Fowl Weather (7 page)

I made sure that our cat Agnes was safely indoors. After switching on the floodlight, I crept outdoors stealthily enough to guarantee that any yellow jacket sentinels playing cards close to the surface wouldn't hear my footfalls. Then, with a sudden but by no means certain movement, I thrust a broomstick under several of the sticks, pushed my end down in lever fashion, dislodged the crumbling wood, and confronted a formidable buzzing hoard.

I ducked into the basement in time to hear the
tick, tick, tick
of hundreds of angry yellow jacket bodies pounding on the metal door and insisting I come outside and fight like a man. I heard the same sound, only louder, as I hurried up the basement stairs into the dining room. The yellow jackets had massed against the picture window. The scene resembled a horrifying take on a nature documentary with a close-up view inside a honeycomb, but these weren't amiable bees preparing little packets of ambrosia for their keeper. These were miniature cogs in a coordinated killing machine bent on stinging me into oblivion. I started worrying whether a mere pane of glass could withstand their fury. Surely by acting altogether they could lift the entire window out of its frame, fly it to a soft landing on the grass, and launch themselves at me unimpeded. As my nerves sagged against the yellow jackets' steady hammering, Stanley Sue startled me by clicking on the bars of her cage with her beak, then erupting into a full-fledged squawk.

“What's the matter, Stanley?” Linda called from the living room.

“I'm taking care of her,” I called back, hurriedly plying the parrot with a peanut, which, for once, she graciously accepted.

Desperate to hide the evidence of my folly, I raced down to the basement and snapped off the floodlights. The resulting silhouette of writhing wasps was muted against the outdoor gloom, and from the living room the ominous buzzing sounded like our refrigerator motor.

“You weren't planning on going outside for any reason, were you?” I asked Linda casually.

“Why, do you need something?”

“Oh, no, no,” I told her. “It's much too dark and unseasonably cold to be outdoors. But when did you say that pest-control guy was coming?”

“He's calling us tomorrow. But don't forget that tomorrow the lady is coming to see about taking Moonbeam.”

In the flurry of wings and my fear of stings, the good news about Moobie had slipped my mind. “That's great,” I told her. Linda shot me a questioning glance when I added, “Make sure she uses the front door, okay?”

T
HE HOLE IN THE
ground baffled me. The yellow jacket nest had been there the previous night. Now it was completely gone. A few disoriented wasps crawled disconsolately around the rim of what had once been their burrow, but only a gaping crater remained. They hadn't abandoned their nest. The nest had abandoned them. I couldn't find a trace of the grey papery material to prove it had ever existed, and neither could the wasps.

Linda and I determined that some animal must have stolen the nest after my broomstick excavation had unearthed its northern hemisphere. To figure out which animal might have been
responsible—and to quell potential blather about the return of the mystery primate—my wife phoned Grand Rapids wildlife expert Amy Martoni, whom she inevitably referred to as Mrs. Martini.

“Mrs. Martini said that it was probably raccoons,” Linda said as we stared at the hollowed-out burrow. One wasp wandered down to the bottom, then returned to the top to confer with another family member, presumably about their hive-owner's insurance. “The thick coat protects them from getting stung, though they might get a few stings on their noses. But she said raccoons would have eaten the yellow jackets.”

“What did you call her when you talked to her?”

Linda paused a beat. “Mrs. Martoni. What else would I call her? She said it could have been a skunk, but raccoons were more likely to have dragged the whole thing off.”

Raccoons made sense to me. They had eaten three of our ducks in the past, which proved their carnivorous tendency. And any animal that didn't mind dining on garbage would probably consider wasps a delicacy. “Did you phone the pest-control guy and tell him not to come? Tell him that the yellow jackets drowned in dew overnight.”

“He wasn't there, but I left a message. And Shelley will be here any minute to see about taking Moonbeam.”

“Speaking of pests.”

Our great white cat wasn't overjoyed to meet her prospective owner. As soon as the young woman breezed in towing her towheaded three-year-old daughter, Moobie made tracks for the bedroom.

