My daughters have both relocated to well-known metropolitan areas where one must drive to experience a centralized-pseudo-nature planted within the pastures of parking lots and pay-toll roads of the cities they currently inhabit.
Savannah, fortunately, landed in a nifty little neighborhood that has gated access to a small forested area buttressed by a slowly-flowing river. She and Lisa dubbed it "The Hundred Acre Woods" and enjoy it daily with their dogs.
Despite its reference to the gentle children's story, "The Hundred Acre Wood" is fraught with danger and peril. Savannah has been attacked by red ants. Sydney tested (and failed) the siren's call of an alluring rope swing coil dangling like a hypnotic pendulum over the gentle water. And...most terrifying...after a rare flood of the river...Savannah and Lisa came nose-to-extended-nostril with an out-of-place alligator. While Lyle, Lyle Crocodile (also a comfortable city dweller) could, quite plausibly, fit into this "Hundred Acre Wood" setting, my girls, fleet of foot, did not stick around to find out if their new neighbor could sing or not.
To their credit, my children know that I am equal parts distractible ("Look! A butterfly!") and manipulable. Lisa assigned me the "important" task of getting a cute picture of their new foster dog, sweet Anne Bonny...left, neglected and abandoned to her own devices...pregnant and frightened...did not fare well on her first crossing of a sea of traffic. She lost an eye and crushed a rear leg for her efforts but saved her puppies.
Anne's four off-spring, treasures, all...found homes easily.
Poor Anne, a beaten and battered-down vessel, is having a tougher time. Her exterior, while not warm and cuddly, does tug, like an incessant wind on the foremast of your heart. Her interior, though? Unfathomable. Anne Bonny, not surprisingly, has trust issues. She is shy and easily startled. Despite her limited vision, she misses nothing and hovers, uncertain of her welcome, in the periphery.
And it was Anne who alerted us to yet another unusual inhabitant.
I've been on the look-out for an armadillo. Savannah would, occasionally, stop-short, alert to the underbrush...sensing its possible presence. "Look for small rabbit ears," my Wyoming-County-raised daughter advised quietly as I scanned the scene. "Does it have a call?" I whispered, ready to engage. "No...it just sort of rustles," she explained.
Well, we heard a rustle.
"That's gotta be one big armadillo," I observed.
Anne was not having the idiocy of her people and began barking.
Sydney squinted through the briars and the bramble. "There's something over there. I think it's a cow."
could have, she would have clapped. "It's a bull."
The Mosiman women all backed up...slowly.
"He must have swam the river," Savannah said. I felt that reading his resume at this time was not relevant...unless it included that one of his strengths was working with others. We appreciated our surroundings at this moment as, unlike the open fields back home, we were buttressed, every few feet by trees.
We soon left Ferdinand behind.
Breathing a sigh of relief, I remarked that things couldn't get much worse than that. "Well, there's always the possibility of a feral pig," Savannah mused, ignoring her sister's pointed glare, "If a bull could swim across the river..."
I scanned the brush...immediately transported to some other well-loved children's classics like "Where the Red Fern Grows" and "Old Yeller." Sydney linked her arm in mine and said, "I doubt Wilbur would have the energy to get off the couch."
Speaking of couch, it was time to get back to my natural habitat.
Populated with bulls, alligators, and ants, walking in "The Hundred Acre Woods" is no picnic. After this encounter, I was practically a basket-case.
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