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.” 

How To Shoot an Armadillo

You might think this is a picture of an armadillo. You’re wrong. This is a picture of determination.

Or desperation. It could be that.

I took this photograph beside a trail I walk a few times a week. The past two months, I’ve seen armadillos out there almost every time I go. That is, every time except when I bring my camera.

At first it was funny. I’d tell my husband, “The armadillos are shy. They hide when they see the camera.” But after two months of that it started to seem less funny and more strange. Surely they couldn’t know when I had the camera. It had to be a coincidence—except how could it be when it happened every single time?

I started trying to trick them. I’d bring the camera but wear it slung around behind me, trying to forget about it. No luck. I’d bring the camera but stick it in a bag so they wouldn’t know what it was. They were smarter than that. I’d get frustrated and give up and go walking without the camera. Then there were armadillos everywhere, prancing right beside the path, silently laughing at me.

I started to think about shooting them with something more lethal than a camera.

Psychologists call this magical thinking—the idea that our thoughts or actions control things they couldn’t possibly control. I tried to remember I was giving the armadillos way too much credit, that this was coincidence, but as time went on it got harder to believe.

Finally, yesterday, I determined I was going to shoot an armadillo no matter what. I took my camera, and I walked the path slowly. I didn’t see any armadillos, but going slowly I could hear one snuffling through the undergrowth back off the path. It was time to hunt him down.

I’d tried tracking one into the woods before and only succeeded in scaring him away, so I decided to be sneakier this time. I found a downed tree near where I heard him, so I scaled my way along the trunk, arms out for balance, wishing I’d stayed in gymnastics longer. It worked, though. I wasn’t crackling any leaves, and I snuck up on the cheeky bugger before he knew it.

Snap! Click! Whatever you call the noise a camera makes, it was louder than I’d expected. It alerted the armadillo to my presence. He sat up, I grabbed a couple more quick shots, and he jumped straight in the air before zooming off like a cartoon character. He looked so funny it startled me into falling from the tree trunk, scaring a lizard that had been at my feet. I hurried back to the trail before he could try to sell me car insurance.

But I was triumphant! The picture you see is my trophy, a near-perfect shot of an awfully weird-looking critter. That photograph is the proof of my determination.

Or my desperation. I’ll leave that determination up to you.