It's a Jungle Out there

We are lazy slobs. Marvin is asleep on the sofa. He is dressed, one assumes for the day, in his boxer shorts and tee shirt--his hair is too long and uncombed--I cannot assume that he has brushed his teeth--it is 11 a.m. on a Saturday. Admittedly, I've only been up for an hour and a half, but I'm sitting at the kitchen table of our tiny run-down cottage and thinking we could be on a reality t.v. show--Can This Mess Be Saved.

It is a gorgeous day, sunny and warm--a day we in the Northwest never take for granted --because unlike other parts of the country--we are not convinced that they will ever return. We have scientific data to substantiate our skepticism. So what am I (or we) going to to do with this amazing day?

Well I tell you what we should do--we should go to the rental store and rent two gas powered weedeaters--and find out what the heck is in the backyard. We've been here three years and never mowed the back. The front--we make an effort to keep mowed--the city yellow cards us if we don't. I think it is only a matter of time before we get carded for the back yard. Frankly, I don't think anybody but us has seen. Kilo has seen it--that’s the cat you see asleep in the kitchen window soaking up the rays. Kilo kills things in there and brings them into the kitchen. For a while we posted it on the kitchen's white board: KILO'S CATCH OF THE DAY.

Sometimes it was a snake, or a frog, other times a bird, vole, or baby rabbit. Phew. I've talked myself out of it. I remember now why we don't mow the back--it is a wildlife habitat and Marvin is trying to get it federally recognized. Apparently there is some tax advantages to that. Marvin has time for that now--he's been unemployed for 14 months. To his credit, he looks for works on Tuesdays and Thursdays--puts on real clothes, combs his hair, sometimes wears a suit--and actively looks for a job. So far nothing--apparently junior accountants are a dime dozen. He's a slob, but he is at the point where he is applying for jobs at McDonalds. Maybe that's why I love him.

Me I still have job--I work for the State--they have cut my official salary by 5 percent in each of the last two years in addition we have 14 furlough days per year. For those of you who don't experience them--those are days we don't work-and we don't get paid. So I'm working twice as hard for half the money--and trying to be grateful I have a job.

The sun is so lovely and warm, I decide to take my coffee out on the patio--such as it is--and soak up the pollen and the rays. I'm setting there in my deck chair, when I hear a rustling in the jungle. I look up and see big movement in the tall grass-- I can't make it out--but it is bigger than a dog, bigger than a cat or rabbit. Now I see dirt flying up--like a mini tornado has touched down. And then it stops and I yield to the warmth of the sun. I awake to the knowledge that there is something or some else on the patio with me. Maybe it was a smell--or the sound of another creature breathing--but I know. When I look down at my feet--there is this creature--with a huge long snout and enormous claws, sprawled at my feet, sleeping in the sun. I want to scream-- but I'm afraid to wake it. I can't really get up, because the creature is literally at my feet.

So I'm stuck there--for what seems like hours, but maybe was only 20 minutes. Marvin, who has now added a pair of cut-off jeans to his wardrobe, comes to the back door, smoking a doobie--

"Hey..." he says, exhaling. "Cool anteater, Annie?"
"Will it kill me," I whisper.
"Oh heck no---get up slowly."

I did get up ever so slowly--and when I did the anteater lifted its head and looked at me--Marvin says it was adoringly, but I prefer to think it was inquisitively. None the less--when I moved it followed me. I managed to get in the back door--without him. But he is pounding and scratching at the back door. Marvin wants to let him in. Says he's obviously infatuated with me. He rolls me a doobie and I smoke down it--I don't share. The anteater is scratching wildly at the back door. I look around at our thrift store furniture rejects--and think, what the hell? So we let him in. He's been here ever since.


He may be a good luck charm---Marvin got a job last week. The pay is lousy--but it's work--and it's work in his field. He's working for a small accounting firm--so things are looking up. The anteater--we've named him Sonny or Sunny--we don't write his name much, but you get the idea.