Cat love is a hard pill to swallow if you’re not prepared for it. But certainly, minus those living on an ice cap or a cat-free island somewhere, no one is beyond the reach of a pair of nefarious cats when the weather is right. It’s even arrogant to think so, I think. It’s like saying, “Oh, that could never happen to me.” Well, it does. And it did. And Tony and I are still humbled by it to this day.

When the cats blew into town, Tony was still serving the remaining sentence of his bachelorhood in a dusty little duplex with Matt and me. Matt and I played our parts as avid viewers of the reality show that had become Tony’s life. Late nights, after a tough day at work and an equally taxing night of wedding planning, Tony would show up, his tie half-undone, the product long wrenched from his hair, looking like he’d just been jumped by a pack of surly shrews. He’d stumble into the kitchen, going straight for a glass of Coke, like a CEO on the bad side of a hostile takeover would a Scotch. Then, he’d fizzle out on the couch and gaze at whatever game was on ESPN. The scene looked so fascinating that a year later I decided to take the wedding plunge myself. In my opinion, Tony should have won an Iron Man award or a Purple Heart or something that year. He should have been awarded not just for the outstanding measure of stamina he displayed on the ordinary, but more for the cat abuse he took as the finish line of his wedding came into view. And, while I’m handing out awards, I should probably give myself a little one, because I went down hard with him.    

A few weeks before Tony’s ”Big Day,” winter vanished into thin air. Overnight, the snow melted and the dirty last of it lay like contaminated snow cones in the storm drains and sewage grates around town. I woke up to find everyone suddenly in shorts and flip-flops and asking me if I played Frisbee golf. The new season of spring had bloomed and filled the air with the sweet fragrance of love blossoms and lifetime commitments. Things were really looking up…or were they? Indeed, the next series of nights would be a lesson in nature that even the horrific imaginations of our 6th grade Health teachers couldn’t surpass. I am not happy for what I am about to report…   

For what seemed like an endless stretch, somewhere in the deepest, blackest hours of those harrowing spring nights, I remember jolting from sleep to what sounded like two cats being skinned alive outside my window. Maddening hisses, shrieks, and savage screams — it sounded like the cat version of the apocalypse. It went on for nearly twenty minutes this way before it finally turned off. The first night, awkward but slightly amused, I was just glad to get back to the business of sleeping. I’ve always considered the ruckus of the alley cat’s mating ritual quite absurd, but what about cats aren’t?  Before I fell back to sleep, in an effort to move past the degree of disturbance I felt inside, I tried to get at it from the angle of education. That night it did the trick; I was back to snoring soundly. 

But by the third night of living this kitty-kat nightmare, I felt things escalating to a near-abusive level. My mental health had gone ugly. In the daytime I became jumpy, untrusting. I’d accidentally misplace things at work and accuse co-workers of stealing. ”You took my Post-its, didn’t you? Don’t lie, Thief! Oh, here they are…under my mouse. So we still on for lunch?” I developed all the telltale signs of a victim mixed up in a shameless, buck-wild feline free-for-all. Indeed, the cats were relentless, demented, even. For reasons known to the mysteries of nature alone, these uncouth cats had made some kind of pact to include me in their sick little game. It was like being hurled into the director’s cut of National Geographic. Why, God, why?!

Apparently, Mother Nature with her sick sense of humor had designated the threadbare sprigs outside my window as the rendezvous point for the carrying on of these unrestrained animals. I grew irate. For several nights I tossed and turned in my half-sleep, flailing in that mysterious limbo between dreaming and consciousness to the screeching tune of the cats’ mating call. In the mornings, I’d wake up all swollen-eyed with a bad taste in my mouth. Over and over I’d have to remind myself, you didn’t do anything wrong; it was the cats; they’re the bad ones. I wanted to move to Powell, or to the more fashionable part of New Albany, somewhere where cats acted more civilized.

