When you spend as much time as I do at the fair in an animal barn, you quickly lose all contact with anything happening on the outside. Sure, there are the streams of visitors, coming in to see the animals, and then they disappear into the darkness beyond those giant sliding doors.

It was the bright lights that shone into the building — that was the first indication that anything out-of-the-ordinary was happening. A man stood in the doorway of the barn, his back to us inside. The halo of light surrounding the man made it difficult to see, at first, that he was wired — an earpiece and hand-held microphone tethered him to the equipment that stood before him.

The mystery man motioned with his free hand to the inside of the barn, but it wasn’t until he turned and ventured inside that we learned who he was or what he was saying.

“…and it is believed that he is in this barn,” the man’s smooth voice announced to an unseen audience. It was a field reporter for one of the local television stations. When he wasn’t standing outside in the wind-driven snow of a blizzard, he was reporting on everything from fashion design to high school football.

“Oh no, not again,” said a club member standing not far from me. She was referring, I had to assume, to the major drama of the year prior. A prisoner was being transported between facilities when the van that was carrying him overturned on I-95. He ran from the scene and ended up at the fair. And he had actually been in our barn. And he had stolen a lasagna that one of the members had prepared for the fair workers. He was caught in some nearby woods, still licking the dinner from his hands.

“His name is You-uh… Wh-uh…” the reporter continued. “Whiskey,” he then said, repeating the word that came through the wire connected to his ear. “Whiskey the Blogger is rumored to be in this very barn.”

His crew followed him into the barn and he held up his microphone for effect. “Whiskey, are you here?” he called to us inside.

“He’s gone insane,” the same club member said, shaking her head.

I was turning red, I could tell, and it had to be obvious. “This commotion can’t be good for the animals,” I said, and I headed for the back of the barn.

Sneaking out was easy with everybody’s attention focused on the excitement, the manhunt. I went around to the front to see hundreds of people standing, gawking, trying to see what was happening inside.

“What’s going on?” I asked a man eating a slice of pizza.

“They’re looking for some guy,” he told me. “…a blogger, I think — whatever that is. Whiskey something.”

“Did you say ‘Whiskey’?” came a voice nearby, a woman with a small child in a stroller. “Is he here? I read in his blog that he’d be here at the fair, and I put two and two together, that he had to be here in this barn.”

“So did Channel 4,” I said.

“He’s going to be on the news?” the woman asked.

“Guess so,” the man replied.

“Have you been inside to see the animals, ma’am?” I asked her, an motioned for her to follow me.

“Uhhh, no…” she said, and realized that I’d meant for her to follow me around the barn.

“Do you know who he is?” she asked me. “Is he here?”

“Yes,” I said. “He’s here.”

The human occupants of the barn were still following the continuing coverage of the manhunt. Now the reporter was interviewing people, asking if they knew of Whiskey’s whereabouts.

The critter occupants of the barn were oblivious, sitting in their cages. I took one out and crouched down, showing it to the boy in the stroller.

“Ooh,” he said, petting its fur. “Soft.”

“So is he here?” his mother asked. “Is Uisce in the barn?”

“Ummm,” was all I managed to say.

“Are you…”

I gave her an ix-nay on the Iskey-whay kind of look and she just smiled.

Her son was still petting the animal and she handed her camera to one of the other club members. “Would you mind?” she asked.

She crouched down next to the stroller and put her hand on the critter. “He is soft,” she agreed as the camera flashed and the picture was captured.

Eventually the news crew left the barn. Apparently their source was wrong about this Whiskey-the-blogger fellow being there. So there won’t be any film at eleven. But if you see a picture of man in a yellow smock and a woman in a blue sweater and a boy in the middle with a big grin and a bunny… well… ix-nay on the Iskey-whay, if you know what I mean.