My Rain Dance Goes Out Over a Conference Call
A dry August call with the lender turns into a rain dance when my rooster crashes the meeting and a cloud finally shows up.
August of the dry year, I had a video call scheduled with my lender about the operating line. Hico had not seen a drop in weeks and the pasture looked like a doormat. I set my laptop on the porch rail so I could keep an eye on the sky, which was a mistake, because the sky was the whole reason for the call.
The loan officer opened by asking how things were looking out my way. I said dry, and I meant it, and then I did something I will regret to the end of my days. I stood up, said 'excuse me one moment,' and walked off camera to the water trough, because I had a notion that a little ritual might help. My wife calls it a dance. I call it stretching with intent.
What I did not know was that my rooster, a bird named Mr. Peabody, had followed me out. He hopped on the porch rail, stared into the laptop, and crowed directly into the microphone at a volume that made the speaker crackle. On the screen, three people from the bank leaned back in their chairs. Somebody muted themselves and said, 'Is that a fire alarm?'
I came back to my seat with a bucket on my head, which I can only explain by saying it seemed natural at the time. The loan officer asked if I was all right. I said I was manifesting weather. Not a minute later a cloud, the kind the Drought Monitor had stopped promising, the size of Erath County slid over the pasture and the first fat drops hit the tin roof of the barn.
We finished the call to the sound of rain, with everybody on the bank's side of the screen smiling. The line was approved that afternoon, and I will not claim the dance had anything to do with it, but I will not rule it out either. Mr. Peabody got an extra scoop of cracked corn, and he has never let me forget it. I still post my weather yarns on farm.FM between the songs, and they tend to be gentler than this one.