Barnyard Quotes

He was slumped over, blood trickling from the side of his mouth. I shook his furry hip, thinking, No! Even if you are half barnyard animal, you're my best friend and I don't want you to die!

I had weird dreams full of barnyard animals. Most of them wanted to kill me. The rest wanted food.

A strong man stands up for himself, a stronger man stands up for others. -Ben, Barnyard

She ignores me, so I cup my hands over my mouth and do something I haven’t done in years— barnyard sounds.

Luis is right there.” I point to the corner of the yard, where my little brother is the centre of attention doing imitations of barnyard animals. I have yet to inform him that talent isn’t as much of a chick magnet when you get into junior high.

He was slumped over, blood trickling from the side of his mouth. I shook his furry hip, thinking, No! Even if you are half barnyard animal, you're my best friend and I don't want you to die! Then he groaned "Food," and I knew there was hope.

It was in Central Park near the lake and I watched a weeping willow turn into a giant rooster and fly off. No tree remained. It glided beautifully into the sky, a big blue barnyard. My mind went with it, something all you bald head generals and wheelchair senators could never imagine.

In the silence of her nonanswer, I considered the possibility that I was a very boring person. Who else but a boring person would utter such meaningless trifles? If a brilliant pig, the prodigy of the barnyard, spent his entire life learning Russian, and on finally becoming proficient the first words he heard were my own, he would wonder why he had wasted his best years when he could have been lolling in the mud, eating slop with the other dumb beasts.

This month is fit for little. The dead ripen in the grapeleaves. A red tongue is among us. Mother, keep out of my barnyard, I am becoming another. Dog-head, devourer: Feed me the berries of dark. The lids won't shut. Time Unwinds from the great umbilicus of the sun its endless glitter. I must swallow it all. Lady, who are those others in the moons' vat- Sleepdrunk, their limbs at odds? In this light the blood is black. Tell me my name.

...man can survive ...he can kill and be twisted and broken and desperate and insane and fuck barnyard pets in the dark and wear a dress if he chooses, and hate and destroy everything that's beautiful, and wish for death for himself and others with every breath, and still be a perfect child of God.

As with Dutchy and Carmine on the train, this little cluster of women has become a kind of family to me. Like an abandoned foal that nestles against cows in the barnyard, maybe I just need to feel the warmth of belonging. And if I'm not going to find that with the Byrnes, I will find it, however partial and illusory, with the women in the sewing room.

Oh, please. I heard barnyard animal noises coming from your room the other night and someone shouting ‘Pull my reins, bitch!’ I realize you’re twenty-one-years old and theoretically an adult, but if I have to hear that shit one more time when I’m trying to sleep, I will beat you like a red-headed step child,” she warns.

After catching an arrow in the back and passing out in Tom the Feather’s barnyard, Hadrian had woken up on a comfortable bed surrounded by lovely women. He thought he’d died and regretted every time he’d ever cursed Maribor’s name.

What's important about morality in politics is us. We own the chicken farm. We must give our bird-brained, feather-headed politicians morals. Politicians love to think of themselves as "free-range" but they do not have the capacity to hunt or gather morals in the wild. If we fail to supply them with morality, politicians begin to act very scary in the barnyard. These are enormous headless chickens and they have nukes.

Black-and-white chickens stagger around Colonial Dunsboros, chickens with their heads flattened. Here are chickens with no wings or only one leg. There are chickens with no legs, swimming with just their ragged wings through the barnyard mud. Blind chickens without eyes. Without beaks. Born that way. Defective. Born with their little chicken brains already scrambled. There's an invisible line between science and sadism, but here it's made visible.

There was a child went forth every day, And the first object he look'd upon, that object he became, And that object became part of him for the day or a certain part of the day, Or for many years or stretching cycles of years. The early lilacs became part of this child, And grass and white and red morning glories, and white and red clover, And the song of the phoebe-bird, And the Third-month lambs and the sow's pink-faint litter, and the mare's foal and the cow's calf, And the noisy brood of the barnyard or by the mire of the pond-side, And the fish suspending themselves so curiously below there, and the beautiful curious liquid, And the water-plants with their graceful flat heads, all became part of him.

To be loved by Susan would be to be impaled by a bird's sharp beak, to be nailed to a barnyard door.

This is the way the wheel turns, coming at last to full circle, with wild as well as tame at he crib; lion and turtle-dove together an barnyard beasts lying down with the fox. For wild and tame are but two hlaves and here, where all begins and ends, everything must be whole. And always, among the sleepers, there must be somebody waking - somewhere, someone, waking and watchful. Or what would happen to the world..?

To be loved by Susan would be to be impaled by a bird's sharp beak, to be nailed to a barnyard door. Yet there are moments when I could wish to be speared by a beak, to be nailed to a barnyard door, positively, once and for all.

LOOK, I’M ONLY IN THIS FOR THE PIZZA. The publisher was like, “Oh, you did such a great job writing about the Greek gods last year! We want you to write another book about the Ancient Greek heroes! It’ll be so cool!” And I was like, “Guys, I’m dyslexic. It’s hard enough for me to read books.” Then they promised me a year’s supply of free pepperoni pizza, plus all the blue jelly beans I could eat. I sold out. I guess it’s cool. If you’re looking to fight monsters yourself, these stories might help you avoid some common mistakes—like staring Medusa in the face, or buying a used mattress from any dude named Crusty. But the best reason to read about the old Greek heroes is to make yourself feel better. No matter how much you think your life sucks, these guys and gals had it worse. They totally got the short end of the Celestial stick. By the way, if you don’t know me, my name is Percy Jackson. I’m a modern-day demigod—the son of Poseidon. I’ve had some bad experiences in my time, but the heroes I’m going to tell you about were the original old-school hard-luck cases. They boldly screwed up where no one had screwed up before. Let’s pick twelve of them. That should be plenty. By the time you finish reading about how miserable their lives were—what with the poisonings, the betrayals, the mutilations, the murders, the psychopathic family members, and the flesh-eating barnyard animals—if that doesn’t make you feel better about your own existence, then I don’t know what will. So get your flaming spear. Put on your lion-skin cape. Polish your shield, and make sure you’ve got arrows in your quiver. We’re going back about four thousand years to decapitate monsters, save some kingdoms, shoot a few gods in the butt, raid the Underworld, and steal loot from evil people. Then, for dessert, we’ll die painful tragic deaths. Ready? Sweet. Let’s do this.

