Post by TinSM on Oct 22, 2004 19:34:08 GMT -5
Fishnchips' post that mentioned "clearance from the tower" inspired this. Wrote it a couple of years ago, just after we (my Latvian/Russian wife and I) had gotten a 6-month old cat and had just days before heard the gruesome details of my sister's cat having been killed by a horde of raccoons in her San Jose backyard (an unusual occurrence). Wrote it in about 10 minutes, right after the following events happened.
It was late afternoon and we stood at the head of the stairs. I held a platter of meat and a fork.
"It will take about an hour?" .
"Yes," I said.
"Then I shall make the salad then color my hair."
Moments later I stood on the cement below the living room window, lighting the barbecue's fire. Nearby was Clara, sniffing plants. I had carried her out back and put her down, to allow her a rare piece of the outside. Soon, she had climbed to the top of the carport and began exploring. She made her way to the latticed wooden structure over the back apartment's patio. Five minutes later, she was looking down at me from the edge of the sloped tar and gravel roof just above my head. I reached up to Clara's dashing.
When the meat was nearly done, what looked like a pale-faced Watusi woman appeared in the living room window. A huge brown bath towel in a wrapping swirl topped her head like a crown and made her seem at least six-feet-six. I have long suspected that a woman with a towel wrapped high around her head is imbued with a sense of greater size and power and in such costume and condition thus possesses an extraordinary willingness - even a keen propensity - toward battle.
Vika gasped, then came "CLARA! RACCOONS!" and to me "SHE'S SITTING DOWN AND DOESN'T SEE THE TWO RACCOONS BEHIND HER."
"GIVE ME A POSITION. POINT!" I launched from the roof's drain gutter gravel over the roof's peak, impotent.
Vanishing from her spotter perch Vika was instantly outside the kitchen window, moving across the parapet with a rapidity and purpose as deft as that red army soldier negotiating monkey-like the Reichstag's blasted girders to plant the Soviet flag; and thereafter from parapet to roof as if one motion she jumped and was running in her house shoes and massive terry helmet like a Special Forces guerilla over the roof's peak.
Astounding.
Soon came over the peak the Bedouin fighter, grasping to herself in one hand the puny, neurotic Clara, while with a finger of the other she pointed to her nose while exclaiming, "She was touching noses with them, talking."
"Goddam, are you sure they were raccoons and not cats?"
As her finger drew a sabre across her throat, the turbaned-warrior admonished "Kill me if I lie. RACCOONS. TWO!"
She leaned over and handed to me Clara. Then upright at the edge of the roof raised a commanding fourteen-foot spire.
"PUT HER IN THE HOUSE. NOW!"
I did what I was told.
Clara, Two Raccoons, and the Woman Warrior
It was late afternoon and we stood at the head of the stairs. I held a platter of meat and a fork.
"It will take about an hour?" .
"Yes," I said.
"Then I shall make the salad then color my hair."
Moments later I stood on the cement below the living room window, lighting the barbecue's fire. Nearby was Clara, sniffing plants. I had carried her out back and put her down, to allow her a rare piece of the outside. Soon, she had climbed to the top of the carport and began exploring. She made her way to the latticed wooden structure over the back apartment's patio. Five minutes later, she was looking down at me from the edge of the sloped tar and gravel roof just above my head. I reached up to Clara's dashing.
When the meat was nearly done, what looked like a pale-faced Watusi woman appeared in the living room window. A huge brown bath towel in a wrapping swirl topped her head like a crown and made her seem at least six-feet-six. I have long suspected that a woman with a towel wrapped high around her head is imbued with a sense of greater size and power and in such costume and condition thus possesses an extraordinary willingness - even a keen propensity - toward battle.
Vika gasped, then came "CLARA! RACCOONS!" and to me "SHE'S SITTING DOWN AND DOESN'T SEE THE TWO RACCOONS BEHIND HER."
"GIVE ME A POSITION. POINT!" I launched from the roof's drain gutter gravel over the roof's peak, impotent.
Vanishing from her spotter perch Vika was instantly outside the kitchen window, moving across the parapet with a rapidity and purpose as deft as that red army soldier negotiating monkey-like the Reichstag's blasted girders to plant the Soviet flag; and thereafter from parapet to roof as if one motion she jumped and was running in her house shoes and massive terry helmet like a Special Forces guerilla over the roof's peak.
Astounding.
Soon came over the peak the Bedouin fighter, grasping to herself in one hand the puny, neurotic Clara, while with a finger of the other she pointed to her nose while exclaiming, "She was touching noses with them, talking."
"Goddam, are you sure they were raccoons and not cats?"
As her finger drew a sabre across her throat, the turbaned-warrior admonished "Kill me if I lie. RACCOONS. TWO!"
She leaned over and handed to me Clara. Then upright at the edge of the roof raised a commanding fourteen-foot spire.
"PUT HER IN THE HOUSE. NOW!"
I did what I was told.
