The Five Layer Break Up


(rejected submission to Taco Bell Quarterly—NOT written by the woodchuck)

He was fine.

He hated when people said that. It seemed too easy and kind of dismissive; lazy, even. People were complex beings with a myriad of emotions that fluctuated throughout the day, and answering fine was clearly a way to shut down a discussion that someone did not want to have.

But he was, really. Fine.

The break-up had caught him off guard, although she said that was part of the problem. He wasn’t tapped into her inner thoughts enough to understand how not fine she was. He had hoped the dinner at the fancy restaurant would prove his devotion, although he was a bit stunned at the prices when they got there. He was cautious with his money (she said cheap), but with the Wagyu Char special set at Market Price (a gimmick he felt allowed them to set any amount they wanted), this seemed like a gesture that would prove his devotion. Also, he loved a good steak. 

He had forgotten—or not heard—her say that eating meat was one of the worse contributors to climate change. He assumed that was what the glare directed at him across the table meant as she ate her eighteen-dollar salad. It didn’t even have cucumbers in it, which he found puzzling. He offered her a forkful of his incredibly tender beef and was relieved when she angrily shook her head no. Even at these prices, the food was fantastic.

Later in the evening as they walked in silence, his stomach groaning with the huge lump of meat he had just devoured, she announced she was still hungry. He wanted nothing more than to take his pants off and lay on the couch, but he intuited that would be the wrong response. Still, he couldn’t believe it when she announced she wanted a bean burrito and veered into a Taco Bell.

He had just spent over a hundred dollars on a very expensive meal (plus the eight percent tip which he had felt was generous, as the server had taken forever to bring him the A1 sauce). Now he had to buy her another meal? He felt she was just waiting for him to protest because she still seemed angry, so he took out his wallet and paid for her bean burrito with extra sour cream and jalapenos (he also took this as a sign they were not having sex tonight).

Instead of calming her, the snack seemed to only make her madder, and she bit into it with such fury that the sauce squirted out the back end of the tortilla. A huge dollop of the red liquid landed on her white halter top, and he couldn’t help but laugh because it looked like a nipple.

The burrito was launched with such force that he never saw it coming, and it landed right in the middle of his chest, with beans and sauce and sour cream creating a bas-relief landscape of ingredients across the front of his neatly pressed light blue button down. The refried projectile was followed by a stream of combined profanity and a complete list of all his faults, which mercifully ended when she stormed out.

That had been three months ago. But he was fine, really, he was, he told his mother. She had insisted on coming to the Bay area to check on him, after he had ceased all communications with his parents. Apparently his office had also contacted her to do a well-being check, as he had not been in for weeks and was late on several projects.

Working from home, no one could tell that he was still wearing the burrito-stained button-down shirt from that night because the smell reminded him of her. He had no appetite, but his dreams were filled with images of Cheesy Gorditas, even though he had no idea what those were.

His mother insisted they leave his apartment, which she felt had a rancid bean smell. She had decided they should have a tourist day and had booked a tour of Alcatraz. 

Why she thought touring a hundred-year-old island jail would cheer him up he didn’t know, but as they rode the boat across the sparkling blue water, his mother chattering on about Burt Lancaster and birds, his head felt clearer than it had in months. The air was crisp and the ride bracing, and as the cooling salt spray refreshed his head, he realized that he hadn’t thought of her all day. He was over her. His shirt was a navy polo with no stains on it, and he was looking forward to a juicy burger for lunch with no guilt whatsoever. He really was fine.

They boarded the island amid squawking gulls and walked toward the crumbling buildings. The tour guide recited the history of the famous inmates once housed there as they walked through the cell block and took pictures of each other in the claustrophobic space. As they headed toward the lighthouse, they rounded a corner and his mother started laughing. She pointed at an abandoned guardhouse and shouted, “That one looks just like a Taco Bell!”

He fell to his knees, sobbing. He was in prison and would never get over her.