But at least I had one thing going for me; I knew what these cats were up to. I grew up in a small town, where cats from the country came to carouse at night. As a child, after a similar cat experience outside my old bedroom window (I wonder, were these the same cats?), I vaguely remember the next day Dad, a country boy himself, saying something along the lines like, “I don’t think they were fighting, Son.” Then he flashed me a knowing look, like I’d just been let in on an age-old secret, or admitted into a secret club, like the Freemasons. For the next several years, I silently bore this burning knowledge inside of me.       

Poor Tony, on the other hand, this was his first time. His was the bedroom next to mine, and we shared the same outside wall. Little did I know that during this stint of rowdy cat escapades, Tony lay trembling in the dark wondering if he’d just heard his first string of cat murders. And if so, should he report it? To him, and understandably so, it sounded like a wolf had got a hold of a few unfortunate strays, night after night after night. Later, Tony admitted that he was surprised the next day to find no traces of blood, fur clumps, or dismembered cat legs strewn throughout the yard. Obviously we were dealing with a street-smart wolf here that was very wise on how to hide his murder evidence.  

Due to our busy schedules and just plain forgetfulness, Tony and I never brought up the cats for a long time. Then one night, near the end of the cats’ gripping reign over our lives, just before it was time to call it the night, Tony turned to me, “You hear those cats fighting at night?” 

Hear ‘em? They are destroying my life!

Then, I knew it was time. I gave myself a moment to search for the right words. There were none. Then, in plain, direct speech I passed on the torch of dark feline knowledge. I said, “Tony, I don’t think these cats are fighting.” I watched as Tony ran through the natural gamut of emotions: first surprise, then denial, then “are you serious?”, and finally sad, sad acceptance. Tony was in the secret club.

After that, the cats quit it. It’s like they’d stopped in just to teach Tony a quick, terrible lesson and to torment my soul. Then they were done. In some strange way — I don’t know how — I’d like to believe that the cats had played a small part in preparing Tony for marriage. But I wonder if I didn’t learn something, as well. Let’s see, if I think hard enough until it hurts, maybe I can squeeze a good lesson from this experience. Yes, there it is. …We live in a fallen world. And this right here, my friends, is living proof. 

Categories: Nature
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I opened the Sunday newspaper and about fell out of my chair. In frightening, 75 font-sized letters, ones typically saved for only the worst of catastrophes, such as, say, an underground volcano erupting in downtown Columbus, the headlines read the following: BLIZZARD OF 2008.      

I suddenly had the sense that I’d dodged an assasination attempt on my life, that I’d ignorantly settled down for a picnic inside a lion’s den, and, by sheer chance, escaped without a scratch. Here I’d spent the Blizzard of 2008 cracking jokes, deleting spam mail, asking what’s for dinner, treating it as any ordinary winter weekend, while nature, in all its wintry fury (sore, perhaps, over the imminent return of spring?), had declared war on the Midwest, threatening to bury our houses to the shingles, sealing us forever in a snowy tomb. I might as well have had an absent-minded tea party in the middle of the Battle of the Bulge.  ”Pass the crumpets, please.”

Oddly enough, however, a comparison to war may not be far off. Although at the time I stood oblivious to any hints of danger to myself, I did detect a potential threat to our squirrel-sized dog, Phoebe. To put it simply, the backyard is our dog’s latrine. The snow on the ground had already accumulated several inches, enough to bury Phoebe to the neck. This posed a problem, since her fur is the color of snow, and if we had tossed her outside, a snow drift may have swallowed her up, and we’d have to wait till spring, when all the snow melted, to find her again. 

Armed with only a shovel, I dug a WWII snow trench in our backyard. This was necessary to prevent Phoebe from using the bathroom inside the house. While I worked, Jess occupied the open backdoor, keeping an eye out for enemies and, most important, for any deserters, namely Phoebe, who stood trembling in the wake of the path I had just cleared. 

