A Great Reason To Always Check Your Child’s Homework

To allow my inner Swedish svelteness to manifest itself I’ve been doing some hiking and biking. I do my own Elmer Fudd biathalon in which I bike for a mighty 3 miles. Hike a hill interval style that I swear rises up at 90 degrees. Then go back to the bike and bike up another hill of the same size. And so I face the normal obstacles–inertia, rocks, mosquitoes, dump truck drivers who flirt with the idea of running me over. That sort of thing. But now I’ve got one more.

You know I’ve been trying to attract some crows and ravens. No luck yet. I’ve gone to plan Q which is probably what most people would do for plan A–just put up a bird feeder with cat food in it. Except I haven’t gotten around to erecting the whole apparatus. So no crows or ravens yet. But I have been able to attract the attention of a pair of hawks.

At first I thought they were protecting their nest. A pair of doughty parents. But I’ve looked about and can’t find any nest. Furthermore, they don’t always pull their stunt in the same area. And so I’m beginning to suspect they’re toying with me.

Here’s what happens. I go on my hike and while I’m walking in place at the beginning of a new interval, looking out over the magnificent mountain vistas and contemplating important things like cheese, one of these hooligans will sneak dive bomb me from behind. At the last moment the bird will pull up making a huge WAAAHOOOF sound with its wings that sends my heart racing even faster than it already is. It’s like someone taking a huge broom and swinging it at speed three inches from the back of your head.

Yesterday, I saw them off to the right at about 100 yards, calling out, making that piercing cry. I thought—ha! they’re over there. But THEY weren’t. It was only one of them. The other guy was between me and the sun. And so I’m hiking along minding my own business and WHAAAHOOOF!  I just about had a heart attack.

I’ve caught one diving at me once. It’s an amazing thing to see a bird of that size hurtling from the sky straight at your head. And I would welcome such an experience again. But they just won’t perform. No, they’ve got to blindside me. 

This week I’m going to get a picture of the low-budget criminals and post it here.

My second-to-youngest daughter came in the house telling me that there was a huge line of ants out in the garage.

“Because there’s poop,” her younger sister says.

I groan inside. Cats. There’s the whole wide world and a litter box to boot. They have to do it on the garage floor?

I go out to clean it up before I go on my walk, and there is indeed a thick line of tiny ants. But they aren’t carrying away bits of poop for their fugus farm. It’s some hairball the cat has yakked up. Disgusting. So I get out the square-nosed shovel and scoop it up. But as I do its contents tumble and reveal themselves. There’s a spinal column of something significant with the last bit of ribs clinging to it. There’s hair, and I don’t think it’s the cat’s.

I fling the stuff into the brush and sweep the garage clean.

And then I start thinking.

What if a kid came out and found this long trail of ants. She follows it. To this lump up in the brush. There are two magpies about. One perched on a piece of scrub. The other pecking at the lump. And in the lump is not some animal bones. No, it’s a long segment of human spine. And there’s half-digested Levis or some nylon windbreaker. And the whole mess is dark, compacted, and damp.

There’s something out there that regurgitated this. Not a bear. Not a tiger. Those are too small. This thing has to be large. A dragon. No. Some ogre or troll. Something else. Something from the depths of the darkening woods. Something the villagers had forgotten. Maybe something that’s come through from some other place. But it’s here now. It’s close. And somebody died.

Check out this wonderful article on orcs. Tolkien must have been having the time of his life coming up with those names–Shadrat, Ugluk, and Radbug…

Zing!

Is this not delicious? I found it on istockphotos.com and couldn’t stay away. I want to be on that trail. I want to know what’s around that bend. Holy moly, the feeling of this photo is just marvelous.

So I bought a copy. It’s by stellalevi.

Zing, Baby!