Long before daybreak, they stood before the shadowy outline of a long, low farmhouse. From the barnyard came the challenging bark of a livestock guardian dog. "Knock - hurry," hissed Waclaw. "I have no desire to become a dog biscuit." Jozef's shoulders shook, but he quickly tapped at the wooden door.

Story time isn't much better. Imagine sitting in a circle with acquaintances, chanting spells and being drilled on a variety of subjects. "What sound does a duck make?" Who cares? When will I need to know that? How is this knowledge of barnyard animals and their corresponding noises going to improve my life? Toddlers who get up to stretch their legs or explore will be publicly admonished. The participation reward will not be a glazed doughnut, so don't bother.

Our essential connection with animals is ancient, and it runs deep. It extends from body to behavior, from psychology to society—forming the basis of our daily journey of survival. This calls for physicians and patients to think beyond the human bedside to barnyards, jungles, oceans, and skies. Because the fate of our world’s health doesn’t depend solely on how we humans fare. Rather it will be determined by how all the patients on the planet live, grow, get sick, and heal.

Is that a fact, Miss Georgia Cracker? Maybe a gentleman does, but not a cowboy. The only time a real cowboy removes his hat is for a funeral, a wedding, or church. A cowboy likes to keep his hat close by in case he needs to get out in a real hurry. That thing you call a hat on your head is big enough for two barnyard owls to roost in.

I am here, come closer,” the old donkey said with her eyes. “I will mother you.

People often ask me where I get my ideas from, sometimes as often as eighty-seven times a day. This is a well-known hazard for writers, and the correct response to the question is first to breathe deeply, steady your heartbeat, fill your mind with peaceful, calming images of birdsong and buttercups in spring meadows, and then try to say, “Well, it’s very interesting you ask that . . .” before breaking down and starting to whimper uncontrollably. The fact is that I don’t know where ideas come from, or even where to look for them. Nor does any writer. This is not quite true, in fact. If you were writing a book on the mating habits of pigs, you’d probably pick up a few goodish ideas by hanging around a barnyard in a plastic mac, but if fiction is your line, then the only real answer is to drink way too much coffee and buy yourself a desk that doesn’t collapse when you beat your head against it.

In fact, Jane kind of hoped that the twentieth-century heiress had really enjoyed herself as she thoughtlessly squandered the planet’s resources and lived like a fattened barnyard animal.

Similarly, hippos, as four ton vegetarians, would be great barnyard animals if they weren’t so dangerous. They kill more people each year than do any other African mammals, including even lions.

All praise and honor! I confess That bread and ale, home-baked, home-brewed Are wholesome and nutritious food, But not enough for all our needs; Poets-the best of them-are birds Of passage; where their instinct leads They range abroad for thoughts and words And from all climes bring home the seeds That germinate in flowers or weeds. They are not fowls in barnyards born To cackle o'er a grain of corn; And, if you shut the horizon down To the small limits of their town, What do you but degrade your bard Till he at last becomes as one Who thinks the all-encircling sun Rises and sets in his back yard?

The moment I entered the bright, buzzing lobby of Men’s House I was overcome by a sense of alienation and hostility … The lobby was the meeting place for various groups still caught up in the illusions that had just been boomeranged out of my head: college boys working to return to school down South; older advocates of racial progress with utopian schemes for building black business empires; preachers ordained by no authority except their own, without church or congregation, without bread or wine, body or blood; the community “leaders” without followers; old men of sixty or more still caught up in post-Civil War dreams of freedom within segregation; the pathetic ones who possessed noting beyond their dreams of being gentlemen, who held small jobs or drew small pensions, and all pretending to be engaged in some vast, though obscure, enterprise, who affected the pseudo-courtly manners of certain southern congressmen and bowed and nodded as they passed like senile old roosters in a barnyard; they younger crowd for whom I now felt a contempt such as only a disillusioned dreamer feels for those still unaware that they dream—the business students from southern colleges, for whom business was a vague, abstract game with rules as obsolete as Noah’s Ark but who yet were drunk on finance.

There are eight other instances in the book of Orwell noting the scents of his environment, most of them repugnant. There are two points to be made here. First, sensitivity to odor is a tic of much of his writing. Second, and more unsettling, it is the smell of humanity that repels him. When he notes the smells of nature, even of the barnyard, it is almost always with approval. In contrast, he is always ready to be horrified by mankind.

What occurred had to do with Will—Sam’s fellow slave at Nathaniel Francis’s. While submitting to one of his owner’s periodical beatings, Will had finally snapped, perpetrating what for a Negro was the gravest of deeds: he had struck Francis back. Not only that, he had struck Francis savagely enough (with a lightwood fagot wrenched from a barnyard stack) as to have broken Francis’s left arm and shoulder. Then Will lit out for the woods, and had yet to be found.

Artist communities love to bullshit each other and glad-hand one another, and there's no room for the crippling honesty of comedy. "I'm a painter" -- well... you don't...probably need to do that. . . . if you're painting something that doesn't exist, I understand that, I can appreciate- . . . but if your pain- 'oh, it's a barnyard scene in autumn'--well then just take a picture of a barn in autumn! It's way better than a painting! - Before Turning the Gun on Himself [2012]

Then tell me.” He’d fix it. Whatever it was, he’d move heaven and earth to make things right for her. Here he was sending her sweets and haberdashery, servants and barnyard fowl. Did she not understand that he would do more, if she would let him?

A man found an eagle’s egg and put it in a nest of a barnyard hen. The eaglet hatched with the brood of chicks and grew up with them. All his life the eagle did what the barnyard chicks did, thinking he was a barnyard chicken. He scratched the earth for worms and insects. He clucked and cackled. And he would thrash his wings and fly a few feet into the air. Years passed and the eagle grew very old. One day he saw a magnificent bird above him in the cloudless sky. It glided in graceful majesty among the powerful wind currents, with scarcely a beat of its strong golden wings. The old eagle looked up in awe. “Who’s that?” he asked. “That’s the eagle, the king of the birds,” said his neighbor. “He belongs to the sky. We belong to the earth—we’re chickens.” So the eagle lived and died a chicken, for that’s what he thought he was.

