Is that a bread crust? Will it make me happy?

I can’t say I know what a happy yak is supposed to look like, but I think now I’ll know an unhappy yak when I see one.

I have to think happiness, relative to its opposite, is far outside the existential ruminations of the yak, and the wildebeest, too, which is what I thought all those yaks were when I saw them close up at a commercial game farm — a drive-through zoo — on a family road trip Monday. My bad — who doesn’t know their yaks from their wildebeests?

Was it indifference on their faces? Disdain? Hard to know how much joy they find in the crusts of bread tossed down like insults in front of them. They do eat ’em.

***

It wasn’t easy to get a read on Henrik Stenson’s face, either, when he was zeroing in on The Open Championship early Sunday morning. The stoic Scandinavian just kept making putts, and not little puny putts, either. When he finally hit the one that clinched it in his head-butting duel with Phil Mickelson, he smiled a little, which gave us an idea of what a happy Swede looks like, and not even drunk, either.

***

We threw a little tournament Saturday at the golf course hard by Hood Canal, after which all the animals in the 3GA zoo howled ’til sun-up, give or take six or seven hours or so. Grey Goatee veteran Steve Manning emerged as Champion Goffer of Midsummer, with all the adulation and bread crusts that come with it. He was, at that point, not even drunk … just one happy yak.