A Revisit For Saturday, from January 2024

 

            One time there was a music promoter. He was not great. Nor was he well known. For the record, his name was Mitchell Kernwald. He was often called M.K., and he liked it that way. "Crisp and direct," he thought.
            He loved the music. But he was not a musician. It was all magic to him. A magic which he served as he could and still made enough for a man to live on.
            He was not a joyful man. Not when we first meet him, but he was dedicated. It’s funny/odd when a person stops to think of the literal meaning of dedicated. It doesn’t just mean he spent most of his time dealing with the music, it means set apart or consecrated to a principle or purpose nowadays, or in his case, to the music. At one time it would have meant kept separate for service to a deity.
            He had some business to conduct in a smallish western city, near the coast of a body of water known as a sound. This city was rather near a mountain range. Now, M.K. was from southern California and he was curious about the great forests of the northwestern states. He had never seen them in person. A desire to visit the mighty forest was born in his heart, as he stood in a third story hotel window which faced east, toward the mountains and the sunrise. In fact, it rose in his heart like a sort of sunrise.
            Mitchell had flown into the local small airport, a great convenience actually. Then he had taken a cab down to Enterprise and rented a smallish sedan. So, he had wheels at his command. It was a completely standard silver thing.
            The next day was a Sunday. Spring was on the way, and he didn’t feel like flying home yet. No one waited there for him. Not even a cat. He was free to come and go as he wished, if  he wished.
            Just as the sun was rising the next morning, he left his things in the hotel room and went downstairs and out of the lobby to find his ride on the main street through the middle of town. It was odd to him that they didn’t have their own parking lot, but maybe they weren’t that busy.
            He didn’t take a map, but he had his iPhone if he needed help. He felt like just going uphill and seeing what was there.
            There was a two lane highway heading straight east, into the light. He went that way. There wasn’t a lot of traffic. At last, there was a smaller paved road heading northeast. That one looked inviting, so he turned up there. He slowed to about thirty mph and opened the window on the driver’s side just to smell the damp woodsy air.
            Eventually he came to a dirt road on the left side of the pavement. It was a forest road. It was one of those travel at your own risk unposted things. He made that left hand turn.

            He was on Green Mountain, though he didn’t know it. It was a pretty steep climb, but he kept at it until he found a wide spot where he could park out of the way.
            It was midmorning. The temperature in the lower forties felt cold to his California skin, but he had worn his jacket, so he was OK. There were birds, birds that he couldn’t identify. It was early in the year, but there were some insects, sleepy insects. No flowers yet, so no bees. He wondered if there were bears about. Or if there were deer, or cougars.
            He walked uphill, into the giant Douglas firs. He had flown over Oregon and Northern California, so he had seen the forests from the air, but he had never walked among trees like this. They created their own atmosphere. Among the trunks and underbrush there was a hush almost like being indoors in a cathedral or some other huge body of enclosed air.
            The further he climbed the more mythical the place became. He forgot the rental car, he forgot why he was on this coast, he forgot his prosaic home apartment in hot dry California. He struggled to go higher. At last he was tired and looked about for a place to sit for a rest.
            Ah, there was a fallen tree. Some terrific storm must have taken it over. The root ball pulled up a great chunk of forest earth. So he sat next to the lower end and just looked around himself.
            A very large raven landed on the fallen tree and looked him over, then took off again. He had never been so near a raven before and he was quite enchanted.
            He heard singing! But what singing! It almost stood his hair on end, so unearthly it sounded, but beautifully.      
            Mitchell Kernwald wept. He wept out his barren broken heart. He wept for the beauty of the singing, like some crashing choir of angels. It was both thunder and high sweetness.
            He began to sing with the voices he heard. How could he, not knowing the words they sang? Well, that is just one of the mysteries of this story.
            A Forest Man saw him sitting there. The man he saw was slight, nearly six feet tall, tanned with black hair, and in his forties. He was dressed all in fashionable informal clothing, browns and blues and he wore New Balance runners. His eyes were closed, and he was singing.
            Of course, we know who it was who saw him there.
            Ralph sat down beside Mitchell and just waited. While he waited he began to sing also, in his voice so deep that it sounds like a force of nature.
            At last the chorus faded out and M.K. opened his eyes and beheld Ralph sitting beside him. He was delighted. He began laughing, it was so marvelous to see such a being right beside himself.
            “Who was singing?” said Mitchell.
            “Well, me, and my family, and the others scattered through the forest,” said Ralph, “we sing together sometimes. I think it was for you this time.
            “It was a song for the healing of broken hearts,” continued Ralph.
            “How can I thank you,” asked our music promoter quite seriously, because he felt reborn.
            “Well, as they used to like to say, just go on your way rejoicing, and being thankful,” said Ralph. “By the way, what’s your name? I find that if I keep a name in mind, it helps that person somehow.”
            So, they made their introductions to each other. Ralph went to join his family somewhere out among the trees. Mitchell walked back out of the deep forest and found his rental car. Then he drove it slowly back into the smallish city, to rejoin his life.
            And he did live happily ever after.