(Alcatraz, 2015. Photo by C. Broquet)

The Wings Beneath Her Wind

The meeting room I sat in had one wall that was all glass, which would have been a lovely diversion if it hadn’t looked out onto a parking lot. Sealed in like vacuum-packed salmon, I couldn’t even hear the drone of cicadas, which had been loud and constant that summer. Bored by the droning inside, a flash of white caught my eye outside. Abandoning any pretense that I was paying attention, I moved my chair closer to the window and was suddenly nose to nose with a tiny white creature. Its mouth was opening and closing silently, but it was clear the sound coming out was a pitiful meow. 

“Look, it’s a kitten!” I shouted, completely disrupting the meeting. I grabbed a cardboard box and immediately ran outside. People at the window were pointing and shouting directions as I crawled under the bushes trying to find the cat. Their mouths opened and closed silently, and I realized this was the view the kitten must have had of us. Finally spotting it, I gently lifted it into the box. A silent cheer went up inside the room.

I took the tiny beast to my vet to get her checked out; he reported she was about six weeks old, skinny but in good health, probably abandoned by her mother. Amused, he said the fact that she survived on her own was amazing, but the truly astonishing thing was that her food source was cicadas. The proof was in the poop, which was full of insect exoskeleton. Eww. Trust me, you don’t want to be downwind of a cat who has been subsisting on these bugs. 

That was 2007. How could I not keep a kitty with an origin story like that? My fascination with cicadas began when I learned that the kitten had been smart enough to hunt them as dinner. I use the term “hunt” loosely, as this was the last time the Brood XIII bugs emerged and there were so many of them scattered about the forest floor that it must have made a crunchy noise when she walked. Entomologists say that even the hungriest predators eventually get sick of eating cicadas, because the sheer number of them is mind-boggling and animals get tired of gorging on them. I’ve been told that works for pizza, too, although I have not found it to be true. 

Seventeen years later, here they come again, and this time they are bringing friends. They are meeting up with the younger thirteen-year-old BroodXIX for the first time in one hundred years, and who knows what kind of party these guys are planning. The giant bugs are a bit creepy when you consider they will number in the billions, but aside from the ick factor, they are mostly just really loud. I am always stunned by the amount of exoskeleton left behind as they crawl out to mate for a swinging couple of days. At the last cicadapalooza, I collected cannisters full of their discarded shells, unsure why I wanted them but certain in the knowledge that I could do some kind of craft project. They are quite delicate, but with patience and a little shellac, I discovered that I could make fanciful earrings and necklaces out of them. I know what everyone is getting for Christmas this year!

The return of the seventeen-year Brood XIII cicadas is how I measure my cat’s time with me, like an oversexed bug growth chart with glowing orange eyes. That kitten is now old and fat and has outlived all the other pets in the house. She prefers her meals served from a can now, but we both look forward to the return of her former food source.

I may bring some live cicadas into the house just to see how she will react. Purina has a complicated formula that suggests she is the equivalent of eighty-four human years old. Some fresh, crunchy snacks might be just the nostalgic trip through her kittenhood that will make her forget how much her knees hurt when she still jumps up on the counter.

(The woodchuck is relaxing after her stressful eclipse experience, and will return later with her new art project, an installation that pays homage to Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party; only instead of vaginas, it will feature cicadas.
This essay is part of The Rude Brood, which is a subset of The Ripple Effect, which for some reason is occasionally part of the Blind Woodchuck. Don’t try to figure that out—at least it’s free!)
Cat Eating Cicadas illustration by Cheryl Welch

Part Three: Every Now and Then I Fall Apart (alternate title: Eat, Prey. Love)

Panic had broken out around her. All the forest animals were aware of the near miss the woodchuck had during the last eclipse and were terrified of not being able to watch for predators. Most had never even realized there were things happening in the skies above them—the only time they looked up was for hawks. Now everyone was suddenly Chicken Little when it came to the sky.

