Words don’t fail me now.
Maybe if I cruised around on my lawn tractor, Big JD, and cut the lawn, I’d think of something to write about. I do most of my best thinking while riding that green machine. In the nearly 20 years that I have owned Big JD, I have engaged with most of my life while giving my neck of the woods a shave.
I’ve solved my version of world problems, stewed on this, slammed that, cried over it, or figured out how to fix it or fell it. Money dilemmas, home improvement ideas, menu plans, holiday destinations, retirement goals, relationship stuff, barn renos, movies to put on my playlist, you name it.
Eckhart Tolle would suggest I am not in the present moment while riding Big JD, and he’d be right. Believe me, I have tried. It starts with a conscious decision to “be one with the grass” as I stare ahead of me, and 10 seconds later, I’m off on my thinking roller coaster.
It has a clock on it to track how much I’ve used it. The time stands at 734 hours. I just googled “734 hours on my lawn tractor” to see if the internet would come up with an interesting fact. All I got was “a lawn tractor at 734 hours is entering its golden years. You are on borrowed time.”
Oh brother.
He may be getting old, but Big JD is a well-oiled machine. He sees Travis for his maintenance and comes back more youthful, like a weight has been lifted off his tires (mostly because of the 5 lbs of grass clippings that are no longer on top of the mower deck).
I think Big JD has a pretty cushy life.
I can’t say that about my resident chipmunk named Squirrel. I rescued him last year from a trap and set him free in my woodpile, where he has lived an adventure worthy of an episode of Fables of the Green Forest—a well-loved children’s classic animated series I used to watch in the olden days. Squirrel gets free room and board, the run of the place and enough sunflower seeds to build an underground food bunker for generations.
And then I got a cat. It never occurred to me that having a cat and a chipmunk would be a problem. However, if I had thought about it beforehand while mowing the grass, I clearly would have figured that out.
Honestly, I think Earl the Duke of Here is a descendant of royal felines, and it would be beneath him to even consider eating a chipmunk. Of late, he has taken to bolting up tall trees in the yard to vertical distances beyond my comprehension. I guess he can see his kingdom better from up there.
So, when working outside in my flower garden this past Saturday, I spotted what I thought was a mouse under the back step. Earl was lying in the grass nearby, and when I used a broomstick to force the critter out into the open in eyeshot of said cat, well, you can fill in the rest.
But then again, it wouldn’t be a story unless I mentioned that all of a sudden, a little brown furry body with a furry tail and saucer eyes and the telltale stripes of a chipmunk bolted out from under the step past me and into my freshly planted flower bed followed without haste by Earl, who clawed through the marigolds, and took out a solar light in hot pursuit.
In slow motion, I yelled “Noooooooooo,” just like the family member does in the Bounty paper towel TV commercial.
I shouted “SQUIRREL!” and was immediately thankful I no longer had my dog Dot, who knew what that word actually meant.
I was not witness to what went down after that as the two adventurers leapt into the bushes. Earl came running when I called him, and I’ll bet Squirrel got away and back to his woodpile where he carved the action-packed story onto a piece of birch bark using a sunflower seed.
