Scared the Brown Right Offa Him, I Tells Ya!

Mother Nature went on a rampage last night. Mother Nature does not appreciate being ignored. I didn’t get to bed until 2:30 a.m., and by 3:00, the thunder and lightning woke me. Actually, it was the wind whipping the raindrops against the front wall of the house that woke me, finally a-snooze on the back side of the homestead. I guess that’s the sound that makes me worry. More so than run-of-the-mill lightning and thunder.

“We’ll just have to blow away. I’m too tired to get up and check for tornado warnings.”

My sweet baboo lent me an ear. “No tornado. My phone would have given me the alert. I didn’t hear it.” Let the record show that this is from the man who sleeps with a quilt over his head. A man who cannot hear my normally-spoken words when I sit right next to him in a waiting room.

“Did you check it for alerts?”

“No. I guess I could.” We wouldn’t want Hick to overexert himself taking five steps to the bathroom, where his phone charges overnight on the counter. “No. No tornadoes. Just thunderstorms.”

“I hope my rocking chair, my rocking chair that I used for rocking Baby Genius, the rocking chair you put on the front porch to make room for the piano…won’t be coming through the front window.”

“That rocking chair ain’t goin’ nowhere.” Still, I heard Hick stump his way to the front door to look out. I imagine his hair, if he had any, would have been forced back like that of the 1970s Maxell stereo guy in the chair.

This morning, we found many small branches that had been separated from their limbs. They littered the field and the gravel road. The creek wasn’t up. More wind than rain, I guess.

I suppose Even Steven knows Mother Nature. She must have wanted to apologize for her bad behavior, taking off those branches. On the way to work this morning, I saw a sight that gave me pause. Actually, it didn’t give me pause, because I was driving, and could not stop in the middle of the road for a picture.

“LOOK! AN ALBINO SQUIRREL!”

The Pony saw it, but had no time to snap it. At least he can verify my story. That pale critter scampered down a tree trunk and darted across the yard of an upper-class home in the lake subdivision.

Maybe Mother Nature likes rich folks better. Or they know where to buy albino squirrels.