At first, the trench bore a hard line, stopping abruptly a few feet out from the house. But the dog took badly to its cramped design. She touched her snout to the snow and sniffed timidly. With a clump of white clinging to her charcoal-colored nose and with her tail tucked between her legs, she did an about-face and made for the warmth of the house. Deserter!

With perfect military execution, Jess placed herself in front of the doorway, ending Phoebe’s feeble escape attempt. It was back to her Arctic potty. Phoebe did the only thing she could do: she licked the air and turned to face the elements. Just then, an icy, Lake Eerie wind kicked up. Phoebe’s floppy ears smoothed neatly back to her skull. Her tiny, white head rounded into the circle of a cotton ball. Another blast of wind, and she made slits around her oil spot eyes. Her pink underside shook.

“Go potty, Phoebe,” I said. 

She was expected to “go potty” in this?

 To move things along, I improved the design of the trench. I ran the trench around the corner of the house, where I scooped out a small clearing, to give Phoebe more privacy and room to maneuver. It was still cramped quarters, though, but in the end, Phoebe squeezed in several tight circles and did her business.

“Good girl!” I said. Phoebe then scuttled back inside the house. 

Victory was ours. The battle was nature vs. nature (if you consider Phoebe, being of the animal kingdom and all, as nature), and Phoebe had fought a good fight. We laughed at her struggle, at her silly animal instincts. But little did we know the joke was on us, for we stood unknowingly in the midst of the Blizzard of 2008.  

Categories: About a dog, Nature
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“What was that?” Jess asked, oh, around 3am. “Was it the wind?” The wind had plagued Jess’s mind ever since earlier that morning when she read in the news that”violent winds” were on their way. ”Violent winds…oh no…” I’d responded, feigning fear.

“You heard it, too?” I shot back, still in a partial coma. Before Jess confirmed it, I half-thought I had dreamed the thud against our house. To best describe it, it sounded like the UPS man had hurled a package against our front door.

So, I got out of bed to better analyze the situation. The pine trees in the backyard were going nuts. In the midst of the angriest wind I’d ever known, the treetops acted as though, at any minute, they could snap off and blow to China. Was the three little pigs wolf outside? I wondered if any shingles were left on my roof. 

In front, banging furiously at our front door step, a strip of siding hung by a string from the exterior of our house, as if a mighty gorilla had been working at it all night. Somehow, it held on all through the night, a miracle in itself. 

Not about to tackle a home repair project at three in the morning, I went back to bed feeling uneasy, listening to the wind slap against our bedroom window, feeling like one of the disciples stuck in the middle of the stormy Sea of Galilee, while Jesus snoozed away somewhere below deck. Wake up, Jesus, before our house blows away! 

The next morning I groggily drug myself out of bed to go fetch our trashcan that had blown into the street. I was just happy it was still in the vicinity. The wind had died down just a tad, but it still blew mean and with a Siberian sharpness. I moved to the side of the house, stepping over the articles of my neighbor’s trash now in my lawn (hey, I didn’t know they brushed with Colgate!), where I gathered a particulary large cardboard box I knew to be missing from the trashcan.

I went back inside thankful that I had made it through the wind storm of January ‘08. I had learned a hard lesson, indeed: violent winds ain’t no joke.   

Categories: Nature
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Saturday evening, Jess accidentally knocked herself out on the pills her doctor had prescribed for some back pain she’d been having. That sneaky blinding pink “MAY CAUSE DROWSINESS” label on the pill bottle, slipped right past our noses (when’d that get there?) and without warning, Jess soon nodded off into a deep sleep that’d make Rip Van Winkle jealous. Our conversation leading up to the intoxicated moment went something like this: “You want to play a game?” “Sure…zzz…”

 If you don’t count the tv remote, it was good that Jess had refrained from operating heavy machinery. However, she did drive home on the stuff, and I half-wanted to check her car for dings, animal fur, or perhaps, an embedded lawn ornament.