“Oh, what a pretty cat,” said Shelley as Moobie's tail disappeared through the doorway. “I've always dreamed of having a white cat.” The heavyset Shelley had a baby face that made her the little girl's twin. But Emily bore a serious expression beyond her years, while
Shelley's smile was cherubic. Mom seemed like a good match for Moobie.

“She's got one green eye and one blue eye,” I pointed out.

“Kitty!” cried Emily.

Our house wasn't exactly child-friendly. That realization hit me like a hornet sting as the girl scampered into the dining room, where Stanley Sue and Dusty waited with open beaks for small, chubby fingers to poke through their cage bars. But Emily put the African grey parrots on the defensive. Stanley Sue jumped off her perch with a worried flutter of wings, sending Dusty and all the caged birds flailing in a similar fashion, except imperturbable Howard, who cocked his head for a better view of the action. The breeze from the combined feather power blew sheets of newspaper that Linda had cut to fit various cage trays from the top of the refrigerator. Fortunately, Emily headed directly for the rabbits rather than the hookbills. She tried reaching the snoozing Bertie through the wire grid, but her hand wouldn't fit. When I brought out the bunny for her to pet, she whimpered and hid behind her mother's legs.

“What a sweet little girl,” said Linda. “Do you like animals, honey?” Emily tightened her arms around Shelley's denim-clad thigh.

“Most of the time,” said Shelley. “Well, we don't really know. She can identify ‘cat,' ‘dog,' ‘cow,' and ‘bear' in her favorite picture book.”

“Kitty,” complained Emily with a scowl when Agnes made a rare appearance in the bird room, requesting an immediate exit outdoors. Dusty gave me the evil eye as the aluminum door slammed shut, as if to say, “Is there no limit to what I'm expected to put up with in this house?”

“Let's go look at Moobie.”

Linda's suggestion took root immediately with Emily, who had determined from their fleeting encounter that Moobie was utterly innocuous, even compared to a grapefruit-size bunny. As the girl ran back into the living room I remembered the glass figurines on the coffee table, a bowl of candy, and other temptations. But she bypassed these and tore upstairs to a minefield of CDs, books, outdated computer peripherals, a folk harp, and other detritus strewn everywhere that was easily stepped on and more easily tripped over. I had forgotten about Penny until a hiss from the grey cat in the guest bedroom sent Emily wailing and retreating downstairs.

“Penny,” I said, sprinting up to the second floor to comfort the cat, who growled at me.

“Oh, dear,” lamented Linda as Emily's howling hit high gear.

Moobie's frame of mind wasn't much better. Back downstairs, I found her in our bedroom closet, hiding behind an old suitcase that held single socks pining forlornly for their mates. When I picked up Moobie, she twisted her body in a fashion that no other animal could ever duplicate. Her front legs jerked stiffly to the right as her back legs jerked stiffly to the left, then vice versa as her head waggled back and forth. The spasms proved remarkably effective. She slid from my grasp just as I reached the living room. For a large land mammal, she was remarkably adept at avoiding Emily's lunge. Within seconds, she had discovered a new hiding place deeper inside the closet.

“Don't chase the kitty,” Shelley told her.

“Oh, dear,” Linda repeated.

“I think she'd be fine with us,” said Shelley. “We live in a small trailer.”

“With lots of closets?” I asked hopefully.

“We're just writing down names at the moment,” said Linda. I found myself nodding in agreement.

“I probably shouldn't take her today, anyway.”

I shook my head. “She seems a little upset. So does Emily.” The child had started crying again.

“I want to see the kitty!”

“We'll get back to you,” promised Linda.

T
HE BUMBLEBEE ROLLED
into our driveway. Linda started calling it that right away. Henry, the master gardener, drove a dented yellow car of uncertain foreign origin and age with a black stripe across the sides and an orange rubber ball impaled on each of two antennae. One aerial served a nonfunctioning AM/FM radio. The other put Henry in touch with the world via a two-meter ham rig that allowed him to make completely free though highly inconvenient phone calls.

“I'm on my way over. Over,” he'd told Linda from the supermarket parking lot minutes before his arrival. “I had to buy a camera first. Over.”

