Monsters With a License

She wasn’t expecting to see a snake out here, and so—at first—she didn’t. At first she saw an old sweater someone had abandoned when his walk in greenbelt behind their neighborhood made him too hot. Then the sweater raised its head and stuck its tongue out at her, and Cheri barely managed to suppress a scream.

Cheri didn’t know much about snakes, but she knew enough to be sure this wasn’t a local specimen. It may have escaped from a zoo. More likely, it was an exotic pet escaped from one of the homes along here. She’d walked a long way from her house, so she didn’t know anyone who lived in this part of the neighborhood. She scanned the backs of the houses she could see, wondering which of them had harbored this monster, wondering whether there were others around as well. Probably. The kind of person who’d choose this creature over a dog wouldn’t be satisfied with just one.

She’d just made a careful note of her exact location—the better to give details to Animal Control—and was backing slowly away when she heard someone say, “Don’t worry. He’s friendly.”

Cheri turned around. A boy with grass-stained jeans crouched in the bushes nearby. “Is this thing yours?” She tried to sound neutral but her voice came out more like that of a nun confronting a teenager with a pack of condoms.

“His name’s Herbert. He’s trained; he won’t bite.” As if to prove it, the boy crossed to the snake, picked it up and draped it over his shoulders.

“Are you crazy?” Cheri screeched.

The snake flicked its tongue out to brush the boy’s cheek. He grinned. “Herbert’s my pet. He’s got a cage in my room, but I like to bring him out here to stretch out sometimes. It makes him happy.” Then, incredibly, he turned his head to face the snake and continued in a baby voice. “Doesn’t it make you happy, Herbie?” he said, and planted a kiss on the snake’s head.

Cheri backed away from them. “That thing is not a pet. I’m calling Animal Control.”

The boy just laughed. “My dad got a license,” he said. He and the snake turned and walked up the hill toward the houses.

Cheri watched him go. At first she thought she would see which house he went into—she might call Animal Control anyway—but then she decided she really didn’t want to know. She turned and hurried back toward her end of the greenbelt.

She knew one thing for sure. From now on, she was taking her walks in the other direction. 

Everyday Miracles

When Jenny was at a crossroads in her life, when she didn’t know what to do, she liked to take long walks in the woods. She found she could think more clearly when surrounded by trees—maybe it had to do with all the extra oxygen.

She had a handful of places she liked to walk, but one time, she found a new trail and decided to take it. She walked along, not really watching where she was going, and wrestled with her problem. Should she keep pressing ahead with her current relationship, which was heading into territory she’d never experienced before, or should she break up with her boyfriend and go back to the simpler life she was more familiar with?

Eventually she realized she’d spent too much time thinking and not enough time paying attention, and she’d walked farther than she usually did. She still had to turn around and walk the same distance back to get to her car. She thought she’d better do that, so she’d know she had enough energy left to finish. But something stopped her. She wanted to go a little farther, to see what was around the bend in the trail. The total distance was farther than she’d ever walked before, but maybe it was time to push herself.

Jenny came around the bend and stopped in her tracks. A doe stood on the trail, not five feet away. She looked up from cropping grass and stared at Jenny. Jenny stared back, afraid even to breathe. She’d never been this close to a deer before. The moment hung suspended.

Then it was over. The doe leaped into the woods and left Jenny standing on the trail, stunned. If she had turned around when she wanted to, she would have missed this. Since she had pressed on past the point of comfort, she got to witness something amazing.

The encounter felt like a sign, a miraculous answer to her problem. She would press on.

Jenny’s boyfriend asked her to marry him only a few weeks later, and Jenny said yes. They were very happy together. Jenny started to take long walks not because she needed time to think through problems, but because being in the woods made her happiness even fuller.

She often walked on the trail where she’d seen the doe. Over time she realized something that made her a little sad—she almost always saw deer somewhere along that trail.

“Why on earth would that make you sad?” her husband asked. “I thought you loved seeing deer.”

“I do. But the first day I saw one, I thought it was a miraculous sign, just for me. I married you based on thinking that.”

“Well, it worked out alright, didn’t it?”

