It was a cold, blustery day in the Midwest. A blanket of snow... no, that's too cliche... The ground was covered in six inches of "partly cloudy". With Junior tucked in for a nap, I headed to the kitchen for another cup of coffee.
BANG! BANG, BANG!!
I danced and swore as silently as possible, now drenched in hot coffee after a sudden, oddly graceful, twitch of shock. The sound came again.
BANG!
My brain pointed out that gunfire was out of the question. The sound was too flat; there was no riccochet.
BANG, BANG!
Some jerk was whacking on the side of my house with a hammer! Probably those little hoodlums from the next neighborhood. I peeked out of the kitchen window and saw footprints leading to the house. A-hah! I ducked into the mudroom, intent on learning the identity of the jerk in question. A look out of the window showed... nobody.
BANG!
Okay, I don't care what the window shows, some incredibly rude vandal is beating on my siding. I pulled on my jacket and went outside for a confrontation.
BANG, BANG!!
The vandal darted to a nearby tree and stared at me in defiance. Face-to-face and now feeling rather foolish, I gave him a half-hearted scolding.
"Dude, could you keep it down? You're really loud."
The flicker scaled the tree and smirked at me from a high branch. I went back to my coffee.
Who did you meet this week?
We have things like that happen at our house as well. Quite often, it's the squirrels whose babies once fell down our chimney and wound up in our basement with our then-small children shouting, "Birds have landed."
ReplyDeleteMonti
NotesAlongTheWay
This week, I met two deer. One strolled across the road in front of my car. The other one stood in the field and traded nervous looks at me, like, "Go ahead." "No, YOU go ahead." "No, no, really. I'll wait." "I'm not certain I still WANT to cross the road. You go on while I think it over." I finally crept across in front of him (or was it her?) and went on my way. :)
ReplyDeleteMarian Allen
Monti-- I had a squirrel get in the house once. Hopefully never again. Were the babies okay?
ReplyDeleteMarian-- Oo! I've had that same conversation with some of the deer around here. Makes you want to "idle" all the way home.