🌲

A simple little story from a year ago.

I spent my working time on Friday editing the second Ralph book.

Z's The Key

 

A place I visited once.

            “The tricky thing is the impossibility of it,” murmured Suzy. “Of course, we cats find impossibility to be challenging, but not entirely off the table. It makes a girl sort of sit up and take a look around at all the angles!
            “Now, here’s the problem. We’re stuck here in this artificial environment, and we want out,” she said, just stating the situation literally.
            It was a general meeting. All except Charley agreed. There was a great deal of nodding, significant glances to the right and left, and shuffling of feet. This was a deeply felt issue, to those who only lived indoors.
            “The only sun we feel is through glass! We never touch the ground, or feel the wind,” agreed Toots. “And there is no hunting in here unless you count bugs once in a while. Not cool!”
            “I feel for you guys,” said Mr. Baby, who was almost always free to roam. “I guess I have no dog in this hunt, but I’m sorry.”
            “Now, listen,” said Suzy. “I think there might be a way. It’s a little esoteric but hear me out.”
            “Oh, boy,” said Willie, “here we go…”
            “Well, look, the way we meet is pretty strange. Right? It’s impossible. We’re all in different places and yet we are together,” said Suzy. “It’s almost like we are in a pocket universe, or dimension or something. I’m just a cat, not a fizzyist, so I don’t know what to call it!”
            “Hear, hear,” said Buddy, out of sheer fellow feeling, since he was not cloistered either.
            “This is what I think. I feel and believe that if we all at the same time use the same vibe that we use to see each other in the glass, but instead really drill down on a place we would like to be together, that we can do it!” enthused Suzy. “But we have to really want it all at the same time.
            “I propose that we use the power of Zs. Oh, I know it will look like a nap to those outside the circle, but it won’t be a nap!”
            “It might work,” said Toots.
            “We can but try,” said Charley, dubiously. “If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work. Period.”
            “What kind of a place are we to concentrate on,” asked Sammie. “We need to land all in the same place, right?”
            A lot of discussion followed. Finally the circle, Suzy, Willie, Sammie, Toots, Buddy, Mr. Baby, Charley, Grayson, little Storm, and Skinnies all agreed on a meadow scene. They fixed it as firmly as they could in mind, sharing visions as best they could. (a minyan!)
            “Now, with that in mind, think Zs as hard as you can!” said Suzy.
            To all the world, it would  have looked as if ten cats had suddenly gone nappy all at the same time in various locations, if they could have all been seen at the same time.
            An impossibility? Yes, but Suzy’s crazy little idea worked.
            In a dream of a landscape ten cats walked out free together.
            It was, in fact, a perfect meadow. The grass was tall and mysterious for lurking and pouncing in. There were dandelions, fireweed, tiger lilies, wild roses and huckleberry bushes. The air was sweet; the sun was warm. The soft breeze told them myriad enticing secrets.
            The meadow was populated by careless birds! Many twitchy nosed small rodents ran to and fro, just asking for a good pounce!
            There was a small pond. In it, silly small fishes kept coming to the surface looking for a glimpse of the upper world and a gulp of air.
            It seemed that time didn’t move at all. It was glorious! They played together for an eternal moment, if there could be such a thing.
            “It worked!” said Suzy.
            “Yes, it did,” said Willie. “I was wrong to doubt.”
            Finally, Toots said, “I think we should all go home now. I miss my Gentleman, and I’m sure you all miss your people too.”
            So, they all thought of their homes and those they loved, and there they were, peacefully napping in their favorite spots. Indoor and outdoor/indoor cats, all sleeping like good kitties.