Abandoned and left with nothing to do, I went right to work at mindlessly zoning out on random fixtures in the living room. When that grew tiring, I thought it might be good to check Jess’ pulse and wait for clear signs of breathing, just to be safe. I did the same with our dog, Phoebe, who lay beside her as though she, too, had gotten into Jess’ pills. The silent, sad walls of the house began to get to me, however, and though Jess and Pheobe snoozed away within arm’s length, they seemed a million miles away. Part of me couldn’t help but feel a little insulted that no one invited me to the 24 hour sleep-a-thon.

After an instance of self-pity, I adjusted to the realization that I should be happy because the night was mine to do whatever I pleased - as long as I did it very quietly, so not to wake the house. But the quiet was too much. For a split moment, I flashbacked to high school library. My chest tightened. I sensed that all too familiar pinned up adolescent rambunctousness. The urge to suddenly bust out laughing and wing paper wads at someone swept over me. Then the fear - I felt eyes on me. Mrs. Matthews was here, I knew it. Any second, she’d emerge from her hiding place, out of the deep dark shadows of the book shelves, and kick me out for another two weeks for being “too loud.”

At the risk of going completely insane with high school flashbacks and the maddening silence, I flipped on the tv. Jess was out for the night, anyway, no matter what ruckus I caused. Instinctively, I landed on the History Channel, which, to my delight, happened to be showing MonsterQuest, a documentary featuring daring scientists and cameramen tracking the jungles of developing countries, hot on the trail of the most notorious mythical creatures, such as the Lochness Monster, Big Foot, and Danny Devito. This noble expedition is done, of course, in the name of Science and, the less advertised, to get to the bottom of what the heck’s in the water that’s making the locals crazy.

But, if you ask me, I don’t think the locals are crazy at all. In fact, they are quite brilliant. What’s better to boost the economy of a poverty-stricken country than the monster tour biz? There’s always a market - man’s innate curiosity - and there’s practically no overhead, just a map and a perhaps a monkey in a mask.

And that may be precisely what we had on our hands here. This particular episode starred ”the real hobbit”, named after the loveable, tiny furry-footed creatures in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings novel triology. In short, the real hobbit is described as an orange-haired, three-to-four foot tall monkey-like creature with a human face (perhaps Gilbert Gottfried’s) whose favorite hide out is the thick jungles of Sumatra, Indonesia. According to eyewitnesses, it has the exact dimensions of the native orangutan - but that’s not what it is! Okay?!

Sometimes, I guess, this baby Chewbaca comes out and says hi to the villagers in his own special monkey-man sort of way by grabbing at roots and bolting up the overgrown side of the nearest dormant volcano when spotted. He’s not particularly violent or cheerful. In fact, the locals call him Orang Pendak, which means “we don’t know what he is or where he came from, but he’s very dull and could certainly use a shave.”

Before the expedition began, the scientists hired the local monster tourguide who had a booth set up right next to the “COCONUT DRINKS FOR 3 BANANAS OR TWO CHICKENS” stand guy. (By the looks of the place, I guessed barter system.) He didn’t speak a lick of English, but in his perfectly urban American translated voice, he went into wild detail about his confrontation with the real hobbit. Upon seeing him, the tourguide froze, he recalled. The real hobbit, probably startled by the monster tourguide bursting in on him in his jungle bathroom, did the only thing a real hobbit knows how: he grabbed at roots and made for the dead volcano.      

To my knowledge, no one’s actually ever held a conversation with the real hobbit. But the general consensus is that he is very intelligent. This was largely confirmed by the way the camera now and then panned in on the treetops, implying that the real hobbit could be cleverly hiding up there, watching (and eating popcorn) as his own search party stumbled through the jungle below calling out his name as if for a lost dog.

