Day 203
Tonight, while out finishing up some gardening (well, finishing up for the day – not actually FINISHING UP!) in the gathering dusk, wearing enough Off! to warrant a haz-mat suit (which I probably should have had on instead because West Nile is running rampant in these parts and I know someone who died a few year’s back and I’m not taking my chances) … I saw a lightning bug!
I haven’t seen one for over a month now … they usually aren’t around this late in the summer and I was so thrilled I thought, apparently in some Off! induced delirium, that I’d “call” to the lightning bug to come to me.
Yeah, right! (What is IN that stuff?!)
First off … I am not the bug whisperer! If I was, all these critching bugs and the cicadas, who are STILL singing, would have quieted down by now by my politely asking them to do so. So, what ever prompted me to think a lightning bug would come to me when “called”?
And secondly … if, for some reason the squirrel chirping sound that I was making actually was the call of the lightning bug, why would it get within 20 feet of my insecticide dripping body?
In any case … all I know is I didn’t kill it off! I watched it flit away to my neighbor’s yard … and I was thrilled, once again, that I got to see another before the end of the season.
The call of the wild runs through my veins.
Today, while waiting on the doorstep for a women I was to meet (for the first time) to arrive home, I was talking to their lab, Hudson through their screen door. He is a big, field lab and could be a brother to Mobes (however, and I’m not telling her, he was a bit smaller! She just has big bones!). I was talking to him and, apparently, not taking into account the torn screen which looked like a lab might have gone through it at some time, I saw a squirrel and (once again) started making squirrel chirping sounds, calling to it.
And in a nanosecond of consciousness and awareness I realized that that was probably not the best thing to do while also calling out the words, “Here squirrel!” when there is a 90 lb lab on the other side of a broken screen door.
In an apparent moment of angst and quick-thinking, I flung my body against the frame of the screen door – just in case the dog decided to make a trip through it again!
And that’s when the family drove up. Nice. Try to explain that one while you’re interviewing for a nanny position! I wouldn’t hire me either! Chalk that one up!
In any case … on my way home … feeling rather stupid that I like squirrels in the first place (cuz I DO!) … I came around a curve and noticed what I thought was a black cat lying in the middle of the street. So, against the Rules of the Road, I did NOT check in my rear view mirror to see if anyone was behind me, I slammed on my brakes and honked my horn and the thing didn’t move. I got out of my car – slowly – thinking that maybe it had been HIT and was injured or dead and just … there!
So, as I warily approached it, it sat up and looked at me and then scampered away to the nearest lawn. It was not a cat but a BLACK SQUIRREL. I was mesmerized as you don’t see them very often. I don’t know what he was doing – some sort of back-to-school initiation prank, I think!
In any case … the call of the wild keeps calling. And, as is my nature, I keep answering.