“The birds knew and they didn’t warn us!” screamed the field mice. “It’s a conspiracy!”

“The crickets are in on it, too!” wailed a hedgehog. “How did they know to start chirping? Did they have access to an app that’s only on Android?”

A groundhog, manically running in a circle with his eyes closed, tripped over a root and tore his ACL. He lay on the ground moaning, clutching his wounded limb and making such a racket that it caught the attention of a turkey vulture flying by. This was exactly the kind of eclipse content the bird was hoping for.

The woodchuck was stunned to see the entire meadow and forest had erupted into chaos. Scientists had predicted some animal behaviors might be odd during the eclipse, but not this level of weird. She was horrified to see one of her cousins lying prostrate on the grass, his naked belly exposed to the sky as he screamed incoherently about the end being near. The buzzard certainly seemed to agree with him.

It occurred to the woodchuck that some of the animals might be blaming her for this, which was, of course, ridiculous. All she had done was pretend to be blind for several years to get people to pamper her and bring treats; she never said anything about writhing around on the ground in plain sight of a very large bird with talons and a beak.

Oh. Well, perhaps they had a point.

The woodchuck ducked back into her burrow, uncertain of what to do about the carnage that was about to erupt. Shirley was fully awake now and could hear the screaming above ground. “Do something!” she shouted. “You’re the only one they will listen to!”

The woodchuck did not believe this was necessarily true, but her only other option was going deeper into the burrow and hiding in a tunnel. She glanced wildly around the cozy dark room, trying to think of what to do, when her eyes fell upon a metallic cold food shopping bag she had saved from her last trip to Costco. 

“Shirley!” she screamed. “Help me tear this into strips!” The two woodchucks ripped the silver fabric into long pieces as fast as possible, and she scrambled up the tunnel gripping as many as her tiny arms could hold. 

She paused at top of the hole. Outside there was terror and screaming and possible disembowelment; fellow groundhogs who hated her and felt she was responsible for the carnage that was about to happen. It would be so much easier to duck back inside and hide.

She flashed back on the last eclipse and the power she had felt course through her body just before her retinas started smoking. Maybe there was just a little bit of Captain Marvel still in her.

She dashed out of the hole and threw herself on top of her writhing cousin, flipping him several times until he fell into a nearby burrow. The turkey vulture was in a dive straight for the entrails but had to pull up before it hit the ground, zooming back into the air before readying another approach. This time it was going for her.

“Tie these around your eyes!” she screamed at the other animals, tossing the foil strips in the air. “You won’t go blind!” She threw the last ones at the other woodchucks just as the vulture snatched her by the nape of her neck and lifted her in the air. Shirley seized her foot and went airborne herself. One by one, all the now blindfolded rodents grabbed onto to each other and formed a furry chain that tethered them to ground; it stretched into the sky at least fifteen woodchucks high. 

The turkey vulture gave up, as the groundhogs were all pretty chunky and probably kind of grisly. The chain plummeted to the ground, with the woodchuck hitting last with a wince-inducing smash.

She awoke to a cold compress of soothing leaves on her forehead and a crowd of doting animals trying to anticipate her every need, bringing her insects and delicious berries. It was just like the last eclipse, only this time she could see their grateful faces beaming at her. She was their hero, but now she deserved it. She would be as humble as long she possibly could, or at least until they stopped waiting on her.

She picked up a fresh cicada someone offered her and bit into it, the crunchy filling delighting her senses. There were two or three on the bark platter, and she popped them into her mouth as well. Were they early this year? It seemed too soon for cicadas.

The woodchuck sighed and relaxed. Spring was here, and it was calm, and quiet. She hoped there wouldn’t be any more extraordinary natural phenomena to worry about this year.

Part Two: The Dark Side of the Moon

She wasn’t really blind, of course. A slight singeing and some minimal scarring occurred in her beady black pupils, but that faded quickly. Shirley came every day and bathed her eyes with the juice of assorted berries, which turned them blue for a while. She thought it looked striking but her cousin sniffed and said it reminded her of one of those pale-eyed husky wolves.