He folded his hands behind his back and puffed out his chest. Reminded Lucky of a barnyard rooster. Anybody who referred to Lucky as a cocky little bantam found out pretty soon that Lucky could back up his strut, and this guy was probably the roostah who used ta, or he wouldn’t be teaching.

The turkeys were chunky With smiley, beaked faces, And they greeted the children With downy embraces. So out through the barnyard They ran and they flew, And they gobbled and giggled As friends sometimes do. Then somebody spotted An ax by the door, And she asked Farmer Nuggett What it was for. With a blink of his eye And a twist of his head, The old farmer told A grim tale of dread: “Tonight,” said Mack Nuggett, “These feathery beasts Will be chopped up and roasted For Thanksgiving feasts.” The children stood still As tears filled their eyes, Then they clamored aloud In a chorus of cries. “Oh dear,” cried Mack Nuggett, “Now what shall I do?” So he dashed to the well, And the teacher went, too. And they fetched some water Fresh from the ground, In hopes that a swig Might calm everyone down. And when they returned To quiet the matter, The children were calmer (And mysteriously fatter!).

Outside, Her Ladyship coaxed her dog back toward the house, lifting both dog and cart up the few steps to her door. Gabe turned away from the window, rubbing his temples. "The situation is untenable, and that makes the house unsellable. No one wants to live next to a barnyard. I've tried reasoning with her, but when it comes to those animals, she's surprisingly tenacious." Tenacious, indeed. And sufficiently reckless to trespass in a house after midnight and recover a parrot from a near-naked stranger's shoulder. However, even that degree of tenacity had poor odds against sheer ruthlessness. Lady Penelope Campion had a softness for animals.

were not people but cartoon mice and rats and barnyard animals, human-sized, and celebrating—began to sing songs from Disney cartoons. Fat Charlie knew that they wanted him to join in with them. Even asleep he could feel himself panicking at the simple idea of having to sing in public, his limbs becoming numb, his lips prickling. I

Only twice in my nearly fifty years of friendship with David Belasco did he ever disappoint me; and I am glad that experience came early. When I was perhaps seven or eight years old, he promised me, many months before my birthday, that he would give me a pony. What boy would nurse that promise to his bosom for any number of months? When the 12th of August dawned, I was downstairs early, I think before anyone else was up. I looked out at the barnyard. No pony. I waited all day. No pony. I said nothing. No pony. There were other presents, of course, and all the other excitement of a small boy’s birthday: but underneath it I was having my very first experience of a forgotten promise.

My interests are varied. They include natural history, lady detectives, and good hygiene,” I said with a significant lift of the brows towards his feet. “What in seven hells does that mean?” he demanded. “It means that if you come to bed smelling like something from a barnyard again, I will scrub you myself with rose soap and a firm hand,” I threatened.

It was with deep, idiotic relief that I leaned on that fleshy, humid, barn-yard fool.

One reason diplomats have so much trouble coming to any kind of agreement is that they sit in soft chairs around a large table with yellow pads in front of them to doodle on. They're too comfortable for serious negotiation. My theory is that world peace could be achieved in short order if the diplomats were made to hunker out in a barnyard and draw their proposals on the ground with sticks. For hundreds of years, hunters have employed the hunker successfully in negotiating with farmers for permission to hunt their property. I myself am an expert hunkerer and would be willing to teach the technique free of charge to both Russian and American diplomats, just so we can get the present mess straightened out in a hurry.

Within a few months Mitch Bush, head veterinarian at the National Zoo, and David Wildt, a young reproductive physiologist working as a postdoctoral fellow in my laboratory at the National Cancer Institute, were on a plane bound for South Africa. Bush is a towering, bearded, giant of a man with a strong interest and acumen in exotic animal veterinary medicine, particularly the rapidly improving field of anesthetic pharmacology. Wildt is a slight and modest Midwestern farm boy, schooled in the reproductive physiology of barnyard animals. His boyish charm and polite shy demeanor mask a piercing curiosity and deep knowledge of all things reproductive. Bush and Wildt's expedition to the DeWildt cheetah breeding center outside Pretoria would ultimately change the way the conservation community viewed cheetahs forever.

I believe I will sit,but not on this chair. The settee is the most welcoming piece in the room,especially with you sitting on it." "Yes,but-" He sat,his hip brushing hers. She scrambled to move to one side, but he'd deliberately sat on the edge of her skirt. Her gaze narrowed, and she said stiffly, "I beg your pardon,but you are sitting on my skirt." Dougal smiled and leaned back, resting his arms along the back of the settee so that she was closed in by him. He found himself charmed by the thought. "Lord MacLean, I have asked you kindly to remove yourself from my skirt. Please do so, or I will be forced to take more drastic measures." "Such as?" "Calling for Angus," she said flatly. "In case you didn't notice, my butler is larger than the average servant. He could easily pick you up and break you in two." Dougal quirked a brow. "While that behemoth you call a butler could easily pick me up, he'd have to get close to me first." She smiled smugly, setting Dougal's pride on edge. "I wouldn't try him; he's faster than he looks." She cast a glancedown at Dougal's boot. "Plus, you'd have to race through the barnyard, which could prove fatal to your shine." Damn this woman! She taunted with every phrase, teased with every look. He shifted so that his hip was even more firmly pressed to hers.

Above all, we cannot afford not to live in the present. He is blessed over all mortals who loses no moment of the passing life remembering the past. Unless our philosophy hears the cock crow in every barnyard within our horizon, it is belated... There is something suggested by it that is a newer testament,- the gospel according to this moment. He has not fallen astern; he has gotten up early and kept up early, and to be where he is is to be in season, in the foremost rank of time.

