The Little Kiltie Makes An Appearance

The St. Louis Scottish Festival is always on the first weekend of October. And unless I'm off on some damned fool adventure (like attending the Woodworking In America conference in Cincinnati, OH, which was my excuse last year), there's a good chance you'll see me there in one of my kilts.

And now there's a good chance you'll see Finley there in his kilt, as well. His new kilt (it was a new size, not a new tartan, which is Ancient Campbell) was delivered just in time, thanks to Neil at Baby Kilts. (You might also take note of the fact that Finley is one of the babies pictured on the front page of Neil's website... yeah, he's a model.)

It was interesting to see what aspects of the festival Finley liked and didn't like.  For example, we thought the pipe and drum bands would be too loud for him, but he loved them!  He kept leading us closer and closer, though we stopped far enough away that it wasn't too loud for his sensitive little ears.

On the other hand, he wasn't at all interested in the border collie demonstration, where they herded a bunch of sheep around the field.  I thought that weird because he always like dogs, but he really couldn't have been bothered.  Maybe it was the angle we had to watch it from.  Or maybe the police helicopter flying overhead was too much of a distraction.

At one time (this was before I was born, in the early 70's), I think my parents may have been the only proud owners of a herd of highland cattle in the state of Missouri. They didn't last but a year or two, though. Apparently highland cattle don't like fences and are quite deft when it comes to circumventing them. Or, at least, they were good at breaking free from the fences on our farm. After chasing them down one too many times, the diminutive bovines ended up on a shipping truck. I don't know if my mom has any pictures of them - if I find any, I'll append this post with them. 

Watching Finley's reaction to the two highland cattle at the St. Louis Scottish Games made me want to go out and get another herd!  He really enjoyed getting up close to them and they're small enough that they didn't scare him.  I venture to say he could have ridden one...

(As an aside, I think these cows were probably raised in America, because I didn't hear any kind of accent when they mooed.  Not even a bad Kevin Costner one...)