I hid inside the house, peeping through the curtains, as Linda conducted Henry around the yard. She moved expansively from flower bed to flower bed, her red braids flapping as she gestured toward the plants while Martin followed unsteadily, as if walking were a hobby that he had just taken up. When he stepped into the middle of the largest front-yard bed and pointed at a patch of greenery, Linda waved her arms until he lifted his left tennis shoe and retreated to the lawn. Bending down, she tried propping up a squashed Oriental poppy.

Henry lagged behind, making entries in a spiral notebook that he'd extracted from a bulging envelope. Each time he finished
recording an observation, he meticulously clipped the pen to his shirt pocket, then wiggled the pad until he managed to wedge it back inside the envelope. His slowness may have exasperated Linda, but it gave me an opportunity to pick the best vantage point for witnessing the same maddening procedures repeated in different sections of the yard. Linda would stiffen as he delivered a judgment on her floral aesthetics and walked into a grouping to demonstrate his point. Next would come the trampled flower, the attempted resuscitation by Linda, and the master gardener's notations regarding the plants that had so far survived his visit.

Eager to see the expert at close quarters, I caught up with them in the backyard as Henry shook his head at the triangular bed just outside the basement door. “We've got problems, here,” he muttered. “The plants are too crowded again. You'll have to give the roots more room. You've read Thomas Merton on the virtue of solitude? The soil doesn't seem to have sufficient aeration, either. See that whitish color? That might be a case of excessive alkalinity, and different mulch could help. I'll need to do a chemical analysis.”

“Watch where you step,” pleaded an agitated Linda. “That's a Jacob's ladder behind your foot.”

An arm's length from the unsteady Henry, I surmised a possible reason for his lurching movements as an aroma of alcoholic spirits washed over me. A small man in his sixties, slightly stooped, he had the classic drinker's nose with a latticework of veins, along with the telltale droopy eyes. “That's one ladder you don't want to step on,” I suggested.

“Saint John of the Cross composed a poem about Jacob's ladder,” he told her as he wrested his notebook loose from the envelope. “It was either him or Hildegard von Bingen, but you'll want to read Saint John of the Cross. I'll bring him along next time.” He scribbled a memo to himself.

“I'd like to meet him.”

“Henry, this is my husband, Bob.”

His head snapped in my direction and he bounced in surprise, as if I had materialized at his side that instant. “A pleasure,” he told me. “The Catholic mystics embraced the concept of evolution as God's consciousness at work in nature. You can see it in a garden. Before I leave today, I'll take a soil sample of each flower bed and test them for you.”

“If you could just pull out some of the hostas for me and divide them, you could start working right now. There's plenty to do here,” Linda said.

“It's all about science.” He turned to me. “Science and religion make perfect partners.” He slurred the final
s
. I shot a wide-eyed look at Linda, but she ignored me.

“I wrote down some ideas on how I'd like to see the beds arranged, if you want to come inside,” she told him. “Would you like iced tea or a glass of water?”

“Caffeine is bad for my health.”

Sitting at the dining room table, he shuffled through Linda's copious notes listing her goals for the various gardens, her design ideas, and plants she wanted to try. He set the pages aside and pulled out a sheaf of his own from his manila envelope, which showed signs of starting to tear along one side. “You're a writer,” he informed me. “I've been working on a brochure to get my business started. Mostly, I do volunteer work at men's shelters.”

He gave me a business card, which read, “Henry Murphy, Certified Master Gardener, Big Ideas for Every Space. The Purpose of Man on Earth Is to Glorify the Most High. Substance Abuse Counseling. Tax Preparation and Accounting Services. Leave a Message at the Just Around the Corner Bait Shop and Ammo Shack. Tell Them Henry Sent You.”

“That's a lot to take in all at once,” I said.

“Wait until you see my brochure.”

Linda grabbed the first page of her notes, while Henry offered me a copy of the most confusing promotional sheet I had ever seen.

“Here are the things I would like done with each bed,” Linda said. “The plants that need thinning, the perennials I'd like to add, and suggestions for improving the soil quality.” Henry took the sheet from her and laid it on the table.

“So, what do you think so far?” he asked me.