This is the begining (I think) of Bunky's Playhouse. What do you think? Help me out here folks-- opinions and ideas.
BUNKY'S PLAYHOUSE
--CHAPTER ONE--
I am rooted and settled, I colonized, I dwell, I am
established, I’ve hung up my hat, my house is inhabited, I have kept house, I
have lived, and I am located, I am lodged, I have moved to, and I am parked, I
definitely put down roots, I’ve set up home, squatted, taken up residence. In
short, I am here to stay. This is how I felt about my first house and this is
how I feel about the house I am in now.
Obviously, in the case of the first house I was sadly mistaken, but hey,
no one is perfect! This time it is for real, for sure, no doubt about it. If I
leave (for a permanent type of reason) I want to be in a pine box, feet first,
heading out the door to the burn pit. Even then I don’t want to go far. Till me
up, scatter me about; make me a part of what I call home forever. I want to
become part of the soil, lifted up on a warm breeze, carried far on the hooves
of deer and the paws of rabbits and fox. Underground, in the air, in the water,
sucked up through the trees trunks and expelled through the leaves, forever
changed, forever the same, part of this place, this life, this world.
I watch a praying mantis devouring bugs more than half its
size on the kitchen window and a wolf spider sits by the front door hunkered
down in a sticky, thick and nasty tunnel built of web within a shrub. I can
hear a little bunny or similar furry moonlight dwelling creature scurry under
the porch, watch the violent, territorial hummingbirds, the butterflies drunk
and wobbly on pollen and the chattering squirrels trying to distract the avian
mob so that they can steal and run with their bounty.
Buzzards, huge and threatening in appearance, float on the
warm air rising from the soft and fertile ground. I watch them, I can almost
hear them whispering ‘here bunny, bunny, bunny, here little bunny, let’s do lunch’.
In my head they share a voice with Hiss the sssibilant sssnake from the Disney
animated version of Robin Hood. I know the only lapin in danger are those too
dead to care about it but they frighten me none the less. I watched too many
cartoons as a kid with the buzzards stalking the dying, giving them no chance
to rest and get their wits about them.
Every now and then an owl’s hoot can be heard, sounding to
every creature who hears it like a silken promise of death to come following
the gloaming. Doves coo, as if to make it all better, to alleviate the
harshness and certain tragedy of the advertised demise by owls and subsequent
clean up by buzzards alike.
The ground is springy under my feet and I can see hummocks
marking tunnels, little highways under the ground, but barely, moles trudging
along chewing and thrusting and chewing some more. Ants of every size and type
scurry like… well, like ants, busy and determined but not averse to taking a
bite out of you if you happen to be in the line of their travel.
Hornets and bees swirl lazily, their buzzing so overweight,
so swollen with the dog days of summer and fermenting nectar that it sounds
almost painful for them. They loll about, all the while keeping a secret, a
burst of energy tucked away, a smidge of lust barely under control for that
sudden speedy dart, land, and sting. It is a given just not knowing when but
knowing it will come and that they will surely, obscenely, enjoy it and then
die. The bees must be jealous because they know they only have one shot at it
while a hornet can sting and sting and sting until you are swollen and full of
poison, on fire in the front yard watching the buzzards fly overhead murmuring
‘here little jeannie, little jeannie, jeannie, yum’ and the moles commence happily
digging the hole you will reside in forever and ever amen.
Little field mice wait on tenterhooks just around the corner
and under the drain pipe taking turns darting in to the garage when the doors
open, digging around in who knows what until they open again and a sprint lets
them back out into the air and the light. I am sure they have confabs late into
the mousy evening regarding the glories they have found on their forays and a
cabal of elders is determining just where they will go for the winter (The bag
of bubble wrap? The collection of wrapping materials and Christmas decorations?
The box of shop rags? Decisions, decisions!), with the lucky mouse that found
the perfect hidey hole being celebrated by all the others as their salvation.
As I see them flatten themselves out and then spring out the
door, making a run for it I think 'CAT', as I picture myself shaking a fist at
them, ‘Cat, you little bastards, a big cat with a large appetite’. I know I
won’t but it feels good to make the threat, to see them quiver (in my
imagination at least) from fear. I will stare down a spider but furry things
with toes give me the willies.
A starling likes to fly in every time the mice run out,
sitting on the top of the open garage door and fussing at me for continually
locking him out. He flies from side to side chattering and trilling, flapping
awkwardly in the enclosed space but he just keeps on doing it so I no longer
feel sorry for him. I am not sure if he is the slowest of the starlings, the
‘special’ one, the one they will
definitely leave behind if given half a migratory chance, or if he is just
doing it to taunt me. Having seen how frightened I am of the mice and with the
moles making me shiver and shudder what a treat it must be for the normally powerless little bird to
make me duck, cover and run from the sheltering garage, sounding all the world
like a crow gone mad. I don’t threaten him with 'CAT'. No point, he knows I am
a liar. While I can’t stand these creatures invading my space they are glorious
in theirs. They belong here and I will not make them dinner on purpose, not
even if they wholeheartedly deserve it.
A pile of deer droppings lie at the end of the driveway,
next to the mail box. I wonder did said deer void before crossing, wanting to
make sure that he was as light and fleet of foot as possible or did he narrowly
miss being run into by a car or a truck speeding through the dark countryside
at night? Did the lights catch him in mid stride and freeze him for a split
second as his life (trees and shadow, guns and grass) flash across his brainpan
before he could tear himself away from the glare and leap onto the shoulder,
barely making it, breathing hard as the wind from the truck whipped his tail
mightily and this mess was literally shit scared out of him? Only the deer and
the truck driver (if indeed he exists) know for sure.
I think the other deer must have questioned him if they saw
his disheveled state, his wind-blown tail, and ‘ooh’ed and ‘aaah’ed when he
told his tale. Even if the first scenario was more accurate, if he just dumped
because it was time or the grass was too green that morning, he would tell a
similar tale anyway, for what chance do whitetail have to be heroes? The speed of the hurtling nemesis would go
from 20 miles an hour to 100 and from a VW Beetle or short bed pick up to an 18
wheeler barreling down the narrow two lane road. No doubt the driver would have
been bent on destruction of one kind or another (why else would he be here, on
this country lane at that time of night?) and narrowly missing the valiant deer
would have thrown off his timing, or given him a chance to reflect on his
misdeeds, real or imagined, and change his direction, both physically and
maybe, maybe, spiritually.
As I chuckle to myself at this image of deer as savior of
eternal soul of a madman a murder of crows begin cawing over my head, loud and
long. They sit in the tallest pines, crying out to each other. Are they shaming
me for laughing out loud and ruining their perfect place, their perfect day? I
start to wonder what might be lying about dead, what with the buzzards and
crows lolling about the canopy, but do not see, or more likely, smell a thing
out of the ordinary. They fly about, random circles, black wings flapping
crying out to one another but for what? What on earth can they be shouting
about if it isn’t food? It is hardly likely that a cat is climbing one of the
giant pines, not a child or hunter about with a gun, BB or (God forbid) real,
no airplanes or crow eating tyrannosaurus rexes about. Why are they making the
racket? Just to be heard. I tilt up my chin and CAW right back at them, it
doesn’t even faze them, they chortle, they flap, they remove themselves from my
annoying presence and I hear their calls echoing through the woods off into the
distance. Holes are left in the blue day where their ragged voices tore at the
noisy silence of nature, slow to fill in again, leaving things around them just
a bit mussed, not quite as perfect as they were but no visible reason found for
it.