More surprising was the outpouring of concern among the forest creatures. A steady stream of delicious leaves and bugs were left outside her burrow so she wouldn’t exhaust herself hunting for food. Get Well Soon! messages scratched into bark were dropped into her hole and she amused herself by sorting them into a scrapbook with the sincerest words at the front. The woodchuck beamed as concerned rodents came from all over the forest to check on her. She had never felt so beloved.

One day while she was out healing in the sun, she accidentally reached out with a lighting fast reflex and caught a grasshopper. It became obvious that she wasn’t sight-impaired and no longer need help. The attention stopped. The other animals had their own checklists to accomplish before winter set in, such as bulking up for hibernation and not getting eaten by hawks.

The woodchuck was not ready to let go of the scam. There is an old saying in the forest: once a narcissus, always a narcissus (animals have far more old sayings than most humans realize). Someone had whittled a long white stick that was the perfect height to use as a cane, so she perched the wire-rimmed sunglasses the guilty marmoset had left for her on the tip of her nose and felt her way around the forest. She knew she looked regal as she worked her way around, waving and tapping, until she realized it also alerted hawks to her presence. 

The whole thing became considerably less entertaining when someone dropped a flyer down her burrow. It was a picture of the current weasel in charge in 2017, the one who liked to wear a severed fox tail on his head; he was staring up at the sun and pointing. Someone had scrawled moron across the picture. They were laughing at her.

She became reclusive and angry. The woodchuck had never been a particularly social animal but now she shunned the other creatures. She showed up late to work, bit the Mayor of Punxsutawney and lost her job as the weather groundhog. She said hateful things about the beavers, about grabbing them whenever she wanted and laughing at how she could do whatever she wanted because she was famous. She meant it ironically because her fame had become an albatross around her neck, but the beavers were still hurt by the comment. The woodchuck also wished she could get that damn bird to leave her alone. 

Even Shirley, her most faithful and loyal cousin, had had enough. “So you made a mistake,” she said, “it was an extraordinary natural phenomena and none of us were ready. The eclipse glasses hadn’t come in yet and how were we to know how stupid it was to stare?” Shirley did not add that she knew enough not to but had enough sense not to mention it.

Cancel culture was real. Humiliated, she stayed in her burrow as much as possible and spent her days watching reality television on her phone. Love is Blind was her favorite. She began grinding her teeth at night, although that proved to be a good thing because it kept her incisors from growing through the roof of her mouth.

Hibernation came as a relief, because for six blissful months she could tune out the rest of the cruel forest and simply dream about being pursued by marmots and not think about the state of the world. As time passed, the weasel with the orange fox tail on his head was inexplicably still around, and she couldn’t help but feel this was all his fault. Perhaps if she had had better guidance, she wouldn’t have stared at the stupid sun. (She also had nightmare about the Love is Blind reunion and woke up in the middle of February wondering why they hadn’t spent more time talking to Chelsea, but was eventually able to fall back asleep.)

Seven years had gone by, a very long time in the short span of a groundhog’s life. And now here she was again, unprepared, with the sky flipping the script and the weird half-moon shadows flickering over the grass. She recalled what Shirley used to say to her: “Those who cannot not remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” which was a pretty compelling statement for a groundhog. Actually, it might have been a lyric from a Carlos Santana song, but that wasn’t the point.

What mattered is that she alone had the power to take back her life—only she could change the course of her own history.

She grabbed her tiny sunglasses and turned to face the dark.

Coming soon: A Total Eclipse of the Heart

Part One: Hello Darkness, My Old Friend

The woodchuck startled awake, sitting up so quickly in her burrow that she banged her head on the dirt ceiling of her sleeping chamber. It was pitch black inside and she was disoriented and dizzy—but this wasn’t like normally waking from hibernation and waiting for your eyes to adjust; something about this felt sinister. She heard a voice whisper the darkness is coming. 

