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mice

One evening while we were walking the streets of Oxford, or perhaps enjoying a light dinner in a Charlottenburg café, a large rat in Gaviota sniffed the air, scurried along the side of our house, and ran into the lower room through a door left ajar presumably by the guy who came to wash the windows. When the window washer finished his work, he shut the door snugly and left, trapping the rat inside. No one else would enter for weeks.

Rat didn't mind at first. It was a fabulous pad for a rodent, with lots of counters to run on, closets to explore, cloth and paper to chew on and shred. He poked around, tested the mattress, nibbled on a straw hat and the edges of a photo album, and figured he had done pretty well for himself. He built a luxurious nest deep within a closet, a nest of fine paper shreds harvested from old letters, bits of towel and sheepskin, even fragments of lace. He gaily dropped shit pellets on tennis rackets, window sills, the too-gleamingly-white top of a washing machine. Sometimes he mingled pee with pellet, smearing the mix, marking his lonely domain.

Days passed. Rat's insides were rumbling now, craving better sustenance, and his throat had grown parched, very parched indeed. There had been perhaps a trace of moisture in the sink, but it was long since licked away. Rat's fascination with his luxurious quarters began to fade, and a growing sense of panic took its place. He crept about the closet where the camping gear was stored, bit away a few splinters of wood from a board in the back, hoping in vain to find an exit, burrowed into a beautiful shiny sleeping bag, and finally succumbed to an overwhelming lethargy the likes of which he had never known before.

Enter two tired travelers. We spent the better part of two days cleaning up that mess. We donned masks and rubber gloves, washed and disinfected, and threw away two large trash bags full of damaged things, including the sleeping bag containing one decomposing rat. And I know that this is pretty disgusting stuff to be writing about, but it really is a classic event around here, an unappealing aspect of ranch life, where the outside is forever trying to get inside.

Nature just naturally asserts itself, and that is often contrary to all our efforts to inhabit a space and keep it tended. We try to coexist with the natural world, respect it, and even marvel at it, but also seek to keep it at bay, more or less. So look what happens in our absence.

Anyway, it was a discouraging homecoming.

I have been tired for five days. These long trips take their toll, and I keep attributing it to jet-lag, but I don't know if that's all of it. Maybe it's just post-travel let-down. A vague sort of depression. Today I didn't even want to go outside, but Monte pep-talked me into at least walking over to Jeanne's to buy a dozen eggs, and I'm so glad I did.

A car drove up as we were walking up the canyon, and it was a young man we know named Nole. There was a bouquet of wildflowers on the seat beside him, and he was heading over to scope out Andy's house, where, since no one is there and it's a cool little getaway, he has been invited to spend his wedding night. Yes, his wedding night...because he is getting married on Tuesday. That would be the-day-after-tomorrow Tuesday.

I should add here that Nole was in my sixth grade class many years ago, and I can still remember him sitting there, wishing he were elsewhere. (Maybe a sixth grade classroom is where the inside is forever yearning to get outside?)

Nole's family and mine have been friends for decades, so it was nice for me to see him so close to his wedding and wish him well. I happened to have a rose in my hand (how convenient) so I added to his bouquet, and we reminisced about the days when he and Luke used to play in their secret fort in Coyote Canyon, and when I would ride by on my bicycle they would jump out shouting and aiming their stick guns and give me quite a scare. Funny.

And now Nole is getting married, and I am a worn-out version of the woman that I was, moving more slowly, but still here. And for the record: still amazed. Definitely still amazed.