Rural Routes, Blog Version

In the mornings, I like to sit outside with a cup of coffee. Lately, those early mornings have had a fall feel to them.

The air has a crisp feel to it, a reminder that we approach the end of August and with it, the end of the summer. The day itself may bring heat and humidity, but the mornings are a clue to what is coming.

RACCOON

It was dusk. I glimpsed movement outside a living room window and moved closer to see what it was.

A squirrel? No, too big for a squirrel. Too big for a rabbit either. As my eyes adjusted to the low light, I saw its tail and then I knew.

It was a raccoon.

It is the first time I have seen a raccoon here in the city. Condo management warns us not to leave our garbage outdoors because raccoons will get into the bags, so we knew they were around. Just not in our yard.

It turned to face me and then hurried to the nearest tree. I lost sight of it as it reached leaf level, so I have no idea how long it stayed or where it went from there.

Raccoons can be pests, but I always have an ‘all’s right with the world’ feeling when I see any kind of animal in the city.

MASKS

In a department store, I saw a discount table piled high with masks. Masks in solid colours, masks with bright designs, disposable masks, washable masks. All kinds of masks.

Two and a half years since the start of the COVID pandemic, we have come to remainder tables for masks, like once popular books that didn’t sell and now are offered at bargain prices. What is surplus is reduced in value.

Don’t ask me why, but it made me wonder what the British author Terry Pratchett, were he still alive, would have written about pandemics and masks. Terry Pratchett is one of my favourite authors. I read him when I want to take a realistic but gentle look at the world. He is very good at shining a spotlight on human frailty with fantasy and humor.

I recently read “Reaper Man” in which Death is fired from his job for sub-par performance. In the interim before his successor takes over, no one dies. Instead living things past their prime become zombie-like, the undead. And objects that had never been alive began to breathe and make plans for their future.

Spoiler alert, Death overcomes the challenge through a mixture of ingenuity and a subversive kindness that verges on human. And life on Discworld returns to normal, or whatever normal means in a world that rests on the backs of four elephants standing on the shell of one enormous and ancient turtle.

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