Made By Nature

“There’s something in the office with us,” my husband said. His still, small whisper carried across his desk to my side of the office.

“Define something.” I didn’t bother to look up from my computer.

“As in some living thing—in this room, with us.” His tone made me pause.

“How do you know?” 

“Because the rug under my desk is breathing.”

And it was. Breathing. There at his feet under the area rug was a small hump—breathing. It was a small, breathing hump. I was stumped.

Then I remembered. “Oh sorry, darn, I meant to tell you earlier that the cat had some thing in here earlier, messing with it. Sorry again. My bad. Should have mentioned it.”

The hump shivered.

Later, after recovering and tossing a rotund, slightly traumatized mole out of his office, my husband observed, “I’m not sure that I can stand all this nature. It’s starting to keep me up at nights. Did you hear that racket in the garage the other night? About one in the morning?”

I shrugged. I guess he’d forgotten how fast I forget stuff.

“You didn’t hear the banging!” he said, shocked. I shrugged again.

“It was a possum, inside the garage, too blind to see to see that the garage door was shut. So, it just kept bonking into the garage door—over and over and over again. I had to let the possum out of the garage like it was a pet or something.”

“We don’t have a pet possum.”
He rolled his eyes. “I know that.”

I didn’t think that this would be a good time to tell him about the fox squirrel (a giant mutant squirrel capable of hauling bricks around) that I had spotted stealing landscaping cloth from our garden. It took us hours to roll out that stupid landscaping cloth. 

That mutant fox squirrel was ripping up huge hunks of the stuff, balling it up, and carting it off to his mutant squirrel condo in the sky. I guess to re-carpet or something.

And I didn’t bother to mention that a psycho cardinal (a red bird on crack) that had been attacking his own reflection in the rearview mirror of my truck, had now graduated to attacking his own reflection in our bedroom window right around naptime—mine! Tap. Tap. Tap. Tappity tap.

“Hey, you idiot bird, you’re trying to peck out your own eyes!” I may have screamed once or twice. 

The good news—the bird wasn’t pooping all over the truck any more.

The bad news—the bird was now pooping all over the house.

So that’s country living. It takes a strong constitution, a hefty work ethic, and an appreciation for nature in all its cracked craziness. 

Linda (Nature Girl) Zern