Far away from home

I saw him only once, as he furtively crossed the traffic circle. We both stopped what we were doing to get a clear look at each other. The neighbor’s son said he thought he saw him too, but didn’t believe his eyes. But last night, we all heard him: three clear, lonely howls, no full moon needed. We figure this natural predator has been forced into this awkward co-existence as his natural habitat falls to Planned Urban Developments. The notion that our incursion into this relatively undisturbed territory will have no effect on the animals that live there doesn’t figure into the balance sheet. The green belt behind our development, where the population of rabbits is running rampant as the bunnies breed like, well, rabbits, is obviously more attractive to him than bulldozers. He is slender and shy, our neighborhood coyote, and I fear for him if anyone in authority hears about him.

Last night, on my way home from supper out with a bunch of friends, Darling Husband towed our two sons into the library, and I ducked into the supermarket next door to pick up an ice cream fix. I settled on the marginally responsible choice of Ben & Jerry’s Dave Matthews Band Magic Brownie. On my way to the checkout, I picked up a small block of Tillamook jack cheese for quesadillas tomorrow evening, and, emboldened by finding something remotely edible in a mainstream market, stopped at the table of baked goods in the bakery department. They had a clamshell of miniature croissants – cocktail croissants, they call them – so I tucked them into the basket slung over my arm. Once home, as I unpacked, I glanced at the label: no real surprises there, other than disappointment that they had used hydrogenated margarine along with butter, but then I saw where they had come from. Arizona. Yup, that’s right, they had traveled more than a thousand miles to get here. My mind races: are they more French than we are here? Is there something about the desert that is more conducive to baking (I would have thought the opposite, handling pastry on a hot day can be miserable)? Do bakers prefer retiring to/living in arid climes? I can’t make sense of it, but I feel a bit like the child watching the naked emperor walk by, shouting, “croissants from Arizona don’t add up!”

And I admit sadness in feeling like the childlike voice in a sea of blind followers. I am profoundly disappointed that the majority of folks seem to think it completely normal when they find baked goods hundreds of miles from home, but who consider it not normal to find a wild animal living in its native habitat. I am thrilled to the core by the normalcy of nature asserting itself in our backyards. But I fear for the emperor’s subjects.