First published in the Tri-Town Transcript Mar 24, 2016
By Esther C. Baird
Living in the Tri-Towns I constantly worry that I’ll be eaten alive – you probably do too. Between the voracious ticks and mosquitoes that now come in multiple viral flavors, and the coy-wolves which roam in groups of more than three, (an activity not even permissible for teenagers at the mall,) it’s risky merely taking out the trash or walking the dog.
Layer in the friendly fisher cat. Regular Readers will recall our family experience last year when a fisher cat chased a turkey that was chasing my daughter who was running across a golf course. It was strange – and certainly startling – but not deeply terrifying.
But this year we have our very own backyard fisher cat. Or rather it has us. Right where it wants us.
We’ve seen it down the road, crossing our yard, and fishing (fisher cats, fish!). Each time, it’s paused in its activities, picked up its head, and stared at me in a way that was obviously a smirk. I could ignore a smirking fisher cat, except it has a bone pile in the flower bed along our driveway. That’s right, our fisher cat has a bone pile.
Ok, ok, before everyone grabs a pitchfork and starts walking the local meadows, you should know that they are dog chew bones – – the kind that has been sawed off and probably stuffed with peanut butter. By the time our fisher cat procures them they are clean and, well, bone white. But this only unsettles me further because it implies that the fisher cat is collecting the bones not to eat them, but simply to be menacing.
This was driven home the other night when I was sitting in our hot tub. It’s set about six inches from our porch so that I can leap inside, in one bound, when the creatures of the night come to eat me.
But I hadn’t planned on a smirking, bone collecting, creature of the night.
You can imagine my reaction then, as I was soaking off a long day, and suddenly it became apparent that a person was having their fingernails pulled out in the shrubbery next to me.
Well, it was either that or our fisher cat letting out a battle cry.
Sometimes, for fun, I mimic the cry of a fisher cat. But almost always somebody spills a drink, because it is the sound of pure terror. It says: lock the doors, the apocalypse has happened, and you have lost. It chills your very blood – – even when sitting in a 102 degree hot tub.
I sent my husband a text, (yes I had my iPhone, my book is on it, but it was in a high end waterproof case otherwise known as a Ziplock bag). “Fisher Cat screaming! Right now!”
I waited. I heard rustling. I dipped lower into the water. There was more movement and then another shrill primal scream saying all misery and horror had been unleashed in my driveway.
I shot off another text. “Still screaming! Come help me!! I can’t get out of the tub!!”
In hindsight, that the text may have mis-communicated my actual reality, but just whatever, it quite accurately conveyed my perceived reality. I couldn’t jump six inches out of the hot tub – – six inches was the Grand Canyon! So much could go wrong in those six inches.
My husband came charging out with a giant spotlight and began shining it, commando style, into the dark night. “Where!? Where is it!?”
“Um, I think it’s on the bone pile down the driveway.” I answered, while springing gazelle-like (a water-logged gazelle) onto the porch. I could tell my husband was not impressed. It was not the clear and present danger my text had indicated.
“It was going to eat me.” I insisted, swishing my bathrobe around me. But it hadn’t. I had lived to be eaten, here in our Tri-towns, another day.