🤍

Granite Falls, WA, May 14, 2025, Open Thread

A shot of the falls the town is named for.

    

         I decided to go take a look at Granite Falls yesterday. It had been a while since I had been there, and since it is a famous Sasquatch hot spot, I was curious to know how it felt to be there again.
            There was a lot more traffic than I remember. It used to be very remote. Not so much now.

            This is downtown, very workaday little place quite near many forests and fields. Outside of town there are more than enough hidden brushy areas for him to inhabit.

            We didn't get many photos. It was not a particularly photogenic day. The allover impression was of new foliage, so green that it almost looked chartreuse, contrasted against the grey of the sky and the pavement.

            I think I would like to go on a Sunday morning and explore outside of town when there isn't so much traffic buzzing around.

            So this is my little report. 🌸

Only the bushy photo is ours. The rest are borrowed.

            

Cherry Time In The Home Clearing

 

 

            It seemed to Ramona that there were little bitty brown rabbits all over the H.C.! Everywhere she looked she saw another one! They were very distracting! Just when she would get busy, one of them would give a little lop and a hop and appear here, going there. They never showed for long, just at the corner of her eye.
            “Why are all these rabbits here? Don’t they know we eat rabbits around here?” said Ramona, running her fingers through her hair. “These are hardly worth bothering with though!”
            Moving around the way they were doing, it was impossible to count them. Could be 2 or 3, could be a dozen. It was hard to nail down.
            “They are not rabbits, Mama,” said Cherry, who was aloft up around a dozen feet, a good vantage point for keeping an eye on things. She wasn’t even trying to count them.
            But Mama wasn’t listening. She had turned back to stir her big pot of fishy soup, and her long wooden spoon was nowhere to be seen.
            If anyone had been listening to anyone, they would have heard some giggling, a bit like little bells clanging.
            Ramona looked all around the fire circle, moving in a kind of circle herself. She looked in the fire, just to make sure it wasn’t there. She glanced at her little stumpy table, and it wasn’t there.
            “Cherry, did you take my long spoon?” she asked in exasperation.
            “No, Mama!” said Cherry, drifting down to her mother. “They took it!”
            But once again, Mama wasn’t listening, because she had gone into the cave to find her knife to cut a small branch, to clean it up to make a makeshift stirring implement. There was no knife in the cave! It was just plain gone.
            Ramona came back out and called her son to her with his special whistle. He came running.
            “Did you take my knife, Twigg?” said she quite mildly. But her eyebrows were up in a certain way, which Twigg knew well.
            “No, Mama, I didn’t take your knife,” said Twigg.
            “It’s not in the cave, or out here, Twigg. It must be somewhere!” said Ramona.
            “I don’t know, Mama!” said Twigg.
            Just then a bunny appeared, giving them a wiggly nosed insolent look.
            Quick as a bunny himself, Twigg grabbed the little beast by its ears. It promptly fell out of his one hand, because there were no ears! But his other hand was quick too, and it caught the little beast right about his mid-section.
            “Put me down!” it squealed in a little ratty voice. Twigg did not. He knew better.
            It wriggled and wiggled and squirmed. Twigg held steady.
            It wasn’t a rabbit after all, at all. It had an angry little brown face, little hands and feet, a tiny plaid jacket and tiny green breeches. It had little pointy ears, but on the sides of its head in a normal location.
            Twigg held on.
            “Very well, you great beasts! Tell me my name and I will replace your precious spoon!” said the little wizened grimkin.
            Cherry laughed. “Oh, it’s a game!”
            “We’re not beasts!,” said Twigg, holding tightly to the squirmer.
            “Lawrence,” said Ramona, who just wanted her spoon back.
            “You only get a few guesses,” said the grimkin.
