SEPTEMBER 20, 2019 – In the splendid weather of late, each morning with coffee and The Times out on the back porch—and each evening there with lemonade and a good book—are blessings to be savored. Thus, you can imagine my chagrin when these simple porch pleasures were denied by offenses to the senses.
Yesterday morning while my wife (sipping her coffee; digesting section A news) sat comfortably in a chair near the sofa, I (sipping my coffee; digesting section B news) sat comfortably in a chair not so near the sofa. Amidst the morning calm, our ancient cat hopped onto the sofa and peed! My wife screamed. At that I jumped nearly as far as the cat did. The clean-up involved few swear words, half a container of liquid soap, the garden hose with jet nozzle, and a few more swear words.
So much for morning porch time.
The evening held greater promise until . . . a neighbor dog started barking—and continued incessantly. I hate to acknowledge the bad thoughts that entered my mind.
But the worst was yet to come.
A couple of hours later, after the dog had barked itself hoarse, the porch beckoned again. I had high hopes for lemonade and more of a grand new book I’d started reading yesterday evening (out on the porch). By this time, however, a terrible stench occupied the porch. It was a familiar odor, one we’d experienced early this porch season—the smell of a dead rabbit emanating from directly under the floorboards of our porch.
Given how our porch is constructed, there’s no simple way to prevent rabbits from burrowing under it. A whole family resides there, which means that on at least two occasions now, a rabbit has died there. The stench is phase one of the unpleasantness. Phase two starts when the maggots turn into flies and find their way into the porch. Then begins phase three, which involves fly paper.
With the porch now temporarily off limits, I stormed off on my evening walk. I felt the burn of injustice at the hands . . . er, paws . . . of a cat, a dog, and a dead rabbit. What assaults on my senses! I thought.
But just then I caught myself.
I recalled the story I’d heard told earlier in the day by a lawyer friend of mine who years ago had volunteered to handle an asylum case. It concerned a physician from Rwanda who’d been ordered to write “death by natural causes” on the death certificates of murder victims in the genocidal horror show of 1994. He refused. His captors tortured him by unspeakable means. He was so traumatized, he couldn’t tell his whole story. Because of that, ironically, one of his own lawyers (here) didn’t believe him. Fortunately, his asylum hearing was delayed long enough for him to recover enough to tell the story and prevail. Some kind of justice at last.
“So,” I told myself two blocks into my walk. “Get over your porch woes.”
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© 2019 Eric Nilsson
