Lives of the Elders (part II)

Lives of the Elders: Episode #72 – “Elder KM and the Highland Moo-dyssey”

Elder KM, known to the WLBOTT archives as both a champion of language and a connoisseur of soft cheese, recently found herself on an “easy walk” in the Scottish Highlands with her youngest child, Maya. The goal? A short and peaceful stroll. The outcome? A three-hour epic of stealth, strategy, and shrubbery-induced suffering.

Did you know the most dangerous animal in the UK is COWS? They kill people every year.

So, we were in Scotland, and my older kid Lana and Seth were doing treetop climbing and little Maya is not tall enough so I decided to take her on an “easy walk”.

Suddenly we see a sign “watch out for cows”. Maya starts scaring me by pointing to random logs and rocks and saying “Isn’t that a cow?” She is quite scared as well.

We are walking next door to a golf club with a low fence, so I tell Maya if there is any issue we’ll just jump over there.

So we keep walking carefully, but soon a hillside rises on our right and the fence and golf club are no longer next to us but way on top of the hill.

Then, we see cows, right out on the path!!!

I quickly google “how dangerous are cows” and it says “if you are a woman walking alone or with a small child, and anyone makes sudden movements you are at higher risk!” I get worried but I don’t want to give up, so I say to Maya, “let’s climb this steep hill and walk along the top, cows can’t reach us there”

So we climb up, our feet slipping, and there is a little path on the top, the cows look angrily at us from below but do not attack, so I’m patting myself on the back like “good idea, self!” and decide we will walk for a while until we are far past the cows and climb back down to the trail.

EXCEPT: The path ends, and now the hillside is covered with dense thorny shrubbery as tall as Maya. So we try to crawl down but it’s like soldiers in a battlefield, slipping, crawling in the mud, attacked by the shrubbery.

So we struggle back up and go across the golf club fence, walk there sort of illegally and finally see the hillside become normal grass again and climb back over. Then Maya helped me find the trail and we finally got home but let me tell you it was harrowing, and our 45-minute walk turned into a 3-hour bootcamp.

To honour KM and Maya, we present them with the following awards:

And a statue!

We reviewed the WLBOTT fine art collection of Flemish Masters, and found several historical images that recommend caution.

Elder DZ

While interviewing Elder DZ for our “Lives of the Elders” segment, I must admit that my attention was bifurcated – Wheel of Fortune was on the TV. But I did get the gist of his recent activities, and they seemed to involve

Don Giovanni
Karaoke
Meaning of life (something about chipmunks?)
Half marathon
All-u-can-eat avacados

DZ’s karaoke performance:

Time constraints prevented DZ from performing a much-requested encore….

Elder DZ has Solved the Mystery of Life

We’ll need to get further clarification.

Elder DZ has also ran several half-marathons in the past week.

Elder DZ is also responsible for curating the west wing of the WLBOTT Gallery of Fine-ish Art with portraits of his favorite 19th century opera singers.

Elder JimZim

Elder JimZim is derelict in his status report. Being in an ICE detention camp is no excuse. When he is released, he will be sent to WLBOTT Re-education.