I'm Waiting For The Giraffes

Sarah, my 26 year old disabled daughter and I were walking Wyatt through the orchard yesterday. Wyatt enjoys his walks, he likes to sniff out the deer that have been there to eat the apples. What was odd was that the apples in the orchard were plentiful, but the single tree near the house was not. This tree had hundreds of small apples on it 2 months ago, but now there are very few. The tree is much taller and older than the ones in the orchard, so the loss of fruit couldn’t be attributed to deer. “Must be the Giraffes” I told Sarah. “They come out at night and eat the apples.”

Later on in the day, a series of small storms rolled through. There was a small amount of wind and rain and some lightning. In the course of the weather, our TV antenna was dislodged and we lost all reception on our set. It had just gotten dark out and was still rainy. There was nothing else to do but watch TV, so I climbed up on the roof and tried to fix it. The leaves and rain made it slippery, so I tried to be cautious. I made my way up to the crown of the roof near the chimney and replaced the antenna in its post.

As I firmly grasped the antenna pole, lightning struck in the orchard about 250 yards away. The power surge from the lightning strike came right up through the antenna and up my arms. I have been hit by lightning surges before, and generally they aren’t strong, but this one had a good bite to it. The jolt caused me to jerk back and I lost my footing on the wet roof. I slid down the roof a ways and fell about 10 feet to the concrete below. It was like the body slam from hell, I landed all at once on my shoulder, hip and knee. As I was laying there, my nose began to bleed and I heard my wife shout at me “That’s perfect! Hold it right there!” I just laid there in the rain and took account of my body before I got up. I was sore. I had a feeling that I was going to feel worse in the morning, so I text messaged my boss and told him what had happened.

Later on, as I was nursing my wounds, I noticed my knee was swelling up and I was having trouble moving my arm. I took some Advil and rubbed BenGay on the sore spots and reclined on the couch. It was going to be a long night.

Sarah got up and walked out of the back door. She didn’t return for awhile, so I pulled myself up and hobbled out to where she was. She was sitting in Wyatt’s old recliner looking toward the old barn.

“What’re you doing?” I asked her.

“I’m waiting for the giraffes!” She replied.

"Move over..." I told her.