“Yes. But I thought it was something special. I thought I got to see a miracle. Now I know it was just an ordinary, every day thing.”

“Or maybe it was a miracle,” he said, and kissed her on the nose. “Maybe when you take a risk, you end up getting to see miracles every day.” 

God's Waiting Room

It was a nice place, God’s waiting room, but anything got old after 120 years. Mary knew going in that the average wait for a one-on-one with Him was 150 years, but at the time she thought that was worth it. Now she wasn’t so sure.

Time stopped within the boundaries of the room. She didn’t age. She didn’t need to eat, drink, sleep or pee. It was always 72 degrees and sunny, with a slight breeze. When she finished here, she’d step back into her life a moment after she’d left, and no one would know she’d been gone. In the meantime, she would have had a private conversation with God.

She’d heard about the opportunity from a man she’d met living in a cave in Nevada. She’d been on a month-long backpacking trip, hoping to find spiritual wisdom. He’d been living in the cave for years and was the wisest person she’d ever met. “Not many know you can do this,” he said, “and not many would even if they knew. You have to wait a long time, because God squeezes these audiences in between His many other duties. You'd be better advised get alone and spend time in deep prayer. He'll hear you faster.”

“But if I do this, I get to hear His end of the conversation, too.”

The man nodded. “That's why some find it worth the wait.”

“Have you done it?”

“I waited 100 years before I decided I didn’t need to see Him. I came back here and have had conversations with Him every day since then.”

When Mary heard that, she’d thought the man wasn’t as wise as he’d seemed. Surely a wise person would have waited another 50 years for that opportunity. Now she was here, only 30 years away from her audience, and she was seriously considering leaving.

The garden was just as pleasant as it had been when she arrived. She wasn’t uncomfortable in any way. The difference was that she’d had 120 years to think about things, and she felt like she got it now. She didn’t need to audibly hear His end of the conversation. After spending so much time here, she would know what He said whether she heard Him or not.

Mary found the path that led out of the garden, and a moment later she was back in the wise man’s cave, sitting by the fire. He grinned at her. “Did you have your conversation?”

Mary shook her head. “I waited 120 years. Then I realized I didn’t need to stay any longer.”

He nodded. “Then you have achieved your goal and found wisdom.”

Mary finished her backpacking trip, and when the time came, she went back to her job in Portland. She didn’t tell anyone about what she’d experienced, but it seemed they sensed it anyway. People sought her out for advice, whether or not they took it. Her friends found that spending an evening with her always left them feeling better than they had before. Her boss gave her a promotion, and when Mary turned it down because the new job would eat up too many hours, he found that he understood.

And Mary was happy. That was the big thing. Mary was happy. 

King of the Jungle

They called him the King of the Jungle—it was right there on his sign, under the Latin—but jungles were pretty scarce in the zoo. He had a couple of trees. Mostly he liked to hang out on the rocks, in the shady spot where he could keep an eye on things and stay cool.

He also liked to stick his tongue out at the tourists.

He’d wait until he saw an obnoxious one—a guy with two cameras, or a teenager trying to roar at him, or a mother saying, “Look, honey, it’s Simba,” over and over to a kid who didn’t care about anything but the location of the next ice cream cart. Then he’d stick it out, real casual, and turn his head toward them. He knew they saw. The cameras would start going double time, or the teenager would laugh, or the mother would say, “Look, honey, he’s panting.”

He wasn’t panting. He was saying, Screw you.

They thought they were so much better than he was, out there walking around while he was stuck in an enclosure. They were the ones who were stuck. They spent most of their time doing things they hated, and they spent their free time stumbling around a zoo, getting sweaty and tired and grumpy. Meanwhile, he sat in the shade and watched his own zoo wander past. He didn’t even have to pay for parking.

The little girl got it. She frowned instead of laughing when she saw the tongue sticking out. I could eat you in one bite, he thought at her. She turned away from him and tugged on her mom’s shirt. “The lion’s mean,” she said. “Can we go now?”

He settled back against his rocks and surveyed his kingdom. He was pretty sure he could jump out of here and eat the lot of them, if he wanted to. But he didn’t want to. He just wanted to watch them, to relax and stay cool, to stick his tongue out and to keep his pride.