My wife is a sensitive soul. In all the right ways. While I do possess compassion, I keep it tamped down, swallowed deep into the pit of my stomach. It only sporadically shows itself, as a gag-reflex, like coughed up mucus and phlegm that I then spit on the ground when nobody's looking. My wife has no problem expressing her love of and concern for all things at any time in any circumstance.
Lately, our house has fallen prey to middle-of-the-night power outages. Mysterious events that cause digital clocks to blink 12:00, and us to wake in the morning in a panic, unsure of how late we are for work. After the latest time this happened, my wife called Maritime Electric and explained the shenanigans. The tech replied that there was no clear reason why it was happening, and assumed that the latest outage was the result of a crow getting fried by an electrical wire (how she knew this, I know not. I remain dubious, and puzzled since the outages haven't returned since the phone-call).
When my son was quite young, he noticed a crow that always seemed to be perched on the highest limb of the tallest tree around our home. While I assumed that it was different crows, he was quite emphatic that it was, in fact, one crow. He named the crow Doogle.
Lately, my wife has taken to tossing, onto the lawn, old bread and such, with the accompanying yell "Here Doogle!". I assume the neighbourhood thinks her crazy, probably thinking she's tossing food to some imaginary lost son. I merely swallow, silently, and recognize that Doogle (or the Doogles, as I still believe) has found a second friend.
So, when she heard that the outages might be caused by crisping crows, my wife, momentarily, became a bit despondent and sullen at the thought of this poor crow losing its life in such a shocking way. "I hope it wasn't Doogle", she said, quite seriously, to nobody in particular.
I, I'm ashamed to say, laughed at her. Fortunately for me, she also shows compassion to me.
No comments:
Post a Comment