Magical forests

For years I would sit in the back of my grandfather's 1975 muted gray Cadillac that we only took to funerals or for a drive to our cottage, and I would stare anxiously out the window. I was always looking for one thing as I gazed patiently at the Wisconsin prairie and farm scenery whizzing by. My grandmother sits in the front seat and tells me that they are coming up soon. I squirm in my seat, belted in, anxious in my small six year old stature and its limits on my Cadillac window viewing. The seconds pass so slowly and thoughts excitedly raced through me head. Will I see one today? Will one of them sneak out into the daylight? Watch out brown cow-they might come out today and spoil your chocolate milk!

My grandmother nudges my grandfather to turn down the radio, Willie Nelson calling for his lover, and I look and look out the window. Little hazel eyes glancing and darting, peeking through the slightly tinted glass for the tried and true signs of their existence. There were their remains, the enormous round balls randomly sitting in the cleared farm fields! Always so perfectly round, these brown and golden spheres of hay were part of the necessary deeds we all had to do. It made sense to me, they ate hay, so they would have to expel hay, regardless of how perfectly round it appeared and the size of their waste only proved to me the real size of the creatures themselves.

I continued to scour the empty spaces between the giant globes, hoping to see one of their horrifically amazing faces. Hoping, wishing, with only the enthusiasm of a whimsical girl to think of how I could tell my friends at school of what I saw, how I could tell them this secret existence that only my grandmother knew. She has shared her secret with me.

My eyes meet the mindless rows of yellow corn, so I sit back into my seat. Another missed opportunity at a sight of them, a sight I wanted so badly. My dismay was fleeting, the ride was long and there would plenty more opportunities to catch a glimpse. My grandmother asks if I saw anything and I tell her no and smile. I know that someday one of them will come out during the day, even though my grandmother said they only come out at night, and the first one I see, I will name them Penny, same as my cat, I can only image them being best friends. As the forests fly by in the tips of the window next to me, I know they will come out of their magical forest home for me to see, a real Wisconsin dinosaur, my grandmother would never lie...