While he turned and twisted the strips, the thin outer bark fell off in flakes, leaving the soft, white, inside bark. The whip would have been white, except that Almanzo’s hands left a few smudges. He could not finish it before chore-time, and the next day he had to go to school. But he braided his whip every evening by the heater, till the lash was five feet long. Then Father lent him his jack-knife, and Almanzo whittled a wooden handle, and bound the lash to it with strips of moosewood bark. The whip was done. It would be a perfectly good whip until it dried brittle in the hot summer. Almanzo could crack it almost as loudly as Father cracked a blacksnake whip. And he did not finish it a minute too soon, for already he needed it to give the calves their next lesson. Now he had to teach them to turn to the left when he shouted, “Haw!” and to turn to the right when he shouted “Gee!” As soon as the whip was ready, he began. Every Saturday morning he spent in the barnyard, teaching Star and Bright. He never whipped them; he only cracked the whip.

Just as a snowflake went on to feed a puddle that filled a stream and then the river, the pumpkin patch is a gathering of molecules from my old goats, chickens, and cats, feeding the underworld of dirt creatures. And somewhere, my father’s ashes mingle with birds, air, and sea.

The autumn leaves were pulverized and the fragrance of leaf-decay was pleasant. The air was empty but good. As the sun went down the landscape was like the still frame of an old movie on sepia film. Sunset. A red wash spreading from remote Pennsylvania, sheep bells clunking, dogs in the brown barnyards. I was trained in Chicago to make something of such a scant setting. In Chicago you became a connoisseur of the near-nothing. With a clear eye I looked at a clear scene, I appreciated the red sumac, the white rocks, the rust of the weeds, the wig of green on the bluff over the crossroads.

A man found an eagle’s egg and put it in a nest of a barnyard hen. The eaglet hatched with the brood of chicks and grew up with them. All his life the eagle did what the barnyard chicks did, thinking he was a barnyard chicken. He scratched the earth for worms and insects. He clucked and cackled. And he would thrash his wings and fly a few feet into the air. Years passed and the eagle grew very old. One day he saw a magnificent bird above him in the cloudless sky. It glided in graceful majesty among the powerful wind currents, with scarcely a beat of its strong golden wings. The old eagle looked up in awe. “Who’s that?” he asked.

Dr. Stanley Curtis, an animal scientist friendly to the industry, empirically evaluated the cognitive abilities of pigs by training them to play a video game with a joystick modified for snouts. They not only learned the games, but did so as fast as chimpanzees, demonstrating a surprising capacity for abstract representation. And the legend of pigs undoing latches continues. Dr. Ken Kephart, a colleague of Curtis’s, not only confirms the ability of pigs to do this, but adds that pigs often work in pairs, are usually repeat offenders, and in some cases undo the latches of fellow pigs. If pig intelligence has been part of America’s barnyard folklore, that same lore has imagined fish and chickens as especially stupid. Are they?

Smith to Marx) To unravel the mystery of capital, we have to go back to the seminal meaning of the word. In medieval Latin, “capital” appears to have denoted head of cattle or other livestock, which have always been important sources of wealth beyond the basic meat they provide. Livestock are low-maintenance possessions; they are mobile and can be moved away from danger; they are also easy to count and measure. But most important, from livestock you can obtain additional wealth, or surplus value, by setting in motion other industries, including milk, hides, wool, meat, and fuel. Livestock also have the useful attribute of being able to reproduce themselves. Thus the term “capital” begins to do two jobs simultaneously, capturing the physical dimension of assets (livestock) as well as their potential to generate surplus value. From the barnyard, it was only a short step to the desks of the inventors of economics, who generally defined “capital” as that part of a country’s assets that initiates surplus production and increases productivity.

Fall down seven times, get up eight,” Manjiro said. “So my mother used to say.” 22 THE RACE here were no earthquakes. There were no broken legs. There were no emergencies of any kind. The day of the race arrived, as days generally did on the farm, with the barnyard rooster incessantly announcing its arrival. Manjiro climbed out of bed like an old man. Today was the day of his humiliation. Captain Whitfield squinted up at him from his coffee when he came into the dining room. “Rough night?” he asked. Manjiro shook his head, trying not to let his gloom show. He had taken great pains to keep this contest secret from Captain Whitfield. He poured himself a cup of coffee, muttering to himself, “I’m not going to let the cat jump in the bag now.” “Pardon me?” the captain said. Manjiro shook his head and sipped his coffee, the bitterness of it like a rebuke. His relationship with Captain Whitfield had been changing. Now that Manjiro was growing up—he was seventeen now—he regarded the captain more as a friend than a father. There were times, though, like now, when the feeling of being the naughty child of a possibly disapproving father was overwhelming. He should have confided in Captain Whitfield; the captain might have been able to help him out of his predicament. Well, it was too late now. He

Pinky?" says Karen. Pinky the pig is lying on her afghan where she usually is during meals, blinking with her bristlylashed eyes and hoping for scraps. "Pinky's right here!" "This is last year's Pinky," says her grandmother. "There's a new one every year." She looks across the table at Karen. She has a sly expression; she's waiting to see how Karen will take it. Karen doesn't know what to do. She could start to cry and jump up from the table and run out of the room, which is what her mother would do and is also what she herself feels like doing. Instead she sets her fork down and takes the rubbery chewed piece of bacon out of her mouth and places it gently on her plate, and that's the end of bacon for her, right then and there, forever. "Well, for heaven's sake," says her grandmother, aggrieved but with some contempt. It's as if Karen has failed at something. "It's only pigs. They're cute when they're young, smart too, but if I let them stay alive they'd get too big. They're wild when they grow up, they're cunning, they'd eat you, yourself. They'd gobble you up as soon as look at you!" Karen thinks about Pinky, running around the barnyard with no head, the grey smoke of her life going up from her and her rainbow light shrinking to nothing. Whatever else, her grandmother is a killer. No wonder other people are afraid of her.