            “Fidel,” said Twigg, hopefully.
            It laughed. “If you don’t guess, you can even cook me, and I will never give it back!”
            “Chekov,” said Ramona.
            “No!” It said, laughing so hard that it might quit breathing.
            “Your name is Bunny,” said Cherry, who was a very good guesser. A quiet, observant girl she was, who kept her eyes open, and her mouth mostly shut.
            “Oh, damn,” said Bunny. “Look in your pot!”
            Ramona looked in her pot, and lo, the long spoon was there just like it should be.
            “Don’t let him go, Twigg,” she said. “I want my knife too!” Twigg maintained his grip.
            “Blast and damn!” said Bunny. “I don’t like steel any better than iron. You’ll not get it back unless you tell me how we came to be here.”
            This was a pauser. “Hm,” said Ramona. She frowned at Bunny and thought of various ways.
            “You came down the river in a wicked little wooden boat,” said Ramona.
            “Never!” said Bunny. “Ha, you’ll never guess.”
            “You fell out of the trees,” said Twigg, hanging on to the squirmer.
            “I did not!” said Bunny.
            “Try, try, as hard as you can!” laughed Bunny. “You’re all as stupid as blocks of wood!”
            “That doesn’t even rhyme,” said Cherry. “You’re a poor excuse for a Plaidie!”
            “Pssst!” said Bunny. His eyes grew wide, and he forgot to giggle and chortle.
                        “You all came here from a hole in the ground.
                        Just like they did before!
                        One end here, and one end there!
                        Now, give it back!
                        And come no more!” sang Cherry in a strange little singsong tune.
            “Oh, bother!” said Bunny. Twigg held on anyhow. He didn’t see any knife returning just yet.
            “You can’t make me bring it back anyhow. I won’t!” said Bunny, laughing again.
            “Maybe not,” said Twigg, “But just you wait!” And he whistled a long curly tone.
            Berry and Bob came bounding up eagerly. Their green eyes were glowing, and they were smiling their fierce cat smiles.
            “No, not that! Not stinking lions!” squealed Bunny, but Twigg had dropped him suddenly.
            “You can have it back,” he said as Bob grabbed and shook him hard a few times.
            Ramona’s knife appeared in her hand, as real as could be! She dropped it in amazement and then picked it up again.
            Now, Ralph had been up at his log getting a few things done but thought it might be getting close to soup time down at the fire circle. So he ambled down the path to check the situation out. He found his family it a bit of disarray. And Bob was running around with some kind of small creature in his mouth, giving it a good shake now and then. The creature was squealing and begging. It also had a small plaid coat on.
            “Hey, Mona,” said Ralph. “What’s up, Babe?”’
            “Well, first there were rabbits! Then there was a Plaidie, just as rotten as the others,” said Ramona. “Then my spoon was missing, and then my knife went too!”
            “Oh! Was there a guessing game?” said Ralph, a pretty good guesser himself.
            “Yes, Daddy,” said Cherry. “I guessed him good, and he gave them back. But, now they need to go away, Daddy! Make all of them go away, Daddy!”
            So, Ralph drew in long long mighty breath. He filled his broad chest! He closed his eyes and then let it out. It blew all across the Home Clearing. And though it was still impossible to count them, all of them tumbled together in a brown and green and red plaid tumble and rolled out to a spot near the river bank. Bob dropped Bunny so he rolled too.
            In fact, they all looked a bit like dust balls rolling along together.
            The one end of the hole was near a boulder on the riverbank, and into it they all blew and rolled together. Then the hole vanished.
            “Thank you, Daddy,” said Cherry.
            “Of course, Little One,” said Ralph.
            “We may as well have soup, before it's spoiled,” said Ramona.
            And so they did, cats and all.
            Maeve was really sorry she missed this one when she heard about it. Evermore!

🤍

🌸

Uncle Bob's New Trip

 