Turned out, after a half hour or so of watching these guys tromp around, stopping occasionally to comment on caches of animal dung, I realized the real hobbit was about as exciting as a hermit in need of a haircut. The Orang Pendak was rather a bore. I mean, he could have at least earned the reputation of raiding the village and terrorizing some chickens, or something. But he wouldn’t even give us this.  

To be honest, I didn’t stick around for the second half of MonsterQuest to find out if the scientists ever found him. Chances are they didn’t. Otherwise we’d have heard about it in the news by now, probably on E!, posing as Michael Jackson’s newest pet, or something. But if the scientists ever decide to go after it again, and they need something to slow the little guy down to make him an easier catch, I know where they can find some stuff that beats any tranquilizer out there on the market today.

“Right, Jess?”

“Zzz…” 

Categories: Mystery, Nature, Television, Travel
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Wednesday morning, the world, usually pitch black at 6am, possesed a curious phosphoresence. Overnight, the first snow of the season had transformed the typical early morning colors into what seemed like the stage of the Nutcracker. The world felt fresher, the oxygen breathed more richly. Consumed by this magic, my mind reverted back to my childhood. I felt that old familiar pang of excitement over a possible school cancellation.

This school boy abandon quickly fled once I noticed my driveway buried in two feet of snow. That meant work for me. The winter version of the Biblical flood had hit Columbus, and unfortunately, someone needed to shovel. If only I had a snow shovel…

Unfortunately, I didn’t own one. If I remembered right, this was the same problem I had last winter. One measly blizzard last March, and the snow shovel shortage of the century suddenly swept the state. Lowe’s, Home Depot, Walmart - none had them in stock. I never checked, but I bet they were going on Ebay for roughly the same price as Ohio State/Michigan tickets. Store clerks laughed in my face when I asked them to direct me to the snow shovel department.

“Will any of your other locations have ‘em?” I’d ask.

“You can try,” they answered, with a tsk-tsk-tsk-like air.

I swore this would never happen to me again. Next time I’d be first in line. I’d buy mine in June. But summer came and the heat of the days made any thoughts of snow vanish. By the time fall rolled around, I’d stroll carelessly by rows of shovels at Lowe’s. There are so many; they won’t run out. Plus it’s not near snowy or wintry enough to buy one now. Maybe next week. There’s time - duped by the universal lie. To make a long story short, I never bought one.

Well, now I was paying for it. After slipping back and forth to work in my tiny Ford front-wheel drive, and after taking a series of spills in the work parking lot, straining a groin muscle, I decided to use my lunch break to finally go buy a snow shovel.

I went to Lowe’s. I Tracked through the dirty parking lot slush and slidding doors with damp pant bottoms. Wasting no time, I made a beeline for the nearest red-vested Lowe’s employee. In an aisle of snow blowers, she worked hard punching buttons on a hand-held electronic device. It resembled a chintzy, Dr. Who laser gun.

“Excuse me,” I asked, using my sorry-to-trouble-you voice. “But do you know where I can find the snow shovels?”

“All we have is in front where you walk in,” she said, still operating the Dr. Who gun. It made a beep.

Unable to remember, I probably uttered a weak joke to cover the embarrassement of having just walked right by them on my way in. I thanked her for her detailed directions and made my way over to the limbo part of the store located between the outdoor and indoor entrances. Inside, every step tripped one or both of the automatic sliding doors. I searched the area for shovels while the doors slid frantically on their rails. Open, close; open, close.  

Finally, a cardboard box of plastic handles near the indoor entrance attracted my attention. ”Snow Shovels - $20″ was scrawled in permanent market on a sign. I held my breath and gained a better look at what appeared to be sand shovels.       

Surely this isn’t all they have, I thought. The Dr. Who woman made a mistake. These aren’t even two feet long, and would easily snap under the pressure of a full load of snow. What’s the point.

As if trapped in a horror movie, I took flight for the nearest Lowe’s employee. Barely able to restrain from snatching two fists full of his red vest and demanding to know if the sand shovels were their idea of some sick joke, I calmed down just enough to ask him if that’s all they had.

