Once, when I was young, my father and I were traveling down a road out in the country and came upon a herd of cows. They were all lying down in the field like they were taking a break from cow business.
My father took one look and said, “It’s going to rain.”
About thirty minutes later, it was raining like a cow peeing on a flat rock (which is pretty hard if you’ve never witnessed such a thing). That’s when I first learned that animals know things, even if they don’t know they know them.
Some people use animals to understand the weather. The Associated press recently reported that 84 year-old Paul Smokov forecasts the weather using pig spleens.
“It looks like a normal year with no major storms,” he said. “That’s what the spleens tell me.”
I have seen a pig spleen and it told me nothing except that the pig that used to house the spleen was dead. The AP didn’t report how Mr. Smokov was able to get the pig’s spleens to forecast the weather, but I assume the pigs had previously faced a deadly forecast themselves, indicating my observation was correct.
My grandmother used to predict weather using all kinds of strange practices.
“Clear moon, frost soon,” she said. And she was right.
“Halo around the moon, rain soon,” was another one that usually ended in showers.
Rainbow in the morning gives you fair warning,” she told me once before a frog strangler nearly washed the house away. Seems her weather predictions were always right and always rhymed. I remember something about red sky in the morning, gives a pig fair warning. Okay, that was not exactly right but it involved a red sky and no pig spleens. It’s easier going to weather.com.
My grandfather once watched a cat grooming himself like crazy on the porch and said, “Going be some lightning soon.” Sure enough, bolts were smacking the ground in about an hour.
If you count the chirps of a cricket in a 14 second period and add 40, it is almost guaranteed that you will have the correct air temperature. Try it.
Once when walking through the woods with my uncle, we noticed more rabbits than usual eating. “They know there’s a storm coming,” he said. “They’re getting ready.” He pointed out leaves that had curled on a tree. “See, the trees know too.”
We were drenched before we got home. Somewhere, the rabbits were dry, fat and happy.
