The Visitor

Abandoned and alone she waits beneath the cedar tree, hidden between the branches that hug the damp dirt.  She hasn't moved for hours, but as the ground beetle zigzags from under her tail and across the open expanse, she barely controls her stuttering jaws as she declines to reveal her hiding place and weakly relinquishes the meal.  It's hard to breathe as she stretches out her soiled front legs to relieve the pain and rests her battle scarred head between them.

This is her last stand.  This will be her final resting place.  Humans live here.  They give...they take away.  She will offer her capture, and fate will decide her destiny.  If she's lucky, she'll experience love...if not, she'll never have known kindness.  A car door slams shut, and as two feet pause to ascend the front steps, she meows faintly and waits.

Life and the Unwise Chihuahua

The Fables of Sweet Zoe FeatherBender  

There once was a little Chihuahua by the name of Yap-Yap-Too-Much.  To Ms. YYTM he was significant.  She lived easy with him.  Yap-Yap-TM knew he was #1.  The group knew he was #16 in a tight little pack of 19.

Yap-Yap-TM fit well at #16, but his head swelled and he forgot the rules to the game.  The pack quickly tired of this insignificant twerp bossing around #1, 2, and 3, and kicked him out on his keister.  Now they all could carry on peacefully without What's-His-Name #16.

They pacified him with benefits of still belonging to their pack, as they built solid foundations to justify and solidify their choice of action.  He had everything for nothing, and lived his enchanting life like it would always be forever...but, of course, we all know you never ever really get anything in life for absolutely nothing at all.  With that thought, his benefits were no more...they ended.

Ms. YYTM lives in their cardboard box and dumpster dives each day for tasty grubs.  Yap-Yap-TM can't get his tail to unwind from between his short stumpy legs.  He has no promise to give that he hasn't broken before. He feels a slight remorse, but life goes on as it must.

That life owes you absolutely nothing...any three legged cat, missing half a tail and living with just two of his nine lives left, knows to be pure unvarnished truth.  While the wise embrace unexpected benefits to better their lot in life, the unwise squander them foolishly away and settle in to living life at rock bottom.    

  

A September Walk

It's magical.  Lightning on steroids.  Up so high, the bolts are hidden.  The black looks solid until the puffs of light begin to pulsate all over the heavens, and the translucency of the billowing clouds is ignited in strobes of back light.  Silent beauty that defies the reality of the electrically charged rage ripping apart the heavens behind that curtain of calm.  

It's rare when the storm maintains its distance and puts on these shows of awesomeness.  I sit in the soft dark, my feet propped up, a warm bowl of buttery popcorn, a glass of fruity wine and take in the light show for hours.  Don't I wish.  I'm stuck in this room trying to outguess when the showers will start and stop and start again.

There's nothing faraway about these rains these days.  It rains just enough to raise the humidity to sweltering, then it stops so I can work outside until I'm an oily mess.  It rains and I'm still watering, because it never seems to rain quite long enough to go past dismal damp to soggy wet.

We're in the dry twilight zone of town where it rains all around all around all around...okay...I've lost my thoughts in the abyss of discontent.  Somehow my feet flew out from under me last week as they did a short tap dance before they gave up and let me drift at 80 miles an hour towards that cold hard concrete.  

The only thought that short circuited through my brain was SAVE THE TEETH.  I keep remembering those childhood nightmares when I tore off my two front teeth like tissues of paper.  It's hard living with an over reactive imagination.  It never gives up.

My thoughts always dredge up that make-believe image of me and my broken teeth to hover over me as I travel back and forth across that concrete slab Vic calls a patio, and I call the only place in the south where I can walk barefoot.  Right now it's harder living with out-of-wacko knees while my successful bone thumping doc is vacationing in Rio.