in nine minutes

So I've got nine minutes to tell you everything and I am weary, weary, weary of going all day.

But I'd like to bequeath the following story to my dear sister Heather, since she seems to take particular relish in disgusting or unusual stories--and this one is gross.

Saturday morning: bright, clear, lovely. Martin and I and the two younger girls are at the university's old historical building for a meeting--we climb up the circular staircases to a room lit with the filtered brilliance of stained glass. After the meeting concludes we let the girls frolic across the well-tended lawn on the way to the car. We laugh at the brazen squirrels and the way the girls chase them up trees. All in all, it is a very pastoral scene.

Martin notices that Bea has stopped to talk to something in the grass, and I note that as she walks away down the lawn toward the sidewalk, she seems to have a long piece of twine wrapped around her leg. I suppose it is landscape twine or some oddly overlooked piece of trash. She kicks her little sandaled foot to free herself. Again and again she tries to disentangle herself. At the same time Martin meanders up to where Bea was conversing with the something in the grass, and we see it at the same time: a matted mass of grey fur marked with blood. And the twine around Bea's ankle? Squirrel intestine!

AHHHHHHHHHHH!

Who knew squirrel entrails were so long? Great Scott!

After we sanitize Bea's foot and strip off her sandals, she asks from her car seat: "Squirrel?"

Martin says, "The squirrel was sleeping, honey."

There is a pause and then Martin turns to me. "Who wants a cookie?"

There's your nine-minute story, all I have time for this evening but certainly only one of the wild and woolly things that happened this weekend.

Over and out.