“Yup,” he said, with his quality customer service mock sympathy. “We ran out earlier today.”

“Will you be getting more in?” I asked.

“I hope so,” was the only help he offered.

I tromped back to my car through the slushy parking lot, defeated, angry that I lived in a world where kiddie sand shovels could be sold for snow shovels - for $20. Later that day I found out that the weekend was suppossed to bring warm weather. This brought some relief. I would only be the neighborhood slob for a day or two, until the snow melted. And as the work day ended and I headed back home on the cleared roads, I thoroughly convinced myself that I will never let this happen to me again.        

Categories: Life, Nature, Shopping
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Sunday afternoon, on our way back from church, Jess and I pulled over at Hoover Dam. She had the digital camera with her and couldn’t pass up the chance for some cool shots of the colorful trees that blazed like fire off the man-made lake.

 Well, her zoom wasn’t quite giving her the winning photos she’d imagined, and the frustration showed on her pretty, little face as she made her way up the incline of the boat ramp.  Over the past few weeks, The Columbus Dispatch has been running a photo contest with weekly winners. Jess is hopeful because the grand prize-winner is awarded the coveted Canon XTi digital camera with 18-55 lens (whatever that means), a retail value of $799.99. Lightening fast, the camera can capture the wings of a hummingbird at a hundred yards. (I might be exaggerating but I’m not sure since I know nothing about cameras.) 

We headed back to the car. Shaking off the last feelings of defeat, Jess mumbled a couple things about being a crumby photographer. We pulled back onto the road for home, but I had other plans. “Where are you going?” Jess asked, when I took a left at The Duke and Dutchess.

“You still want to get some pictures?” I asked. Out of the corner of my eye, I detected her face was glowing, but her response was guarded, like I might be up to something. Another turn took us through the yellow autumn trees and up a windy road that snaked past the frisbee golf course and led behind Hoover Dam itself.

More or less, I was thinking wildlife action shots, maybe a close up of an irritated Alaskan wolf, or, perhaps,  a giraffe, unguarded with her babies drinking from the reservoir. I doubt if Jess was. But given the less than rugged environment of Columbus, Ohio (not counting the Columbus Zoo, of course), the best we’d probably get would be a washed ashore bluegill.

But, no, things went off better than expected. After missing the opportunity to capture an elusive yellow butterfly, we moved on. Jess had her camera out, firing away at the dam and its surroundings, near where the reservoir ended and the dam began. I was lost in a hypnotized world, under the spell of the pressure valve, which  produced a constant blast of lake water out the side of the dam.  

Drifting away, I leaned over the concrete wall that secured us from tumbling below to our watery deaths, turning my attention south to the near-dried up river (the Hoover River?) that once cut through the land, probably when George Washington was president. Almost thirty feet below, perched one-legged on a rock, was our award winning photo, posing for us in a massive heap of beak and feathers. It was a blue heron!   

 The bird looked so majestic and graceful among its brushy and still-water environs. Then again, it wasn’t so hard to imagine the 4 foot tall bird somehow getting ticked off and carrying one of us off forever in its giant beak. Either way, National Geographic was written all over it. Jess leaned over with her camera and did her best from an aerial view. “We’re up too high,” she said, followed by, “I’m just no good at this.”

But I wasn’t about to let her give up. “Let’s go down there,” I said.

“Way down there?”

“Yeah, down there.”

“We’ll get in trouble,” Jess said. “We’re not supposed to be down there. They’ll give us a ticket.”

Well, that was a risk we’d just have to take if we wanted to roll with the big-timers. Besides, my adventurous mood may have slightly clouded my senses. But I wasn’t about to admit that.

