You Never Know WHAT You're Going To Find Along the Back Roads of Backroads

The most recent floodwaters have receded from the babbling brook that runs along our gravel road. The runoff is on its way to the Pacific Ocean by way of the Gulf of Mexico Watershed. It has, however, left a lasting impression on the landscape.

When we drive along the creek, The Pony and I often spot large, long-legged birds who sometimes gather their gangly limbs and take flight. We see cottontails hippity-hopping across the potholed gravel. Snakes on tree branches peering in the window. Turkeys stepping methodically through the fallen leaves. Deer flipping us the white tail while bounding from one copse of trees to another. The one thing you really don't want to hear from your kid as you putt-putt along at ten miles per hour is:

"Oh, hey! There's that bear."

Let the record show that a bear WAS spotted in town, in a neighborhood we drive through on the way to school. It happened a year or two ago. Several people made reports, not just one crazy old coot with a moonshine habit. I have seen a bear in the wilds of southern Alaska. Yet I was rattled to hear The Pony announce THIS bear. I gazed out the passenger window. Across the creek. Into the saplings and broken rocks lining the edge. Thinking, perhaps, it had come to drink.

"Where? I don't see a bear."

"There. On that limb. The one I told you about last week. It's back."

  

 

Somebody has a kind of warped sense of humor. And somebody really needs to schedule an appointment with an optometrist. Because that's a BUNNY, not a bear.