Rider's head snapped up at the sound of gravel crunching under Willow's boots. The sight of the girl in boy's garb birthed an oath. Beneath her cotton shirt, her breasts bounced freely with each step. And within the tight mannish pants, her hips swung in an unconscious rhythm, clearly proclaiming her all woman. Hell, she might as well be naked! His body's reaction was immediate. Cursing his lack of control, he turned sideways, facing her horse, and pretended to adjust the saddle straps. Willow took Sugar's reins and waited for Rider to move aside. He didn't budge an inch. Instead, he tipped his hat back on his head, revealing undisguised disapproval. "Is that the way you always dress?" he bit out. Willow stiffened, immediately defensive. Criticizing herself was one thing; putting up with Sinclair's disdain was another! "If you were expecting a dress, you're crazy!" she snapped. "It would be suicide in this country." "Haven't you ever heard of riding skirts?" "Yes. I'm not as dumb as you seem to think. But fancy riding skirts cost money I don't have. 'Sides, pants are a hell of a lot more useful on the ranch than some damn riding skirt! Now, if you're done jawing about my clothes, I'd like to get a move on before dark." "Somebody ought to wash that barnyard mouth of yours,woman." Willow rested her hand on her gun. "You can try, if you dare." As if I'd draw on a woman, Rider cursed silently, stepping out of her way. As she hoisted herself into the saddle, he was perversely captivated by the way the faded demin stretched over her round bottom. He imagined her long slender legs wrapped around him and how her perfect heart-shaped buttocks would fill his hands and...Oh,hell, what was he doing standing here, gaping like some callow youth? Maybe the girl was right.Maybe he was crazy. One moment he was giving the little witch hell for wearing men's pants; the next he was ogling her in them. He started to turn away, then reached out and gave her booted ankle an angry jerk. "Now what?" Icy turquoise eyes met his, dark and searing. "Do you have any idea what you look like in that get-up? No self-respecting lady would dress like that. It's an open invitation to a man. And if you think that gun you're wearing is going to protect you, you're badly mistaken." Willow gritted her teeth in mounting ire. "So what's it to you, Sinclair? You ain't my pa and you ain't my brother. Hell,my clothes cover me just as good as yours cover you!" She slapped his hand from her ankle, jerked Sugar around, and spurred the mare into a brisk gallop. Before the fine red dust settled, Rider was on his horse, racing after her. Dammit, she's right.Why should I care how she dresses? Heaven knows it certainly has no bearing on my mission. No, agreed a little voice in his head, but it sure is distacting as hell! He'd always prided himself on his cool control; it had saved his backside more than once. But staying in any kind of control around Willow Vaughn was like trying to tame a whimsical March wind-impossible!

Late in the evening I heard the distant rumbling of wagons over bridges — a sound heard farther than almost any other at night — the baying of dogs, and sometimes again the lowing of some disconsolate cow in a distant barn-yard. In the mean-while all the shore rang with the trump of bullfrogs, the sturdy spirits of ancient wine-bibbers and wassailers, still unrepentant, trying to sing a catch in their Stygian lake — if the Walden nymphs will pardon the comparison, for though there are almost no weeds, there are frogs there — who would fain keep up the hilarious rules of their old festal tables, though their voices have waxed hoarse and solemnly grave, mocking at mirth, and the wine has lost its flavor, and become only liquor to distend their paunches, and sweet intoxication never comes to drown the memory of the past, but mere saturation and waterloggedness and distention.

Gian Pero Frau, one of the most important characters in the supporting cast surrounding S'Apposentu, runs an experimental farm down the road from the restaurant. His vegetable garden looks like nature's version of a teenager's bedroom, a rebellious mess of branches and leaves and twisted barnyard wire. A low, droning buzz fills the air. "Sorry about the bugs," he says, a cartoonish cloud orbiting his head. But beneath the chaos a bloom of biodynamic order sprouts from the earth. He uses nothing but dirt and water and careful observation to sustain life here. Every leaf and branch has its place in this garden; nothing is random. Pockets of lettuce, cabbage, fennel, and flowers grow in dense clusters together; on the other end, summer squash, carrots, and eggplant do their leafy dance. "This garden is built on synergy. You plant four or five plants in a close space, and they support each other. It might take thirty or forty days instead of twenty to get it right, but the flavor is deeper." (There's a metaphor in here somewhere, about his new life Roberto is forging in the Sardinian countryside.) "He's my hero," says Roberto about Gian Piero. "He listens, quietly processes what I'm asking for, then brings it to life. Which doesn't happen in places like Siddi." Together, they're creating a new expression of Sardinian terreno, crossing genetic material, drying vegetables and legumes under a variety of conditions, and experimenting with harvesting times that give Roberto a whole new tool kit back in the kitchen. We stand in the center of the garden, crunching on celery and lettuce leaves, biting into zucchini and popping peas from their shells- an improvised salad, a biodynamic breakfast that tastes of some future slowly forming in the tangle of roots and leaves around us.

The long year passed slowly. Then one day, as October winds blew golden leaves around the farm, Autumn heard his mother say that even though her son was gone she would bake a pumpkin pie for Halloween. And of course she would need a pumpkin. At last an idea came to Autumn. If he could just get his mother to the barn and up to the loft she would find the magic pumpkin. Autumn began to pull at his mother’s apron. “What’s wrong with you today?” cried his mother. “I have many things to do and I have no time for playing.” But Autumn kept pulling on her apron until she was out of the house and in the barnyard. Then he ran into the barn, barking louder than he ever had. His mother followed him into the barn, where it was so dark she could not see the little dog. “Now where have you gone?” she cried. Autumn began barking again and it seemed to come from above her. She looked up and dimly saw Autumn at the top of the loft ladder, barking wildly. “What are you carrying on about up there? There’s nothing up in that old loft.” But Autumn did not stop barking. “All right, all right, I’ll come up and take a look,” she said as she began to climb the ladder. When she got to the top, the morning light lit up the corner of the loft where Autumn, smiling as much as a dog can smile, stood next to a very large pumpkin. It was one of the largest pumpkin she had ever seen. “Now, how did this pumpkin get up here?” Of course there was no one there to answer her question except Autumn and he could not talk. So she decided to use the pumpkin for the pie she planned to bake. She pulled at it and rolled it, and finally after a great effort she managed to get the magic pumpkin down the ladder and into the kitchen, where Autumn ran barking around the table. “Calm down, Autumn, and let me get to work on this pie.” As she was about to cut the stem from the pumpkin, she thought of the days when her husband carved the jack-o’-lantern for Angus. “Well, maybe I’ll just do the same.” She went to Angus’s room and found one of his old drawings. She traced a jack-o’-lantern face onto the pumpkin. Then, taking a large kitchen knife, she cut into the pumpkin. When only one eye was carved, there were streams of light. And when she carved the nose, and the smiling mouth, great shafts of light like sunbeams filled the room. Again Autumn began to bark. But when she turned to quiet him, there, standing in the wonderful light, was her son.

