…but we still have the best of everything.
I’m the Casa del Whackos, and I’m a decidely weird place. A modest house that is beginning to show the wear and tear that only a constant parade of kids, dogs, ducks, chickens, hamsters, mice, etc, can inflict. My exterior doors bear mute testimony to the thousands of canine fingernails that have scratched at my jambs demanding entry. The length of my hallway wallpaper stained approx 15″ from the floor, marking the passage of many a hairy shoulder wet with dew, enroute to the bedroom to destroy the covers, along with any chance of dad getting back to sleep.
Since mom and dad moved in many years ago, I have witnessed many vagabonds of both the human and canine variety that just “show up”. It’s like one hears the word, and others follow. An example: first, it was a solitary hummingbird. Then he must have put the word out that there was an oasis of sugarwater located on the migration route to South America, and now they keep dad hopping just to keep the feeders full.
Then last year, a single monarch caterpillar appeared on the back porch; was he alerted by the hummingbirds as well? Under mom’s watchful eye, he progressed from larvae to chrysalis and finally to beautiful butterfly. On the day that he unfurled his sodden wings to dry in the last hot winds of September, you would have thought that another child was leaving the nest.
Well, he must have spread the word, as now there are no less than twenty-three monarch caterpillars on the one milkweed bush that mom had planted. So many of the vibrantly striped little buggers that she had to drive all over town to find two more plants to satisfy the little yellow and black pronghorned slinky’s voracious appetites.
How’s that for a bunch of adjectives?
And still they come. recently Titus Pullo, the good natured pit bull; we have absolutely no idea where he came from, just “showed up” and hung around until he was one of the pack. The same with Victor, yhe neighbor’s dog that has figured out the code to the garage door and occasionally lets himself in to cool off. Of course, mom doesn’t run him off, and actually made dad install a small AC window unit to help the big oaf chill out.
But, dog hair, pee stains and all, I wouldn’t have it a other way. Those are a small price to pay for the opportunity to serve such a diverse conglomeration of transients; if it’s true that the greatest in the kingdom shall be the servant of all, and I believe it is, then I aspire to be the greatest. Instead of dollars, rubles, shekels, or pesos, I would rather my worth be counted by as different currency; in number of dogs, hummingbirds, caterpillars, and hopefully people that are made to feel welcome for a time. Whether or not one ever physically visits, my goal is to provide a virtual sanctuary, a refuge, from the barrage of negativity that gets firehosed at us daily. Those that delight in such negative division have no place here; their hearts have been twisted, and they would turn others into what twisted them.
But that’s them, and we’re us; they may be selling, but we ain’t buying. Come by and see us some time…
We be of one blood, ye and I.
