Thar be a Varmit

I thought that Rod and Teejay’s walk was mighty short, today, as they rushed into the office with new of finding “something” on the dirt road beside the house. I followed him up the hill and sure enough, there he was.

We have a lot of little voles burrowing all over the place but this was something new. His relatively invisible wound suggests to me that an owl may have dropped him, before he could be a meal. He is now a hearty meal for the ants who have found him.

Perhaps this is the guy who has climbed the tomato cage to do this.

When I came down the hill after doing the “identify this” with my Seek app, the other name for this guy was a Pack Rat. I told Him that this was his kindred spirit and he says, “Rod Rat”? “Souza Rat”? Uh, no, you know who you are…

You know, this year, we had a bounty of wildflowers and everyone seemed to have the potential for lots and lots of tomatoes and other veggies. Mother Nature has given a lot and, too, has taken so much.

Fires, floods, pandemic, what next? I truly believe that our Mother Earth has had quite enough of our BS and if we don’t start doing better, she is just going to start shrugging us off. We can do better, with every choice we make, when we buy products. I have begun to make a concerted effort to look for earth friendly packaging and products. We take our water from our aquifer and we return the used water to the ground and so it is important to be careful with our stewardship of that water, just as we know that we must be, with our forest.

I can smell bear, this morning, in the moist air. We are not alone, here in our little clearing in the forest. I’m sure that someone will have a Ring photo of the visit.

One last thing; He and I went through some tissues, this morning, during the ceremony to honor The Deliciously Notorious RBG in the capital building. Hearing the gentle words of the Rabbi reminded me of the uplift that I felt during the funeral of a friend, and the only time I sat through a service at a synagogue. They have a gift, don’t they? I cried because Ruth thought and wrote so that I could have credit in my own name, which allowed be to accept credit cards, which made it possible for me to sell fancy sweaters to people, while we stood beneath Redwood Trees in Woodside. She set the tone and fought for the freedom of men and women to live good lives and one thing that really stuck with me was when the Rabbi spoke of Ruth’s famous Dissent collar, signaling that she had something to say that, in years ahead, could be a beacon for the changes we need to make. Thank you, Ruth. You lived a life to inspire us all.