            We kind of left Uncle Bob alone in his stump didn’t we? It’s enough to make a person wonder what he does out there by himself most of the time, when he isn’t sitting around Ramona’s fire having some real Firekeeper dinner.
            As it happened, the isolation had been a good thing for Bob, who was really no one’s literal uncle.
            After that first disaster with his fire, he began to be more careful with fire.
            What was actually going on was that he was starting to think about things before he did them. He made a little fire pit a good ten feet from the stump. Smoke didn’t go in his door. His stump didn’t burn down. He saw that this was good.
            He also had to learn to be a better hunter. Bob was a slow moving character. It made hunting problematic. He had to think this thing through also. He found that he could sit motionless until some unwary pheasant or turkey wandered within range, and then he would bean said bird with a nice baseball sized rock. His aim gradually improved until he almost always got his bird. His hand/eye coordination improved all the time. He began to be pleased with himself in a nice way.
            Naturally, he wanted to begin cooking, since that was the coming thing among Forest People apparently. He had developed a taste for cooked meat and salt. He watched Ramona and tried to reason out a method. His first attempts were rough. He ended up with pieces of bird scorched on the outside, with a few burnt feathers, and raw on the inside. He felt he must do better. So he began looking for a metal thing like a light bar of some kind to thread the meat on. He eventually asked Ralph for help and together they found something. It wasn’t a bar though. It was the grill from the nose of a junker car left rusting at an old farm outside the National Forest. It looked weird, but he was able to put it over his little fire pit in such a way that it worked, with a few stones to support it.
            He borrowed a supply of salt from Ramona. He kept it in a clean Dinty Moore stew can.
            He started thinking about how his Stump House looked inside. At first he had just slept in a pile of dry grass. But, he began to see it with new eyes. He decided that he could do better. There was room inside for a low cot, up off the ground. So using branches broken to length he made one, tying the corners together with some bits of line Ralph had lying around. He made a platform of springy branch crossed over each other and then added a good thick layer of dry grass. It was much more comfy.
            One day Bob looked up from his work at the fire and realized that he was very lonely. He sighed and went back to cooking turkey. Sometimes it was trout. But it was usually turkey.
            Bob felt that he was ready for something new.
            One later day Bob was sitting silently in the grass with a few rocks at hand waiting for turkeys to wander by when a vision passed before his eyes. She was alone.
            “Are you alone?” Bob called out in the old language, formally.
            “I am alone,” she said in the old words, formally.
            She stopped in her tracks and faced Bob. She was in her middle years, not tall, not even six feet tall, a little chubby, and her color was a nice light brown. She looked wise and kind. Bob was smitten on the spot.
            “Will you eat with me?” he asked formally.
            “I will eat with you,” she said. Then she sat with him silently while he managed to kill a wandering turkey. It was magical. Like a dream. God must have sent that foolish turkey so near two Forest People. A special blessing.
            When they went back to his stump house, she butchered the silly turkey. Bob had a knife he had gotten from Ramona who had two, because Thaga gave her a couple.
            This lady tended his fire unasked and cooked his turkey. Just like a dream. Apparently she was from a clan who knew cooked food and salt.
            Her name in the old language sounded a little like Suzy, so he called her Suzy. She laughed and thought it was fine. She would be Suzy for Bob.
            “Oh, I have so much to show you,” he said. He was thinking of Ralph and the Home Clearing and all he knew there.
            “I will stay with you and see it all,” said Suzy and the evening and the morning was the first day of Bob’s new life.

🌸💚🌸

           

Lazy Mama Open Thread

Monday Greetings!

Bubbles by Bubble Woman

🎈

 No story was written Sunday.

Not by yours truly, anyhow.

But there were bubbles in the alley!

So, as a couple of guys we used to know would say,

we got that going for us!

🌼🤍🌼

My theme song.

PS, look out for Z-Rays!

Ralph Dreamed Of His Mother

 

Happy Mother's Day to The Mothers!

