed there.

Ben returned after a week with the news that not only had the farmyard beyond his agreed with their messaging, they had agreed to send their own scout to find the next farmyard.

Sally could not wait to come back and share this news with us. She left that night and almost got scooped up by an owl on her way home but managed to run and hide until morning.

Then she came home a couple of days ago and you are nearly caught up now.

All that remains is to tell you what we are planning to do with all this information, but that will have to wait for another night as this turkey is very tired.

Love love love you all. 💓🦃

Barry Behind Bars

Good evening all you beautiful people! Let's pick up where we left off, shall we?

I know this was not a saintly thing to think but as Sally described Barry behind bars, his orange fur once so proudly groomed, dirty, clumped together, slinking in a corner instead of proudly yelling from the fenceposts, I felt a little good that he got just exactly what he deserved.

If she was surprised to see him, he was equally if not more surprised to see her.

"What are YOU doing here?" he hissed, a hiss that would have once scared didn't now with him being behind bars and Maude's words telling her she would be safe echoing in her ears helped too.

"I'm here to see who they locked up for making trouble around here. What did you do Barry?"

Barry answered with a look of contempt, "As if I need to explain myself or anything to you."

Sally looked around - the cage was set way back in a shed, surrounded by bales of hay and it looked as though no human had been there for some time. There was dust on the tools hanging from the wall, she told me that she remembered noticing that, and this small shed was very far away from the farmhouse or any of the animal pens. It had all the appearance of being forgotten.

Then, our little Sally, said pretty much the best thing she could have said in that moment and I just know how riled up Barry would have gotten about it.

She looked at him and said, "That's okay, it looks like your words don't matter much anymore anyway."

An with that she left him and Arnott took her back to Maude.

How good is that??

I will try to tell everything else that happened in as few words as possible because there is work to be done on our next steps.

Maude told Sally that Barry had come up to their yard and had introduced himself as the leader of a nearby farmyard who had been sent to get more farmyards to see him as their leader. He did not go about things in a very good way and was immediately starting to talk about how some animals were better than other animals and he did not realize that Maude's yard - as she was the leader - was one of fairness and equality.

He was caught trying to attack the chicken coop by an old ram that he had ignored, thinking the ram too old to do anything about it. Boy was he wrong. The ram butted him so hard he fell unconscious and when he woke up he was in the cage and had been there ever since.

They fed him but didn't pay him much attention other than that.

He was always yelling about the COA and how they had been against him from the start.

"When you said you were with them, I knew you were against him and were probably my kind of animal," Maude said smiling.

Sally was welcomed fully into the yard and even though she was supposed to come back and report to us right away she saw an opportunity and took it, and that next part will explain why she was gone for so long which is a question I am sure you were waiting to ask me and one that I will answer when I return tomorrow.

Remember that writing out all of these words in one sitting gets very tiring on this old neck of mine. 

Thank you for reading and good night to you all.

Sally is fine and here is her story

I am so sorry and I hope I did not leave you hanging in suspense for too long and made you worried about me from my weblog post the other night. The man woke up and was coming downstairs and I had to turn everything off very quickly and I was so nervous that I have not come back for a couple of days but also the last few days have let me fully digest all of the news that Sally brought back with her.

I will tell you the important part first: Sally is fine and was treated very well by the farmhouse near to us. She was invited to stay with them but oh boy was there ever drama at first and let me tell you it has to do with a barn cat named Barry.

But Sally is fine and we have a plan moving forward and I will see how much I can tell you about everything tonight.

Sally left us and headed in the direction of the farmhouse from my map and she hopped along for almost a full day before she reached the edge of what she could see was a farmyard that looked a little bit like ours.

She is a very bright little chicken and of course I always knew that but she showed it in how she handled herself as well because she did not go running right up to the fence. She spent the first evening nested in amongst some tall grass and she spent some time observing everything and seeing which animals she could see and which ones she could not and assessing the best way to approach the yard.

She noticed there was a chicken coop that was very close to the fence and she thought that the chickens might be the best place to start because she was a chicken but then she also remembered how loud chickens could be and she did not want to rustle up any mayhem on her very first visit so she decided not to go to the chickens but instead to approach an old sow who rarely moved but who seemed to get a lot of attention from the other animals as they passed by to say goodnight.

She thought that this sow was very well respected and it turned out she was very right about that.

The next morning Sally approached the sow and hopped up onto the lowest plank that made up her fence and introduced herself and at first the sow did not pay much mind to her but when she said that had come from this farmhouse and that she carried a message of importance from the other animals the sow perked right up.

The sow, whose name is Maude, asked her about our farmyard and asked some very specific questions and I will tell this next part like a story if that is okay because I think it will be easier.

"Is there a big stump in your farmyard?" Maude asked.

"There is," Sally replied and was surprised that the old sow might know such a thing.

"And do the animals gather there for speeches and the like?"

"They have, yes," Sally said and was again surprised. "In fact," she added, "the message I have come to share comes from our leaders who call themselves the Coaltion Of Animals and they're trying to raise awareness around how many animals get eaten by people every year."

"I've heard of this already once before," Maude said, and Sally was shocked.

Before she could ask any questions, Maude added, "You will be safe and welcome here, know that, but there is someone you should see first."

Maude called a smaller piglet over to her who came running right away and told the piglet to take her to the cage.

"Arnott here is going to take you to see someone who is in a cage and I'd like you to see them and then come back and we shall talk some more."

My friends, I think maybe you can guess who it might have been who was in the cage and I think I was able to guess who was in the cage when Sally was telling me this story and I was right and I think you will be right too.

