Rural WTF

[bunn]

It is 20 minutes to 1am in the morning, and someone is employing a tractor, lights and a bizarre swooshing thing on the field opposite my house.    I think it may be muckspreading.   As the valley is otherwise completely silent at this hour, the noise, which would normally be unnoticeable, is quite striking.  It sounds like he is energetically circulating a number of angry foxes in a large metal barrel.

WHY  would anyone be muckspreading at 12:40am?  WHY? 

At least he's unlikely to be very long about it.  It's not a big field.  Which just increases the mystery of the 'WHY AT 12:40am?' question by an order of magnitude.

Comments

[demon-rum.livejournal.com]

I am kinda burning with curiosity over this. So Weird. Am especially intrigued by the noise (foxes?) and the timing.

Maybe he got a rental discount if he returned the spreader by 3 am?

[bunn.livejournal.com]

I cannot explain the noise of whirling foxes but inzilbeth_liz has divined that in my sleepfuzzled state I failed to spot exactly what he was up to - he must have been baling hay in a frantic hurry to beat the rain.

[demon-rum.livejournal.com]

that makes 800% more sense. But let's be honest--I am entirely certain I would never have thought up that explanation. Your friend is smrt.

[inzilbeth-liz.livejournal.com]

I've had contractors baling hay for me at 4am to try and beat the rain before now but this seems bizarre unless he's just a very busy guy. If he was spreading pellet fertilizer which wouldn't be seen once it hit the ground, he might be trying to cheat on the nitrogen levels he uses but if it's muck, that's going to be very visible in the morning.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

Yay, I think you have it! Viewing the operation by tractorlight in a sleepfuzzled state, I thought that field had already been mowed and the thing that made the fox-battering noise was a muck spreader, but in the light of day I can see that it must have been a baler and presumably he was getting in ahead of the rain forecast for today.

This is excellent news as it means there is no overwhelming pong this morning. Though I'm sure balers don't normally make that noise? I'm not sure what does!

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

Scenario One:

"Reuben Clodhopper!" thundered Mavis Clodhopper, her hands sharp on her hips. "How many times have I asked you to get rid of the enormous pile of muck that's sitting in the garden, right outside my parlour?"

"Yes, yes." Reuben didn't look up from his newspaper. "I'm going to spread it on yon field; I keep on telling you."

"It's been there for a week," Mavis said sourly. "And Lady Snodgrass is coming for elevensies on Friday morning. I'll never be able to hold my head up at the WI again if she arrives to find an enormous--"

"It'll be gone by Friday," Reuben insisted. "Stop nagging."

"Nagging?" Mavis echoed. "Nagging? I'll give you nagging. If it's not gone by Friday morning - not a trace of it left - I'm leaving you, Reuben Clodhopper, and that's final."

"It'll be done by Friday, woman," Reuben snapped. "Sit down and eat, woman. Can't a man eat his breakfast in peace?"

--

Similar scenes occur as the week progresses, as the anger escalates, until:

Reuben Clodhopper sat bolt up in bed in the middle of Thursday night. "OMG!" he gasped.

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

Scenario Two:

See Mavis nag! She's nagging about muck. Reuben doesn't look very happy, does he, children? Nag, nag, nag. Nag is a nice easy word, children. When you get home, you should all nag your mummies and daddies. They will like it very much.

Oh! Look! Reuben has a frying pan in his hand. Doesn't it look heavy? Hit, goes the frying pan. Hit, hit, hit! Now Mavis is lying down on the floor, having a nap. There is a lot of red goo around her head. It looks yucky, doesn't it, children?

"Oh dear," Reuben says. "I need to get rid of the evidence." Evidence is a long word. It means chocolate on your mouth or jam on your fingers. "I need to bury the body." Do you like burying things, children? It's fun, isn't it?

Reuben is clever. Reuben knows that if you want to bury something without anyone else finding out, you should do it in the middle of the night.

See Reuben dig! What a noise! Brrrm brrrm brrrm goes his tractor. Brrrm brrrm brrrm. See everyone waking up!

Oh dear! Maybe Reuben isn't that clever, after all. Silly Reuben!

___


Scenario Three:

"I don't know what you're talking about," said the blank-faced man in black. "Aliens landing in the middle of the night? What nonsense! It was just a tractor, spreading muck."

"But..." gasped the rustic householder.

"Just a tractor spreading muck," repeated the black-clad man, taking off his sunglasses and leaning forward.

"Just a tractor spreading muck," echoed the householder.

The man in black smiled as he returned to his car. "They all believed it," he said. "These rural types, they'll accept anything, even something as implausible as muck spreading in the middle of the night.

His superior looked up from his box of doughnuts. "Earthlings!" he burbled, waving a dismissing tentacle. "What fools they are!"

[bunn.livejournal.com]

I find scenario 3 by far the most convincing, as it appears in the light of day that I had mistaken a baler for a muckspreader.

Also, it has a tentacle, and doughnuts.

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

Your comments can usually make me smile :-)

[ningloreth.livejournal.com]

I had a similar experience when I was moored at Foxton. I assumed that he was spreading something he shouldn't have been spreading, but it was hardly covert. Maybe he was just behind with his jobs for the day. Or maybe he'd got up really early in the morning? Farmers seem to pride themselves on early rising.

[The strangest thing that ever happened on the boat, though, was the attempted alien abduction -- bright lights flashing and the boat quaking in the water, things falling off the shelves.

Turned out it was the Fire Brigade, rescuing a cow. It never occurred to them that climbing all over someone's home in the middle of the night without their permission was extremely bad manners.]