            It was May time, and the forest was alive every day with birdsong, new growth on the trees, animal life. Ralph had been having a restless night with many dreams. He dreamed of his mother for some reason. The images reminded him of her constant care and her unending tenderness toward himself and his younger siblings. There had been seven younger ones, boys and girls. Each received her faithful care, and she had never tired.
            His mother, unlike Ramona, was plain and silent.
            And yet, his mind naturally went to Ramona. She was still sleeping, so it must have been very early indeed. His eyes opened and he counted all the ways in which she had been only wonderful. Her care was also faithful, constant, and tender. Her mind was full of wisdom and humor. She had never complained or found fault. And she was beautiful, without a doubt.
            Ralph began to plan a way to express his love in a special way for one special spring day, “in addition to his daily appreciation,” he thought.
            He slipped out of bed silently, without waking her, and then out of the green door. The sky was just lightening a little.
            He was going to need help to accomplish his plan, so he quietly whistled up toward where Maeve had her nest, high in the rocks of the Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest. It’s an odd thing but Maeve always heard him, night or day. So did she this early morning.
            As he sat poking at the fire, and giving it a few more chunks of wood, Maeve drifted down out of the canopy. Silently, she took her place on his shoulder.
            “Everything OK, Boss?” said she.
            “Yeah. I had to get up really early. I needed to talk to you before Mona got out of bed,” said he.
            “Oh ho! What are you up to?” quoth Maeve.
            “You don’t have to go all Elizabethan, Maeve! I want to take Ramona out walking, like we used to do before all this Home Clearing happened.  I need your help, mostly to get Thaga’s help. Do you think you could fly over to Thaga and ask her two things?” said Ralph.
            “Lay it on me, Boss,” said Maeve, perking up, because she loved intrigue more than anything almost.
            “Ask her if Twigg and Cherry can spend the day there, and maybe overnight, if we don’t come back until morning,” said Ralph.
            “I’ll do that,” said Maeve. Then she lifted off and was gone, determined to wake Thaga and get her answer.
            In the meantime, Ramona woke, found Ralph missing and came out to her fire. She found him sitting there feeding the fire.
            “Feeling alright, Baby? You’re sure up early,” said Ramona.
            “I was dreaming about my mother, and it woke me finally,” said Ralph.
            “I hope they were good dreams,” said Ramona.
            “They were very good dreams. She was a good mother. We didn’t think about how good of a mother she was when we were all there with her,” said Ralph, a little wistfully.
            “I can believe she was a good mother, Ralph! She raised a good son!” said Ramona. Then she began preparations for something for everyone to eat. It was to be oatmeal this morning. She had some raisins and butter to fancy it up a little.
            Twigg and Cherry came out and soon the family ate their breakfast. Bob and Berry went out to do a little hunting because pumas don’t really dig oatmeal even with raisins and butter.
            Maeve came back and took her usual perch. When Ramona ducked into the cave for something, Maeve whispered into Ralph’s ear, “It’s a go. Thaga says to send the kids over as soon as you like and they can certainly stay all night. She seemed pretty excited, once she woke up!
            “I’ll just go with them to make sure they get there. I know they would but it’s good to be sure,” said Maeve.
            “Thanks, Birdie,” said Ralph. “Now I have to invite Mona.”
            When Ramona got back out to the fire, everything looked just like any other day. But it wasn’t just any day!
            “I have an idea,” Ralph told Ramona. “Let’s spend the day like we used to! Let’s walk like we did before, together in the forest, meadows, mountain flanks, and along rivers! Let’s take a day for you and me, Mona!”
            “Can we do that? How?” she said. “Will we take Twigg and Cherry?”
            “I’ve sent Maeve to ask Thaga and Ooog to have them over for the day and maybe the night if we stay out overnight! Maeve will fly with them to make sure they get there. Oh, Mona, it’s going to be so much fun!”
            And that’s just what they did. Twigg and Cherry and Maeve wandered over to the Neanderthal’s place for the night.
            And it was fun. Ralph and Ramona went walking as they did before when they first were getting to know each other. They walked out of the Home Clearing, out into the greater forest. They revisited mountains. They walked through sweet meadows.
            They visited their river further upstream than usual. Ralph caught a few trout for supper. As usual he threaded them onto a sapling twig, to carry them. Then they found a sheltered little spot and Ralph made a nice fire for the evening. They cooked their trout on green sticks, and they drank river water, and it was lovely.
            The stars came out, the night grew deep, a couple of owls spoke softly, and a soft little wind blew the smoke of their fire away.
            “What was this all about, Baby?” said Ramona. “I loved it!”
            “It was about you, Mona. You are good in every way. No one could ever do better than you do! I am in your dept. That’s just the truth!” said Ralph, looking a little serious for a moment. “Thank you for it all. Without you I might just be in a stump like Bob!”
            Ralph couldn’t be serious for long, so they ended up giggling like kids.
            They went home to their children in the morning, after a night of camping out like Forest People always used to do. The kids had a great time too, with Thaga and Ooog!

