The Circle of Life

Illustration by Christine Bennett

I know, I know, sometimes I'm a bummer. I wish I could be different. Some people make candy and bake cupcakes that look like flowers and construct teeny elf houses and the elves that live in them at Christmastime all year round, and that must be a pretty damn cheery thing to do with your time, but that's not me. Instead I paint and write and that's pretty much it. I am not cheery, nor am I cheered. What's to be cheery about? Candy is poison, and cupcakes are also poison, although if we're talking Magnolia Bakery cupcakes, what a way to go, and elves don't even exist. But pretending is so popular, there's gotta be something to it; I must try it sometime.

Today I continued my fall yard clean-up, having been abandoned by the lawn guys after charging them for the broken birdbath--should I not have told them I knew they did it? I raked leaves and it was a glorious day; the sun was shining and the frost was on the pumpkin, literally, as well as everywhere else. God was in his Heaven and all was right with the world, until I raked up a dead mouse. Or more accurately, a dead mousie. He was stiff as a board and his little paws were in the pleading position. I found him exactly where I had interrupted my cat Lurch attacking a mouse yesterday afternoon. Obviously, he returned after the coast was clear and finished the job. Anyway, that made me sad, and I started thinking about death, and next thing you know I was in a bad mood. Another cup of coffee and I managed to bounce back, until I came upon another dead mousie a few yards away. That damn cat --what did they ever do to him? Now he has his eye on my pet chipmunk, ChipOrDale, who lives under the front steps. That would be the last straw.