“Shirley, what did you say?” Her cousin, who had slept over during hibernation, groaned and rolled over on her side. “Go back to sleep,” she mumbled. “It’s too early to get up. It’s only April.”

Ignoring her cousin, the woodchuck poked her head out of her hole and did a slow 360 degree turn around the meadow. The sky was still black and across the horizon the light was beginning to dawn, but on the other side, the sun was setting. How could that be? She thought she heard the rumbling bass of Johnny Cash singing about going down, down, down. Something was wrong. Something was happening.

The insects had gone silent. Even the birds were still, as if it were the middle of their sleep cycle. Tiny half moon shadows danced across the grass.

She reached for the dark glasses that were usually perched on her tiny forehead, but they were not there. It made her uneasy to not have them on, because you just never knew when you were going to be caught outside with proper eye protection and . . .

“Oh my God!” she screamed. “It’s another fucking eclipse!”

Seven years earlier: August 21, 2017

The woodchuck scampered playfully toward her burrow but paused to hide behind a huge catalpa leaf, looking back coquettishly to see if the large marmot was still ­­following her. Most of her hind quarters were sticking out on either side of the leaf. Mating season was over, but you couldn’t blame a girl for flirting. 

The marmot must have lost interest, for he stood frozen, staring at the ground. Tiny half moon shadows were dancing across the dry grass and the normal chatter of the birds had ceased. The silence was eerie and the woodchuck shivered slightly, wondering what had happened to the blistering hot day that she had been sweating through just moments ago. Why was it getting darker? Hadn’t she just eaten lunch?

Her would-be suitor the marmot began running toward her, glancing in terror at the sky. He grabbed her and shouted, “Look away! Look away! It’s the Rapture!” as he dashed off and dove into a burrow.

The woodchuck had hoped that was going to be her line but apparently not. 

Suddenly, every cricket in the forest launched into a cacophony of chirping like someone had flipped on a switch. What was wrong with these stupid insects? They weren’t supposed to start that infernal noise until after dark.

Except that it was. It shouldn’t be, but it was. 

She glanced up at the sky just in time to see a black disk slip in front of the fiery sun. A golden orange ring surrounded the circle with flame-like spikes pointing in every direction. All the other creatures had vanished down holes or were hiding in trees. She thought she heard the opening notes of Also Sprach Zarathustra off in the distant forest, or maybe it was Johnny Cash? She was alone in the meadow, transfixed by the movement in the sky, suddenly wondering if she was about to become imbued with super powers by the glowing orb that had been overcome by a simple circle. What could this mean? Was she about to become Captain Marvel? 

As she stared at the black hole that had swallowed the sun, a brilliant point of light appeared on one side. She squinted a bit but was hypnotized by the sight and could not tear her eyes away as the inky sphere moved diagonally and the searing light of the sun burned away the dark orb. 

Shirley was shouting at her, something about stop staring at it! and are you a complete moron? But if she was going to become the next Marvel hero, she didn’t want to miss a moment of it. 

Suddenly the day became normal again. The heat returned and the crickets shut up, embarrassed they had been fooled by something as basic as a celestial event. Shirley dragged the woodchuck into her burrow and started screeching at her about crispy retinas, which the woodchuck thought sounded delicious until she realized what it meant. 

She spent most of that fall and hibernation hiding in her burrow, rubbing a salve of crushed fireflies and tree sap into her sore eyes that did not seem to help much but gave her an eerie glow. A tiny pair of round sunglasses were left at the opening of her burrow, a gift from the guilt-stricken marmot who had apparently confused the Rapture with an eclipse.

From that day forward, she would be known across the meadow as the Blind Woodchuck. 

