09/11/2025
Written by a farrier I follow 🩶
You would be hard-pressed to stick a shovel in the ground out here and not hit the bones of a buried treasure.
With a tear-stained shovel handle in hand, I have dug what seems like more than my share of pet graves.
And although I’m approaching a time when I might forget why I climbed a ladder, I still can take you to each spot and tell you chapters about who occupies that little patch of dirt and why I miss each one.
The ghosts of cats, dogs, a turtle, a horse, a few chickens, four geese that the devil would return if he could, and one cockatiel name “Pretty Boy” who cussed like a senile sailor, now walk these grounds after dark. And the only prints they leave are the ones on our hearts and in our thoughts.
In the grand scheme of things, animals are very important. More important than we sometimes realize.
The Bible says that God created animals before He created man. And I wonder if He ever looks down now and says to Himself, “Well, I should’a stopped after the skunk!” But He didn’t. That decision probably haunts Him to this day.
You know you aren’t supposed to see ghosts, and I can’t say I’ve ever seen or bumped into one out here. But I’ve heard a few.
Months after she died, I heard our cocker Honey barking at foxes under the pear tree where we buried her. Still, when I come home from work, my eye catches the shadow of a memory, and I see her running up the driveway, tongue flapping in the wind, to meet me like she used to. You would have thought I was the UPS guy armed with dog biscuits and not just the fellow who saved her from a ditch.
For weeks after he passed, our mustang, Maverick, whinnied at me when I was late feeding.
For a long time I could feel a chihuahua and a dachshund in my lap, quarreling over whose turn it was to get their ears scratched.
So I know they are here, and here is where they—like me—are supposed to be. If I could, I would catch them all by the collar and bring them back home. But as we all know, ghosts don’t wear collars.
As humans, we are limited in our ability to sense or believe in what we cannot see. I don’t think we used to be that way. But we have become that way. We used to be more spiritual than we are now.
It’s one pitfall of overeducation. It seems the more we think we know, the less we think we need to believe in a spiritual world.
But they are here, these spirits once wrapped in fur and feathers and love, as real as the wind you cannot see, yet it moves the clouds. How can that be?
Sadness has stained this ground so many times. Maybe it’s the DNA of those tears that kindles this oneness I feel with this place.
Or maybe it’s simply the dirt and the memories it covers like Mama’s hand-stitched quilt, keeping them warm and alive.
These bones are a part of this place as much as that live oak tree and the air that surrounds it, thick right now with the smell of a winter approaching from the northwest.
These spirits are as real as the rich earth that brings forth life, or the passing cloud that shades on a hot day, or the warm sun I will crave come feed time at daybreak Wednesday morning.
They are as real as the sound of an owl in the stillness of early morning, as real as the rumble of horses running in the dark when you can’t see them, but you know they are there.
They are the sound of wind chimes dancing with a slight breeze, or the sound a heart makes breaking as you stand over the grave of a friend.
It is as old as time itself. A spirit that science cannot explain, but I know is real. I guess it’s close to a pantheistic view of the earth, where even the dirt and darkness have a spirit.
I don’t know.
But what I do know is I keep these recollections collected and close by, tucked away in hay lofts, old shoe boxes or in the ground like treasures I buried using a shovel with tear stains on the handle.