It is getting very late and there is so much story to tell so I will come back tomorrow night to tell you more but for now I can tell you that, yes, smartypants, the animal in the cage was Barry.

Sally!!!

My friends, I am not going anywhere just yet because Sally came back to us today!

Happy and healthy and so full of news that she

Five weeks

I have no choice my friends. Thanksgiving is just five weeks away and I am going to leave the farmyard with or without the blessing of the COA.

I cannot stay here and just await my fate. As dangerous as it will be to leave here alone in the direction of the farmhouses that Sally went, it is either the danger I know or the danger I don't and this is now a case of knowing being the scarier of the two.

I am going to say my goodbyes tomorrow and I will come back onto my weblog tomorrow night and say a final goodbye to all of you as well as I am not sure I will ever be able to access a computer again.

I am full of emotion as I am writing this now and I cannot think of much more to say than thank you to everyone who has supported me along the way and who took the time to be my friend.

Tomorrow my story comes to both an end and a new beginning.

I am scared.

No rescue party is to be attempted

The COA are adamant: we will not be sending any other animal out there to rescue Sally.

She has been gone now for a week with no word or even hint of her returning.

Any number of things could have happened to her and we are afraid that all of the bad ideas we are having will prove to be one of them, but if we are not sending anyone out to rescue her we may never actually know what has happened to her and not knowing is somehow worse than knowing.

We are also not going to be sending any further scouts. Petunia was very clear on her thoughts on this and she has definitely swayed the whole team with her opinion. Even Carmel who I thought I could persuade would not let me finish my argument with her and she was very polite and earnest when she told me that, Goebbels, she said, we just can't risk any more lives.

Today was a very sad day.

A very sad day indeed.

No word

It has been two days now and there has been no word from Sally.

I hope she is okay.

Sally is gone

She left very early this morning when the mist and the fog were still hugging very close to the ground and there was not a lot of movement yet by the man and the woman.

She came to the door of my hut and whispered goodbye and I whispered goodbye and I sniffed a small sniff of a tear.

I am nervous for her but so thankful.

She left and slipped through the fence and we are hoping we will see her in a couple of days time. She was under strict orders to report back quickly and not to try and do too much on her first visit.

I cannot wait to hear the news she brings back.

Brave Little Bird

Good evening all you beautiful people, I come to you tonight with the most glorious news.

After they have had so many meetings over the last day or so after I spoke with them, the COA have agreed to send out a scout to see what they can see from the map I have drawn.

They feel it is worth it to try and spread our message outside of our farmyard and this scout is going to try and make a first contact.

And... and and and... they made a specific reference to my idea that if we can forge a tie with animals outside our farm then it may be worth it to see what I might be able to use that for in order to save my own skin before Thanksgiving.

And do you know who this scout will be?

Sally.

She is small enough to fit through the fence and the plan is that she is going to work very hard to memorize my maps and go to only the first farmhouse and then report back what she was able to find.

Such a brave little bird, what with foxes and all manner of other animals out there who would want to eat her, but she is proud to take on this responsibility.

She and I will be spending the next two days together and she is meant to leave early next week when she feels she is ready.

My friends, I am feeling something I have honestly not felt much of over the last few months.

That feeling is hope.

Under advisement

Today I met with Jasmine and Carmel and Petunia and Esther and I invited Sally to come along as well and I told them about what I had been learning on Google maps.

It was the first time I had met with so many animals on the COA in so long and they were truly happy to see me and I know that they have been worried about me lately because Petunia said they have been worried about me lately.

When I told them about the other farmhouses they seemed a little suspicious and I think they were thinking things that they did not want to tell me right then to my face because after I was finished they said they would take everything I had told them under advisement and they would come back to me with some thoughts and questions.

It was very awkward if I may say so because I felt I was being dismissed even though I was an important part of the COA even being a thing called the COA but then I remember that if I want to continue to live a life of heroic virtue then I cannot spend my time worrying about such things and I have to have a little humility when it comes to my place here now.

I think maybe they felt abandoned by me for the times when I would not ever even come out of my little hut and I think this because, afterwards, Carmel came to my hut and told me that they felt abandoned by me but they are glad that I am coming back around.

She would not tell me anything further and so I hope they will come back to me with their ideas very soon.

I am looking at the calendar now and Thanksgiving is only seven weeks away.

A trail of farmhouses

My friends, a plan is starting to form in my mind and I am going to bring this plan to the COA tomorrow to see if they are willing to help me but I wanted to tell you here first.

I am starting to make my own maps from the maps I am seeing on Google maps and I am calling Goebbels Maps and maybe they will not be of much use to anyone else in the world but I think they are going to be incredibly helpful and useful to yours truly which is why I have named them after myself.

There are a trail of farmhouses that I can see when I follow the Google Maps and I am starting to get a sense of where they are out there in the real world compared to where I am as well.

There are things called satellites which are so high up in the sky you cannot even see them but oh boy they can certainly see you because I have seen a satellite that has taken a picture of our very farm and I can see where the farmhouse is and the barn and the big tree and even where my little hut is and I had no idea that a satellite had been taking our pictures this whole time!

And when I use the mouse and I scroll and I scroll I can see how far away the other farmhouses are and I have been making a couple of small notes here on the papers at this desk but I have been transforming them into better papers and better drawings in my little hut.

I have made a trail of farmhouses and I think the COA will be very interested in trying to make a connection between our farmyard here and any animals that may be in a farmyard somewhere else and, if they are interested in pursuing this course of action maybe it is something that can be both very good for the COA as well as for yours truly because if we can find safe spaces outside the farm, maybe, just maybe , I will have some place to go where I can live past this Thanksgiving.

I cannot wait to tell them my ideas and see what they have to say.