Dear Blog Reader
I hope that this finds you doing well. I am fine. I feel
much better after getting Ebola and ISIS out of my system last week. Isn’t that
the way of worries and concerns? You are going along just fine. Everything is
cool. Then, something appears. Worries on the periphery congregate;
accumulating, getting more numerous. Suddenly what was clear blue sky is now
overcast and ominous. Thankfully, writing about it clears things away. I would
say that we are now partly cloudy, on a cool spring day; warm when the sun
shines; cold and shivering when a cloud interrupts my sunbeam.
It is hard to believe that we are racing through October.
November is just around the corner and with it, my precious returns. My
precious hour of sleep that the government stole from me last March with day
light “savings” time. Isn’t it ironic that an entity that can’t save enough
money from my tax dollars and use that savings for the development of a vaccine
to prevent “the AIDS of our time”, Ebola, can sneak into our bedrooms in March
and remove a precious hour from our alarm clocks? Obviously, Santa needs to
tighten up on security at the North Pole because his secret is out regarding
that neat trick of getting to everyone’s house in one night. I believe that he
has been hacked by the N.orthern S.ly A.malgamation. Next thing that you know,
he will find out Santa’s secret of being able to be in numerous shopping malls
from Thanksgiving through Christmas Eve while supervising his elven, slave
labor force.
It is my duty to report the first casualty of the season’s
shift out of DST to regular time; or as I like to call it Back to the Dark
Ages. Usually, it is only embarrassing when you show up an hour early after “falling
back” the last Sunday of October instead of the first Sunday of November. The
consequences are a bit stiffer when, like the Colt’s defense, you show up confused
about the manmade semiannual rift in the space time continuum and let the
Steelers drop 51 on you. Still that is nothing compared to the consequences of
a miscalculation by my arch nemesis the Assassin Deer and one of his minions,
Ricky Raccoon.
You see I have been suffering from a bit of insomnia, what
with Ebola and ISIS (read the blog before this if you need more context.) I had
suffered through a particularly bad night last Tuesday night. Tossing and turning,
counting sheep, counting backwards from 100, counting 100 sheep backwards,
nothing was working. So at 3:00 a.m., I got out of bed and read for a while.
The next thing that I knew it was 4:30 and time to go on my morning bike ride.
I got dressed and had a great ride, put in a full day at work and managed to
stay awake for the drive home. But, I was exhausted. I kept myself awake until
7:30 then shuffled off to bed.
The assassin deer setting his watch ahead 1 week early made
two fatal errors thereby assuming that I was going to bed at 8:30. With the bad
information, he sent one of his raccoon minions up to check the back door. I
can understand the confusion. Sure the lovely Miss Beverly was still up.
However, we have distinctively different lighting tastes. I am an every light
in the house on. She is miss “I like mood lighting.” 29 years of marriage and
we still make this fundamental difference work. So the lovely Miss Beverly was
sitting in the near dark reading on the IPad for the hour before her usual bed
time of 8:30. I know. We are pretty wild and crazy.
As her bed time approached, she let out our two dogs and
they caught the raccoon red handed. He was up on his hind legs checking to see
if the back door was unlocked. Certainly, he was preparing a report on the
security surrounding the Sharritts for his dark overlord the Assassin Deer. The
raccoon made his second fatal mistake. First, he took orders from the Assassin
Deer. Second rather than run away across the grass, he went vertical and ran up
the porch post in the corner.
Let me paint a word tableau for you. The raccoon is in the
rafters of the back porch hissing and scrabbling for a foothold. The dogs are
on the ground jumping, barking and snarling at said raccoon. I am in bed at the
other end of the house, just heading for a deep sleep after being awake for 18
hours the day before. And the lovely Miss Beverly is standing over the bed
whispering my name; “Roger, Roger, Sweetie.” I groggily open my eyes to see Bev
silhouetted by the hallway light. As I come to, I get the grim news that the
dogs have a coon cornered on the porch. That is all that is said. It was the
part that was left unsaid that was the important part.
“What are you going to do about it?” Those words were not
spoken but I heard them loud and clear. This is not a new subject. It has been
written about over and over again in the annals of spousal communication. Every
essayist has written about it. Every comedian has stood up about it. The first
time I read about it was in a reader’s digest back when reader’s digest was what
bloggers did before the internet. The situation in that essay described a
husband being informed that there was a dead ground hog back by the garden. “What
are you going to do about it?”
Being a responsive and caring husband, I swung my feet out
of bed, put on a sweatshirt to guard against the chill in the air, shuffled to
the back porch and figured out what I was going to do about it. There was one
angry raccoon poised about three feet above my head. I could see that he
recognized me from the Wanted Dead or Alive poster that the Assassin Deer had
been circulating. I could see it in his beady little eyes. “If I drop down from
here, I could scratch his eyes out. He would wander around aimlessly taking me
away from these cursed dogs. Once safely away, I could crawl down and go get my
master and collect the reward for this wretched beast thereby ingratiating
myself to my evil overlord the Assassin deer.” Raccoons only look stupid. They
are really quite imaginative.
The dogs were at my feet. I could see that they were
thinking about using me for a ladder. I could see it in their beady little
eyes. “If we jump up to about his waist, we could gain purchase about his belt
and then by rapidly moving our short little legs and claws we could scratch our
way to the top of his head. As he flailed around, we could perch there until he
drew close enough and then fling ourselves at the coon. You go for his throat
and I will unclench his paws and we will tumble to the ground and take this fur
ball out. Our master will be forever grateful and give us extra chew toys and
not make us stay outside all day during the winter.” My dogs really are that
stupid. I was in my pajama pants and was not wearing a belt. That would have
been a painful disaster.
After sizing up the situation, I went back in the house, put
on some thick gloves, rummaged around the closet for the rarely fired 22 rifle,
and remembered where I kept my Barney Fife bullet. I went the back out to the porch,
and put an end to our little drama. Life is hard on the farm. No we don’t trap
raccoons and move them to the country where some farmer will have them spying
around the house getting the dogs all lathered up. We are the country; the end
of the line.
Take care. And remember what time it is.
Roger
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