It was late, late at night, and on this rare occasion, I was alone in the house …or
so I thought. I was playing a favorite
video game of mine, Plants vs. Zombies, a delicious blend of creepiness and
humor, because of course, there are no such things as zombies… or so I
thought. Immersed in my game, I was
furiously beating back the zombies with awesome strategy and the quickness and
finesse of my lightning reflexes, when I heard a-rustling in another room of
the house. I stopped and listened …but
now, there was nothing more than the imagined tick, tick, tick of the silent digital
clock on the desk beside me. I resumed
my game, driven to lay waste to the world of the zombies and prove myself
forever the victor with a capital ZV (Zombie Vanquisher).
Yet again, I was disturbed by the sounds of papers and small
objects being moved around, in some room, close by. Was there some mad, midnight organizer,
distraught over clutter in my home, come to vanquish me and my lackadaisical attitude
towards dishevelment?
I called out, this time.
“Hello? Is there a body about?”
My own life’s breath was my only reply. So, back to my zombies I went, but this time,
with one ear cocked, like a dog with a bone somewhat distracted by the beetle
in the shadows.
Then, there was a brief scrabbling sound on the hardwood in
the hallway, but I could not be torn from my quest for zombie extinction. Soon, I heard sounds of movement in the very
room where I sat. I looked up from my
game with dread.
But there was nothing.
No specter with feather duster in hand, no cranky housemaid
from the grave. But now, a rustling
amongst some file folders on the floor, and then, I heard it: a scratch,
scratch, scratching from behind the haunted piano (our antique--- okay,
antique-like--- dark wood, upright piano that sometimes resonates strings on its
own, seemingly to distinguish and emphasize particular thoughts from the stream of consciousness passing through my mind).
A rat! That must be
it. A grimy, hairy, yucky rat that I
alone was going to have to deal with. A
grimy, hairy, yucky rat that was disgusted that there was not a place for every
thing and every thing in its place!
But before I had time to ponder this further, IT sounded. The phantom brushed the piano strings,
vibrating them into a ghostly soundtrack to a ghastly scene.
I decided I would bang on the piano keys to drive the
neatnick out with the cacophony. I
pulled out the piano bench to access the keyboard, when I spied there, on the
carpet, an eerie sight, a crawdad, claws raised in attack mode, ambling towards
me in a threatening, off-balance, slow, but surprisingly efficient, zombie-like
motion.
Wha-at?!
A crawdad?!
A crawdad, like some dream-veiled Salvador Dali vision. A crawdad, as if drawn up out of the water in
the Moon card from the tarot.
My son has two crawdads for pets that he keeps in a
ten-gallon aquarium in his room. But
could this be one of them? How would it have
gotten out? No time to ponder that, now,
though, as the crawdad made his slow, lurching progress toward me. I ran to the aquarium and retrieved the net
and ran back to scoop up the crustacean, though he struggled against it. I deposited him in the tank in my son’s room
and successfully determined that indeed, he was one of my son’s crawdads,
specifically, the one named Speedy.
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| Crayfish Interrupted |
Oh yeah, I guess I didn't mention I'd write about crawdads, too.