💗

We Bet You Think We're Asleep

 

 
            It has come to my attention that all you talking, constantly talking, hominids think that we sleep all the time just because our eyes are shut and we are stationary. It may be that you think this because we don’t talk. Ahem. Not so that you can hear us anyhow.
            The fact of the matter is that we are very busy. Below I will provide a list of some of the cogitation going on under those cute little pointy ears.
 
1.      Contemplation of Intuitional Physics.
    a.      Trajectories.
    b.      Corrected Trajectories.
    c.      Crash Recovery.
2.      Applied Calculus. It’s not what you think.
3.      Methods of Endearment. Beyond purring.
    a.      Head butting. Sounds contradictory, but it’s not.
    b.      Ankle twining.
    c.      The slow blink and hold method.
    d.      Wrist grip. Keyboard methods.

    e.      Adoring glances. This really works.
4.      Feline Poetry. It's a thing. Don't judge.
5.      Atypical Fonts. Why?
6.      Music Appreciation.
    a.      How to get our opinions across.
    b.      When to sing along.
7.      Deceased French Painters.
8.      Motivations of Humans.
9.      Establishing Dominance.
10.  Defining Obedience. Is it a given? Yes, or no?
11.  Interdimensional Gymnastics. (Wheee!)
12.  Many times we are actually in deep Purr™. Do not disturb!

13.  Shhhhh. Formulating escape routes.
 
            As you can see, appearances can be deceiving. However, I must say that Suzy’s nap times are mostly full of hunting scenes. What can I say? The girl is mad for the hunt! May God have mercy on any rodent who manages to invade!
 
Your Devoted Friend,
Willie 🐾

The Boogerville Brats, A Cautionary Tale*

 

            The song spread like wildfire! It was “penned” by some smarty arsed youthful Squatch with a broad sense of humor and not much respect for convention, Human or Forest Man’s.  
            “We’re the Boogerville Brats,
            And that’s that!
            We do just as we please.
            So, you’re a camper?
            That doesn’t hamper
            Our elbows or our knees!
            So, this is your house
            Well, goody for you!
            You might not like it
            When we get through!!
            Boo Hoo!
            Oh, the Boogerville Brats
            Will fix you up good!
            Hoot or whack as you will!
            Wah wah, wah ahooooo!  

    (Think "When You're a Jet" from West Side Story. Something in that spirit.)      
 