After several courses, Dylan looked at the menu, noting that "Cheeseburger" was next up. "Okay, this is something I recognize," he said with relief. "Don't get too excited," said Grace knowingly as she sipped the last of a bright and barnyard funky Romanee-Saint-Vivant from a big-bowled burgundy stem. The waiter stepped out of the shadows and set two servings of the next course on the table simultaneously. Another server placed two very large Bordeaux stems on the table, and then carefully filled each with just one and a half ounces of wine. "This is Chef's cheeseburger," the waiter said. "Paired with the '70 Latour." The waiter and other server then backed away. Dylan and Grace leaned forward, examining the strange creation. It smelled amazing, though it looked much more like something from a science class than from a Michelin-starred restaurant-- a tiny piece of freeze-dried cheese on a teaspoon of bison tartare, lying atop a small lettuce pillow that had been filled with Vidalia onion smoke. It sat on a small warm open-face wheat bun, and the whole thing was presented on a miniature plate on which was a little pool of foamed heirloom tomato, and another of foamed mustard seed. And it was all topped with a few droplets of pureed brined Japanese cucumber. Dylan just stared at it. "I feel like it belongs in a museum." "I know. It's almost too beautiful to eat," Grace said. They were both captivated by the variety of scents coming from the presentation. It did, indeed, smell like an amazing cheeseburger. "Well, I'm gonna try," said Dylan, putting the little top bun on. Grace watched as he picked it all up with his thumb and forefinger, dapped it in the foamed tomato and mustard, and popped it in his mouth. Dylan's mouth and nose were filled to bursting with all the expected flavors and scents of a great cheeseburger-- bread, meat and cheese, ketchup and mustard, lettuce and pickle. Oh, wow, it was good. And as he chewed, he popped the lettuce pillow, adding just the right touch of sweet onion scent and flavor to the mouthful.

In 2013, science writer Natalie Angier gave the centrality of female friendship a zoological boost, pointing out that, "In animals as diverse as African elephants and barnyard mice, blue monkeys of Kenya and feral horses of New Zealand, affiliative, long-lasting and mutually beneficial relationships between females turns out to be the basic unit of social life.

Gentry crept out. There, stuck in the slime a few feet away, was a huge unexploded bomb. It was about the size of a household refrigerator, shaped like a cigar, with its tail fins sticking up. A large pig slowly waddled across the barnyard and began licking it. On

The Talent Code, Daniel Coyle writes that “From a scientific perspective, it was as if the researchers had traced the lineage of the world’s most beautiful swans back to a scruffy flock of barnyard chickens.

Mort d'un coq, but you annoy me, you vex me, you anger and enrage me- me, I could twist your so stupid neck! What lies behind all this I know no more than you, but may Satan serve me fried turnip with parsley if I traverse Monsieur Robin Hood's barnyard seeking a conventional explanation for something which fairly reeks of the superphysical. No, a reason there is, there must be, but you are as far from seeing it as an Icelander is from hearing the blackbirds whistle in the horsechestnuts of St. Cloud Yes!

You can always reason with a German. You can always reason with a barnyard animal, too, for all the good it does.

Quinn grunts. Somehow, it encapsulates his disbelief that I’m able to put together an edible meal along with an acknowledgment of my father’s passing. Though I shouldn’t be surprised, considering most of his vocabulary is probably composed of such nonverbal expressions. Barnyard animals aren’t known for their witty discourse.

It’s one of the few places in the city where a person can sample the scent of ungulate manure. Not the reek of human excrement and piss, or the moldy-dusty funk of pigeon shit, but the true grassy smell of a barnyard. Like a well-balanced pinot grigio, the air was green and vegetal, warm with the memory of hay.

Sounds good to me. I know watching me come turns you on, but if you could refrain from sounding like a barnyard animal while I come, that would be great. The mooing is a weird habit you’ve picked up.

Even if you are half barnyard animal, you’re my best friend and I don’t want you to die!

Going through the barnyard he passed Mrs. Wiggins. The cow lifted her big nose and sniffed appreciatively. “H’m,” she said. “Roses!” And passed on. Freddy

Boyfriend #11 Clark Barnyard, Age Twenty-Three Still not over boyfriend #9 and humiliated by #10, Jane declared she would shed her victimhood and become the elusive predator--fierce, independent, solitary!...except there was this guy at work, Clark. He’d made her laugh during company meetings, he’d share his fries with her at lunch, declaring that she needed fattening up. He was in layout at the magazine, and she’d go to his cubicle and sit on the edge of his desk, chatting for longer than made her manager comfortable. He was a few years younger than her, so it seemed innocent somehow. When he asked her out at last, despite the dark stickiness of foreboding, she didn’t turn him down. He cooked her dinner at his place and was goofy and tender, nuzzling her neck and making puppy noises. They started to kiss on the couch, and it was nice or approximately sixty seconds until his hand started hunting for her bra hooks. In the front. It was so not Mr. Darcy. “Whoa, there, cowboy,” she said, but he was “in the groove” and had to be told to stop three or four times before he finally pried his fingers off her breasts and stood up, rubbing his eyes. “What’s the problem, honey?” he asked, his voice stumbling on that last word. She said he was moving too fast, and he said, then what in the hell had they been building up to over the past six months? Jane sized up the situation to her own satisfaction: “You are no gentleman.” Then Clark summed up in his own special way: “Hasta la vista, baby.”

In The Talent Code, Daniel Coyle writes that “From a scientific perspective, it was as if the researchers had traced the lineage of the world’s most beautiful swans back to a scruffy flock of barnyard chickens.” Over time, even without an expert teacher at the outset, the pianists managed to become the best musicians in the world. The pianists gained their advantage by practicing many more hours than their peers. As Malcolm Gladwell showed us in Outliers, research led by psychologist Anders Ericsson reveals that attaining expertise in a domain typically requires ten thousand hours of deliberate practice. But what motivates people to practice at such length in the first place? This is where givers often enter the picture.

