No One Says Anything about a Moose

Moment of Zen yesterday evening as night descended in earnest, one of the many things about Autumn I don't like. I'm a big fan of daylight until half past eight so this a few-minutes-darker-sooner-than-yesterday stuff wears thin in a hurry.

My wife and children joined me here in the Land of the Round Doorknobs nearly twenty-two years ago-and I was reminded again last night of how Americanized we can be (I have a head start; I am an American).

Sigrid was startled by one of the neighborhood squirrels, to whom we feed peanuts on such a regular basis they look like the Michelin Man in a fur suit. Bibendum is his actual name; those French! They have a name for everything. And people say you learn nothing from reading blogs. HA!

I realized she was surprised because she was carrying on a conversation with, at first, one and then the other of the animals as they swung by on their home to the nest from a full day of foraging just to see if the timid woodland creature act might net them a few peanuts for the road.

Times have been tight in our house thanks in no small part to the turmoil in Washington DC and its impact on my bank account. The peanut budget hasn't been spared its portion of 'shared sacrifice.' Of course, squirrels have a brain about the size of the legume they are eating so a serious discussion on the failures of the Keynesian economic model in the US public sector is completely wasted on them.

Not that Sigrid was leading that particular discussion, but, rather, she was offering a lecture on why they needed to get along better with one another (and the subtext was to stop frightening her by popping out of nowhere). I'm starting to think that's why her English is so conversational; ubung macht den meister.
-bill kenny