Nightmares
Maisie was five and Charlie was barely three when we came across the carcass of an antelope while walking on our ranch in western Montana. The creature was young, the size of a large dog, and its hind legs had been torn away by predators. Its eye sockets were empty, pecked clean by magpies, its petrified grey tongue was jutting out, and the top of its skull had been gnawed on and laid bare. I tried to hurry my children past the sight but they wouldn't come. They edged closer to the body. They nudged its bloated belly with their feet.
"Come on. You'll give yourself nightmares," I said to Maisie.
"We don't care," she said flatly. "We love dead things."
I let my children go on probing the corpse because I'd loved dead things too at their age. Most kids do, and most country kids especially.
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