He got Mrs. Wiggins to help him at first; she would run, and then he would gallop after her and lasso her. But it wasn’t much fun for her. When you run and somebody ropes you, you’re likely to fall down and skin your nose. After this had happened several times, the cow quit. Indeed she was so lame from falling down that she said she couldn’t run once around the barnyard without yelling. She got a bottle of arnica from Mrs. Bean and a bottle of liniment from Mr. Bean and Freddy found a bottle of something Uncle Ben had had, up in the loft. She mixed them all together and rubbed them on, and then she said she felt better. She certainly smelt different.

Down in the barnyard Mrs. Wiggins was mustering her troops. She had been President of the F.A.R. for so long that she had got used to being in authority and giving orders, and she was a much better general than you’d expect a cow to be.

I might refer here to Jeff’s concept of the Human as Two, and mention that these may be glimpses, as it were, through the fence that surrounds Charles Fort’s famous comment in Book of the Damned, “I think we’re property.” We are little, curious animals, as it were, peering through the slats of the fence that surrounds our barnyard, and seeing beyond the edge not another world, but a more real vision of ourselves reflected as noumena and wondering, “What is that?

The idioms also revealed that Chinese shared a barnyard bawdiness with American English. My favorite was “taking off your pants to fart”—wasted effort.

Oh, Lord!” I muttered, because I knew that even though I’d tried hard not to get Lizzie started, I’d already done it. Already walked across a barnyard inside of myself and gone right along and stepped in something! “You dreamed about Jesus?” Lizzie repeated.

that the prevalence of hierarchy is not limited to human societies. There are clear hierarchies among most social birds and mammals, including those species most nearly related to human beings. Farmers have always known that barnyard flocks of hens develop a ‘pecking order’ in which each hen has a rank, allowing her to peck at and drive away from food birds below her in rank, but to be pecked by, and forced to give up food to, those above her.

Thought you might like some help around here.” The children raced down the porch steps. Sheriff Jeffries swung Dan up in the air, but his eyes never left my face. I bit my lip and concentrated on Janie as she painted the shoulder of my clean blouse with her half-gnawed teacake. I sighed. Maybe I could make myself a bigger apron. I switched Janie from one hip to the other. In spite of my worry over Arthur and Mama, the sight of the sheriff set me in a more playful mood. “Do we need help?” I hollered. “Well, let me see. I don’t know as we have any lawbreakers to be hauled off to jail. You boys seen any outlaws?” Dan and James giggled, and the sheriff grinned as he swiped his hat from his head and twirled it round and round his fingers. “Figured you might like a break from farm chores. I don’t imagine it’s easy for a slip of a girl like you to take care of it all.” I pulled my shoulders back and lifted my chin, my good humor retreating a bit. “I do just fine, thank you.” He held up his hands. “I didn’t mean to imply otherwise. Just bein’ neighborly.” I studied his eager eyes, trying to decide if I should be offended or flattered. But unlike Mama, I never could stay offended long. I threw him a grin. “You do the rest of my barnyard work, and I promise a filling dinner in return.” “My pleasure.” He bowed at the waist and slapped his hat on his head. Now it was my turn to blush. Help sounded wonderful, as did company, but did I sense something more in his manner? I ought to turn the conversation to Arthur during dinner. That would make it clear that my future was spoken for.

We’re still a bit short on the donations, so if you’ve got a rich uncle, today’s the day to remind him of the filing clerk he once took to Blackpool, the name of the cheap hotel where they stayed, and the type of barnyard animal that was involved.

Lydia Maria Child Over the river and through the wood To Grandmother’s house we go. The horse knows the way To carry the sleigh Through white and drifted snow. Over the river and through the wood Oh, how the wind does blow! It stings the toes And bites the nose, As over the ground we go. Over the river and through the wood To have a first-rate play. Hear the bells ring, Ting-a-ling-ling! Hurrah for Thanksgiving Day! Over the river and through the wood, Trot fast, my dapple gray! Spring over the ground Like a hunting hound, For this is Thanksgiving Day. Over the river and through the wood, And straight through the barnyard gate. We seem to go Extremely slow~ It is so hard to wait! Over the river and through the wood~ Now Grandmother’s cap I spy! Hurrah for fun! Is the pudding done? Hurrah for the pumpkin pie!

There are any number of choice terms I could apply to you, several of them involving the barnyard. But since most of them would be an insult to the animals living there, I shall refrain from saying them aloud.

The musicality makes this book soar, balancing rhymes with sounds that chickens would make while bringing imaginative fun to the barnyard. A perfect pick to illustrate the fun of reading for the very young." Kirkus Review

When oxen dance in the barnyard, mice hide in their holes.

In the early 1900s, Soviet agronomist Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov discovered a strange phenomenon: weeds in crop fields sometimes begin to look like the crop themselves. Original rye plants, he realized, looked nothing like the plump grain that by then was a staple crop in Russia. It was a scraggly, inedible weed. Rye, he realized, had performed an incredible trick of mimicry. Early wheat farmers, weeding by hand, pulled out and discarded the rye-weed to keep their planted crops healthy. So, to survive, a few rye plants took on a form more similar to wheat. Farmers still extricated the pesky rye, when they could spot it. This selective pressure molded the rye to evolve to trick a farmer’s discerning eye. In this case, only the best impressionists survived. Eventually, the rye became so excellent a mimic that it became a crop itself. “Vavilovian mimicry” is now a basic fact of agriculture.* Oats are a product of the same process; they also got their start mimicking wheat. In rice paddies, the weed known as barnyard grass is indistinguishable from the rice at the seedling stage. Recent genetic analysis found that this weed began to change its architecture to match the rice about a thousand years ago, when rice cultivation in Asia was well underway. In lentil fields, common vetch is a ubiquitous weed that masterfully redesigned its previously spherical seeds to be the same flat, round disc shape as lentils themselves. In that case, the plant needed not to trick a farmer’s eye but rather make itself impossible to eliminate from the mechanical threshing process. Winnowing machines simply could not tell the difference between a vetch and a lentil. Weed genomicist Scott McElroy argues that modern herbicide-resistant plants are actually just engaging in Vavilovian mimicry at the biochemical level; they are mimicking the crop plants that have been conveniently engineered to tolerate the herbicide.