Searching for a way down, Jess followed closely behind with stories of people she knew or of those who someone else knew who had experienced the rigid Hoover Dam authority for straying off the park’s marked path. I didn’t see any prohibiting signs, and even if I did, I was on an anti-establishment high at the moment. It was in the name of art. Tell that to the judge.

 I grinned at this thought as Jess and I stumbled and slid down a near 90 degree slope of loose rock, briers and wild animal dung. Watch your step.

 ”Joe! Wait up.” O, yeah - Jess. I gave her my hand. “I don’t have the right shoes for this,” she said.

Jess had on a pair of imitation Native American moccasins. Once fashioned in the latest durable deer or bear hide style by careful, knowing hands, the ancient foot covering is now produced from flimsy synthetic fibers and thrown together by a brainless factory machine. They looked nice; she felt every pebble.

But I didn’t let on about this. ”Sure you do. They’re perfect. You have on the same shoes the Indians wore,” I said.

Finally, we reached the bottom. Waiting for us was another cleverly placed heap of animal dung, a little trap set by a raccoon or a feral cat with intestinal problems, no doubt. And it became obvious that some animals were down here making sandwiches before we arrived, because stuck in the bushes was a half loaf of Wonder Bread. 

“Is it still there?” Jess inquired about the bird. “Because if it’s not…”

“There it is,” I said quietly, not to scare it off or get it angry at us. We were completely vulnerable. There was no where to run. We stepped cautiously toward the heron, over the long grass and onto the rocks poking through the water. Immediately, I thought this could be a good home for water snakes, but I kept this to myself.

The bird was still a good 30 feet away, but this time Jess had a better angle at it. She snapped a couple shots, moving closer and closer to it each time, before we saw that the bird was missing a foot. It couldn’t stand on two legs even if it wanted to. Poor bird.     

Pictures of how this may have happened flashed in my mind. Was it a bird fight? Did a bear catch it with a claw in mid-flight? Somewhere between these questions I lost interest. Sadly, I knew, that in a cold, vain world where malnourished clothing store mannequins shout to women from their store front windows, ”There is no room for physical imperfection,” that there was little hope for the acceptance of a one-footed bird. Not in this world.

 ”Are you ready?” I asked.

“Yeah, let’s go,” said Jess.

We clambered back up the slope, more difficult now. After spotting a park ranger truck creeping past overhead, a shot of adrenaline helped us pick up the pace. Once at the top, another set of steep stairs that ascended to the top of the dam waited for us. The ranger was no where in sight. We’d given him the slip. And the taste of forbidden fruit tasted so sweet. 

Huffing and puffing up the steps in the afternoon sun, I felt sad that Jess didn’t quite get the pictures she’d wanted. Then my mind drifted back to the bird, and I couldn’t help but wonder if it had been shunned by its circle of bird friends due to its missing foot. I doubt it. What does a bird know? Two feet or one, their tiny bird brains probably don’t even know the difference.

I turned to Jess, “So what do you want to do for lunch?” 

Categories: Nature, Photography, Xtreme
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It should be recognized up front that Jen Frabott acted boldly above and beyond the call of duty in a desperate time of peril.

Oblivious to the ill-fated direction of last Sunday, I started out by treating it the same as any other day. What I didn’t know was that, coiled deep in the shadows of our basement, lurked a terrible, dreadful creature. Fortunately for Jess and me, Tony and Jen, our brother and sister-in-law, respectively, had stopped over to help us drag a roll of carpet down into our basement, where it would probably sit rolled up for the next six months, or until we mustered up the will to lay it down.

With Tony and me struggling on both ends, and the two girls helping with the middle, the carpet roll was finally placed near the east basement wall with the rest of the “so-called” storage. Before heading back up, one of us noticed a stray piece of bungy cord wrapped awkwardly in a strip of duct tape and some dust beneath the basement stairs.

