Chipmunks

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A family of chipmunks lives in Mother’s yard. My experience with these tiny burrowers is limited, so I’ve been enjoying their company.

I am most fascinated with their reaction to gray squirrels that browse the yard’s maple trees. Whenever squirrels are around, a single chipmunk will bark a raucous, staccato alarm. I can’t decide what the alarm’s purpose might be, as the squirrels and other chipmunks seem to ignore it. Perhaps this guard is a unique individual, exhibiting a behavioral quirk that is politely ignored by everyone except me?

The Menagerie

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From my earliest memory I lived among packs, herds, and flocks. Not all of the pets belonged to me. Each was designated an “owner” within the family, for the sake of clarity…and blame. So that when my sister’s Husky chewed another plug off another cord, the destruction belonged to my sister. When one of my cats clawed another hole in another screen, or delivered kittens on Daddy’s coat, the trouble was mine. (Though Mother shielded us from the worst storms. I don’t believe Daddy ever knew about his coat.)

We chose some of our pets, others chose us. For the most part, once they set toe on our property, they stayed. Every nook and cranny, every shed and tree sheltered our teeming beasts. I can’t imagine a world not crowded with warm, funny companions. We fed and housed them, and in return they taught us to laugh and cry with their wonderful, infuriating habits. Despite the semantics of ownership, I now claim them all. I own a story for each of them. They are in everything I do.

                             

Over the last few weeks I have come to know Mother’s current cats, four rescued felines with wildly different personalities. They range from shy to bold…from chronically sleepy to intensely curious. I’m delighted to know them, to add their characters to The Menagerie’s story.

The Rabbit Nest

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Earlier this summer, we found a rabbit nest in our back yard. The baby rabbits survived until old enough to leave their nest, but one was lost to a hawk within days of emergence.

I had been mesmerized by the rabbits’ secret nest, and I mourned the lost baby with helpless tears. I mourned, even though I understand and accept the necessary balance between rabbits and hawks, the fierce and inescapable truth that binds life to life.

I’m working on it.

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I live in a place called “I’m working on it”, which is a place of dreams, poems, and partial manuscripts. Hopelessly entangled, my real and written worlds mirror each other like water reflections, distorted by winds above and stones below.

In rare moments the surface calms, allowing imagination to breach the plane of possibility.

Maybe such moments are all the success I will ever achieve, or need. If so, success is deeply personal and vexingly random. Perhaps even trivial. That’s what this blog will contain:  the personal, random, and trivial. Odd moments of clarity, when life is marvelous, even though I am merely “working on it.”