A couple drove down a country road for several miles, not saying a word. An earlier discussion had led to an argument and neither of them wanted to concede their position. As they passed a barnyard of mules, goats, and pigs, the husband asked sarcastically, "Relatives of yours?" "Yep," the wife replied , "in-laws

college boys working to return to school down South; older advocates of racial progress with Utopian schemes for building black business empires; preachers ordained by no authority except their own, without church or congregation, without bread or wine, body or blood; the community "leaders" without followers; old men of sixty or more still caught up in post-Civil-War dreams of freedom within segregation; the pathetic ones who possessed nothing beyond their dreams of being gentlemen, who held small jobs or drew small pensions, and all pretending to be engaged in some vast, though obscure, enterprise, who affected the pseudo-courtly manners of certain southern congressmen and bowed and nodded as they passed like senile old roosters in a barnyard; the younger crowd for whom I now felt a contempt such as only a disillusioned dreamer feels for those still unaware that they dream -- the business students from southern colleges, for whom business was a vague, abstract game with rules as obsolete as Noah's Ark but who yet were drunk on finance. Yes, and that older group with similar aspirations, the "fundamentalists," the "actors" who sought to achieve the status of brokers through imagination alone, a group of janitors and messengers who spent most of their wages on clothing such as was fashionable among Wall Street brokers, with their Brooks Brothers suits and bowler hats, English umbrellas, black calfskin shoes and yellow gloves; with their orthodox and passionate argument as to what was the correct tie to wear with what shirt, what shade of gray was correct for spats and what would the Prince of Wales wear at a certain seasonal event; should field glasses be slung from the right or from the left shoulder; who never read the financial pages though they purchased the Wall Street Journal religiously and carried it beneath the left elbow, pressed firm against the body and grasped in the left hand -- always manicured and gloved, fair weather or foul -- with an easy precision (Oh, they had style) while the other hand whipped a tightly rolled umbrella back and forth at a calculated angle; with their homburgs and Chesterfields, their polo coats and Tyrolean hats worn strictly as fashion demanded. I could feel their eyes, saw them all and saw too the time when they would know that my prospects were ended and saw already the contempt they'd feel for me, a college man who had lost his prospects and pride. I could see it all and I knew that even the officials and the older men would despise me as though, somehow, in losing my place in Bledsoe's world I had betrayed them . . . I saw it as they looked at my overalls.

You should a got a wife,” said Joad. “Preacher an’ his wife stayed at our place one time. Jehovites they was. Slep’ upstairs. Held meetin’s in our barnyard. Us kids would listen. That preacher’s missus took a god-awful poundin’ after ever’ night meetin’.

Over the river, and through the wood, To grandfather’s house we go; The horse knows the way, To carry the sleigh, Through the white and drifted snow. Over the river, and through the wood, To grandfather’s house away! We would not stop For doll or top, For ’t is Thanksgiving day. Over the river, and through the wood, Oh, how the wind does blow! It stings the toes, And bites the nose, As over the ground we go. Over the river, and through the wood, With a clear blue winter sky, The dogs do bark, And children hark, As we go jingling by. Over the river, and through the wood, To have a first-rate play— Hear the bells ring Ting a ling ding, Hurra for Thanksgiving day! Over the river, and through the wood— No matter for winds that blow; Or if we get The sleigh upset, Into a bank of snow. Over the river, and through the wood, To see little John and Ann; We will kiss them all, And play snow-ball, And stay as long as we can. Over the river, and through the wood, Trot fast, my dapple grey! Spring over the ground, Like a hunting hound! For ’t is Thanksgiving day! Over the river, and through the wood, And straight through the barn-yard gate; We seem to go Extremely slow, It is so hard to wait. Over the river, and through the wood— Old Jowler hears our bells; He shakes his pow, With a loud bow wow, And thus the news he tells. Over the river, and through the wood— When grandmother sees us come, She will say, Oh dear, The children are here, Bring a pie for every one. Over the river, and through the wood— Now grandmother’s cap I spy! Hurra for the fun! Is the pudding done? Hurra for the pumpkin pie!

Given time to attend to their own affairs in exchange for subsisting themselves, slaves gardened, tended to barnyard animals, and hunted and fished on their own. Occasionally, they manufactured small items and sold them to their owners, neighbors, or other slaves.” Money was not the issue. The correlation to examine was between work and power.

I didn’t really expect her to accept, not with her being a humanoid and me a barnyard.

The jury which informed Potter he would be drawn and quartered was not an undisciplined mob but an official body representing the interests of the Revolutionary government. Humiliation with barnyard symbolism—goose feathers or hog’s dung—had regressed to archaic forms of torture.

Wholeness feels like gratitude. Gratitude that we are safe and happy and together. And for that, I must thank equally the foxes and the weasels, the tigers and the crocodiles. For the peace of the barnyard, I am grateful to the dangers and jaws of the jungle. For the belonging that is home, I can thank, in part, the exile that is travel. Though they seem like opposites, they are more like twins—two halves of a whole.

The pecking order comes from the barnyard

It felt somewhat like being in a zombie movie, only instead of our car being attacked by mindless brain-eating humans, we were being attacked by mindless, hostile barnyard animals.

Any doubt of the Father’s love disappeared the night God was wrapped in barnyard towels so the hay wouldn’t scratch his back.

Strong Christians see God in both the good and the bad. The mature believer sees God not only in pleasures and palaces, but also in the barnyards and stables of life.

couple drove down the road for a few miles speechless. An earlier discussion had led to an argument, so neither of them wanted to concede their position. As they passed a barnyard of pigs and goats the husband asked sarcastically, - Your relatives? - Yep, in-laws.

Impressive cursing, Barnyard.” Motherfucking Easley thinks he’s a riot with that wholly unoriginal nickname for my last name Barnard. “Ek gaan vir jou n poesklap gee.” I threaten

Four technicians clack and peck at keyboards beneath the video-encrusted wall, nerd-chickens pecking at the ground in a high-tech barnyard.

[...] don't you forget that those stinky smells have a purpose. Without the barnyard, there'd be no bacon. Without the fertilizer..." He waved his hand over the garden before turning again to Matthew. "Don't be afraid to deal with the mess, son. The sweetest moments come from the most offensive fertilizer.