Star Trek Energize

Each night about 11pm, I let the kids out into the tiny pen at the back of the house while I get their beds ready. Last night, Pippi and Mason started barking at something and of course, I ignored them - it's dark, they're dogs, dogs bark. Suddenly I heard a mournful howling coming from the pen.

Deciding it was time to investigate, I found Rosie with head tossed back, singing her wee heart out. I stood there smothering a laugh but when she started on the chorus to "Nobody Knows The Trouble I've Seen" for the third time, I decided it was time to bring them in. Mason and Pippi insisted there was a monster in the yard, looking towards the front of the house and the driveway, still barking. It's late, it's dark, I AM NOT going to go look. I lock the door.

Now it's morning and cloudy. Muggy; humidity feels high already, although it is only 20 degrees as we stroll through the garden yard. I am stiff and achey, gonna be another 2 painkiller day. The Mole People didn't manage to move the inverted red clay pots. The two remaining peas in the patch and the Scarlet Runner Beans are doing well. Over to the garden boat to roll up the beach mats and shower curtain so the sun can reach the tomatoes, peppers and peas.

Every thing appears to be doing good. I make a mental note to water after the sun - should it appear - moves past the garden boat. It is cloudy bright now. I notice a few of my CD's from the Disco fence are on the ground, some inside and some outside the wire and I do the scrunchy face thing. For a moment I flash on the cute little Island Buck Mule Deer hooking his antler in the holes of the CD's and ripping them off the fence, then shake my head at the idea. Still...

We are going to town for groceries, so we organize ourselves and start out to the van. And I says a swear. Yup, that really bad swear. The monster last night had been that cute little Island Buck Mule Deer and he went for the only plants I was foolish enough to leave outside the Disco CD Fence...my scarlet geraniums in pots by the patio door. Chewed their pretty little flowered heads right off. Pippi and Mason give me the "we-told-you-so-last-night-but-you-wouldn't-listen" look out the window. I am so beginning to get over the whole Bambi trauma, I mean really! Richard says "I think I am going to put up an electric fence around the garden yard to keep out the cute little Island Mule Deer and the cute little Island Black Bear." Oh, sure, just what I need.

Now it's afternoon and I have watered all the pots and the boat. Do some weeding and dead heading and notice a CD on the ground. I reach out to tie it to the fence and I flash on...

...me in my usual fog, wandering out to the garden yard, reaching out to untwist that Disco CD on the fence, touching the energized wire that I was supposed to deactivate but didn't because - see the bit about my usual fog, above. I am lying on my back, hair all fuzzy, looking up at the apple tree above me where there are no apples because the cute little Island Black Bears are not deterred by electric fences!

I shiver. "Um, no, no I think we should rethink that electric fence idea", I say.

Really!