I lunged forward to pick it up, but something - whether it was a sixth sense or divine intervention, I don’t know - told me to just hold up a second. Wait a minute, we don’t own a bungy cord. My thoughts pieced togther slowly, trying to make sense of the meeting of two worlds seemingly unfit for each other - the world of the domesicated, and that of the razor-teethed, venomous wildlife found only in the Outback or the pages of National Geographic. Tony beat me to the punch. “It’s a snake,” he said. Yes, that’s exactly what it is.

“You can see its tongue,” exclaimed Jen. Jess hovered closely behind and around us, as we spent a short time examining the sliver of bungy from a safe distance. It appeared it was stuck and unable to move.

“That’s not a snake,” said Jess, calmly. Tony, Jen and I had seen the tongue. Jess had not. Silence. No one tried to argue with Jess. She’d find out soon enough. The three of us stood stock still, while Jess took her time sorting out the colliding of the two worlds. At this point, we were all experiencing some form of that age-old fear of snakes, which had been so generously handed down to us from our ancestors in the Garden of Eden.

Now, the fear of snakes may be human nature, but most do their best to hide it if they can. Jess was not one of these. Again, the tongue. It tickled the air. This time Jess saw it. “Snake!” she screamed. “Snake!” she screamed again. “Snakes!” this time she added an “s” to make it plural. “Snakes!” Evidently, as we’d later discover, the sight of one snake turned into a multitude in Jess’ mind. In fact, they had already grown 10 feet in length, eaten me, slithered up the basement stairs and swallowed our two children who don’t exist, and who she’d quickly imagined us having for the occassion.

Jess’ face was red like a turnip and rapidly approaching purple, and every muscle was tensed to the point of popping. I ran up the stairs, fleeing not from the snake but from Jess’ bloodcurdling shrills. I ran about the house in search of a broom and a trashcan to sweep the snake into. Once upstairs, Jess’ muffled shrieks were still building strength. Poor Jen and Tony were in the basement, trapped between the snake and Jess’ screams. Looking back, faced with Jess’ mounting insanity, I now see that Jen did what anyone of us would have done in her situation. There was only one way for escape.

It was the sad truth, Jess had completely melted down, uncontrollably surpassing the stage of uselessness and fastly approaching the point of becoming a total hinderance. Jen made a decision. She took one for the team. With bravery demonstrated only in the trenches of warfare, or possibly when ordering up a 10 pack of White Castle slyders a half hour before bedtime, Jen picked up the tape with the snake stuck to it. Calmly, cooly she went upstairs with it, careful to keep her fingers from touching the slithering reptile. Jess, doing what she did best at the moment, followed behind still screaming about snakes.

With one quick motion I opened the door and waved Jen in the general direction of the backyard. Once there, she could quickly toss the snake over the back fence into the overgrown ditch - where all things go we don’t want. On the way out, I shut the door behind us, leaving Jess inside to deal with her scream-filled panic by herself.

Tony was already in the backyard throwing the ball with our dog, Phoebe. In the midst of the chaos, Tony at once poured his best efforts into protecting Phoebe from witnessing the going-ons. Phoebe’s a very nervous dog.

Right before Jen was about to give the snake a toss, the backdoor opened and out came a brand new Jess. She was smiling. What looked like compassion played in her eyes. And a camera was in her hand. Supposedly she wanted to remember the object that had put her over the edge. “Don’t hurt it,” Jess said.

What happened alone inside the house, we may never know, but somewhere in that brief span of time she had made up her mind that she and the snake were friends. Jess possessed a brand new attitude toward the creature. She brought out a tupperware container to place the snake in, like a little bed, and then studied it closely, saying she was sad for it.

The snake was so wrapped up in the tape, it was hard to tell where the snake began and the taped ended. No one had the courage to unravel the poor reptile, for that would require a lot of touching it. So after a couple snapshots, the snake and the duct tape went over the fence never to be seen again. We all finally took a deep breath, and Tony assured me that Phoebe would never know about it.

And that was the day Jess learned she was afraid of snakes.

Categories: Nature
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