The Wind That Took the Pallet Wrap
A Panhandle gust carried a roll of pallet wrap across forty acres and wrapped a stock tank, a mailbox and my neighbor's dog.
Dumas wind is not a weather condition, it is a neighbor. It shows up uninvited, rearranges your yard and leaves without apology. One March afternoon I carried a fresh roll of stretch wrap out to the loading dock to prep an export pallet, and the wind took it out of my hand like a kite string.
The roll bounced twice and then unspooled, a long clear ribbon of plastic streaming behind it for what looked like half a mile. It went across the dock, over a fence and out into the pasture. It looped around a stock tank, a windmill leg and a feed bin. It wrapped the mailbox so neatly the postal carrier left a note that read, Looks nice.
The strangest part is what happened to the dog. My neighbor's heeler had come by to visit, and in about ten seconds he had been wrapped around the middle, front to back, like a loaf of sandwich bread. He did not seem to mind. He stood there in the wind with a plastic stripe around his belly looking proud of himself, and he waited calmly while I unwound him.
I spent three hours collecting that wrap. I got most of it back, but a hundred yards of it were gone to Oklahoma. I checked the National Weather Service wind alerts after that, because I figured if I was going to get blown around, I might as well have notice. I also bought a second roll and a very large clamp.
I wrote the whole thing up for farm.FM. The shipment went out on time and the pallet was wrapped better than any in my history, since I was angry. The buyer wrote to say it was the tightest wrap he had seen on a cheese order. I told him it had help from the weather. The mailbox is still wrapped, by the way. I have been leaving it because the carrier seems to like it, and the dog still visits, hoping for a second go.