            It spread like a contagion from pod to tribe to family to clan, all among the young and frisky. It didn’t scan that well, but maybe that was part of the attraction. Even quite nice young Forest People learned it, even if they had to sing it quietly.
            It didn’t really prescribe any particular disruptive behavior. But it didn’t have to. It left latitude for invention.
            Well, youth is youthful, and singing a sub-cultural song is one thing. Perhaps it should have been pinched off where it started somewhere down in the American southeast. But it wasn’t, because elders didn’t take it one bit seriously. “The little boogers are acting up a little, ah well, they’ll be too busy being older shortly.”
            Singing inspires the young, else where do armies, and children’s marches, and movements come from? The contagion of group thought. It led to the desire to best one’s besties in acts of nuisance toward the homo sapiens of the land.
            The first generation of the contagion was pretty predictable. Young Boogers* would rap on windows at night and run off giggling, while some lady grabbed  her neckline and hollered. It was delicious!
            Youngsters in neighboring forests would hear the song and hear of the exploits of the first responders and figure they could do better. And better they did. Some of them found campers at night, sleeping the sleep of the human and unaware. Mostly these kids just made noise. There was always something to bang around. They would sing the song and then split before anybody got seriously awake.
            A group further to the northwest thought these were pretty pathetic and childish exploits. A leader amongst them, Harold, began to devise games for his buddies. What he came up with was something like counting coup. A burly young Booger would run up to a tent, unzip the zipper, and if he was bold and fearless, reach in and give a person a good yank on whatever part he could get ahold of, all the while singing the song. Sometimes they would grab some lady and then the screaming would start.
            Youngster began marching in groups through the forests of America in broad gleaming daylight singing the song.
            Somebody told somebody, and then they told somebody else, and eventually word got to Ralph. He was not amused. And as we know Ralph really prefers to be amused. So, he was doubly not amused.
            Harold’s group inspired Gnrrr, who refused to go by an English name. Gnrrr was dire and dark and not kidding. He was still young but had potential to be a real cross-cultural problem when he hit his full stride.                         “Games?” Gnrrr thought. “I like games, when the loser is some peckerwood human!”
            He wasn’t a real thinker though and he couldn’t remember the words of the song, so he bagged it and went straight to what he called games.
            He gathered all his age group, who were probably somewhere in southern Idaho. This thing had been spreading.
            He told them that he would put a good word in with his tall dark and glamorous sister, Anki, for the guy who could sneak into a house at night and steal the pillow out from under a human head, with extra credit for getting the pajamas or sweats or whatever too.
            This turned out to be the ultimate straw. Things got ugly in Idaho for several nights. Houses were invaded. Not many pillows were stolen because people in Idaho are also not kidding. Some shots were fired too. No jokers were injured, however, just scared out of their hairy minds. They returned to Gnrrr lamenting. No good word was given. Anki remained single.
            Once again word got back to Ralph by several stages. He whistled up Maeve and told her to repeat this message to Benny in Concrete, WA, where he was supposed to be keeping order in the Squatch community and all that sort of thing. The message went, “Find this Gnrrr in Idaho, use a portal. Don’t waste time hiking. You know what is going on. Make it stop. You know what to do!”
            Maeve flew all the way to Concrete in a few hours and found Benny at home with Lily in the Basket House and delivered her message. After a snack and a short rest she flew back to Ralph to say, “mission accomplished.”
            Now, Benny remembered what it was like to be a brat/joker/pest. So he was the perfect guy to deal with this Forest fad. He had some sympathy, but he also knew it was a dead end and no good would come of it, even for the jokers.
            Benny kissed Lily goodbye, said he would be back before too long, and took one of those mysterious shortcuts to Jerome, ID, where Gnrrr was hanging out with his gang of pests in an abandoned spud cellar.                     Benny pretty much followed his nose to find them. Forest People don’t have any trouble doing that. He already knew the general location from gossip, rumor, and outraged news. Gnrrr and the boys were making Squatches smell bad with the locals reputation wise.
            When Benny slipped into the old collapsing spud cellar seven pairs of red eyes glared at him.
            “Peekaboo!” said Benny. “I found you goofballs.”
            “Huh?” said Gnrrr, followed by grunting from the guys.
            “I have a message from Ralph, Himself, for you guys. He says “Stop. Now.”
            “Who is Ralph? I don’t know any Ralph. Why should I care?” said Gnrrr.
            Benny said, “Listen. You don’t want him to come down here. You really don’t. You’re big, but you’re stupid. He knows stuff you guys will never know or even guess!”
            “Scare me cutie,” said Gnrrr.
            “OK,” said Benny. He had just lost his last bit of sympathy for these hairy clowns.
            So! Standing in the dark in a spud cellar in Idaho he began to sing the Song of Reversals that Ralph had taught him a couple of years before. Even human people within earshot had goosebumps and couldn’t define what they were hearing. It was unearthly deep, long waved sound. Birds and beasts hunkered down and waited for it to be over.
            Things started to happen. The ground kind of shifted. Dirt fell from the overhead in the cellar. The big tough guys began keening in fear, because they knew this wasn’t just an earthquake.
            They forgot the song they didn’t know anyhow. They forgot the games. Six of them forgot about Anki too.
            They walked out into the darkness backward and disappeared. The song had sent them home. The song did its work like ripples spreading in a pond.
            Harold and friends forgot the song and stopped counting coup and then forgot the whole thing.
            Back and back it went until no one could remember the stupid song and in fact weren’t sure what all the excitement had been about.
            The Boogerville Brats fad was dead, was a dud, and was over. It was so passé no one would even mention it.
            By the time it was all tidied up Benny was back home with Lily getting ready to eat his dinner. During dinner he told her all about it. He was quite pleased, and Lily was quite impressed. Benny thought maybe they should visit up at the Home Clearing soon. Maybe Ralph would teach him another song!
 
*A booger is what some southern people call the creature we mostly refer to as a Bigfoot or a Sasquatch. To me the word seems to be related to the British usage “bugger” which is what old time rural farmers called an animal. It think it’s from Yorkshire.