Coming soon: Part Two: The Dark Side of the Moon

Piece on Earth, Part (Pizzeria) Due*

The woodchuck roamed restlessly about her burrow, picking up and putting down a tiny Statue of Liberty, her souvenir of that remarkable whirlwind trip to New York. She had assumed she would go back into hibernation when she returned, but her mind kept replaying that weekend and dreams of her evening with the infamous Pizza Rat kept jolting her awake, sweaty and panting. Then she had to get up to pee and could not get back to sleep.

It didn’t help that her most hated holiday was approaching. She had once been the most famous groundhog in the world, her weather predictions anxiously awaited by millions as a guide as to how much longer they would need to wear mittens. Local news shows had loved her; she’d been interviewed by Anderson Cooper. 

But the town of Punxsutawney had grown tired of her ever-increasing green room demands and she had been unceremoniously dumped as the rodent meteorologist. The green M&M things had been a joke! Now her cousin Kevin was cosplaying as her and no one seemed to notice or care. Someone told her he had been doing shots with Anderson and Andy Cohen on NYE. She had blown the best gig of her life and now she was alone and sad and probably had six more weeks of winter ahead (she would check on February 2nd, but there was always six more weeks of winter ahead).

Scrolling through her phone, she stopped cold at a headline on the New York Times site. She’d been vaguely aware of a lot of buzz about a rodent silhouette captured in concrete, but she gasped when she saw the newspaper of record writing breathless prose about it. Could this be her Pizza Rat? She exhaled as she realized this had happened in Chicago, not New York, but then a whole fantasy bloomed in her mind: what if he had come to visit her and a steamroller had flattened him? She’d seen enough cartoons to know that happened all the time. Her meadow was not that far from Chicago, and he might have thought it was close to her burrow. New Yorkers seemed to think any place outside their city was all kind of mushed together with no interesting architecture.

The woodchuck felt an overwhelming need to see the rathole for herself; she was convinced that it was him, and now she must either be proved wrong or mourn the greatest love of her life. 

The trip across the frozen prairie was fast; she serpentined from burrow to burrow, keeping a practiced eye out for hawks. Once she reached the city, she was surprised at the number of available ratholes there were to duck into for cover. The woodchuck wouldn’t normally have thought to share this underground subway system with them, but she felt they were kindred spirits now, sharing the pain of the Unknown Squashed Rat and possibly the mingling of inter species DNA.

There was a crowd gathered on the sidewalk where she knew the imprint to be, and she hid under a parked car. Flowers were placed in the snow around it and people holding candles made keening noises and rocked back and forth. What the hell was going on? Why would humans be mourning this rat? She had passed hundreds of yellow signs in alleys on the way there that shouted Target: Rats! with a large red canceled sign over a picture of a rodent. She would never understand human beings.

She strained to get a look at the impression lodged in the concrete. The angle was weird because of where she was hiding, and it was hard to tell how big it was. If all those people hadn’t been standing around it weeping, she could have laid down on top of it and that would have told her for sure. Even though Pizza Rat was a giant among rodents, she still outweighed him by several pounds.

Looking at the imprint gave her a terrible feeling. She couldn’t be completely certain, but the rush of grief she felt made her believe that this was her once in a lifetime love. She turned away, fighting back tears, too upset to gaze upon the shallow grave of her doomed future.

Suddenly the air was filled with shouts of horror, and she looked up to see a giant rat running across the street dragging a slice of pizza. It was him! He had come to find her! She had just enough time to register that the piece was from a Chicago deep dish pie instead of a foldable New York slice, when a huge SUV came barreling down the street, the driver talking excitedly on her phone and waving in the direction of the imprint. The car hit the famous rodent and he flew across the street, landing face down in the cement of a new sidewalk being poured. The woodchuck screamed and covered her eyes.

A moment later, she peeked around a tire, certain that she would see a new rat imprint; a paw reaching out to her, anguished expression on his snout as if he were Han Solo being encased in carbonite. But no! He was alive! He had surfed across the wet cement surface on the pizza and landed on the grass. The only thing in the new sidewalk was an imprint of ‘za.

The crowd parted in respect or fear and watched as the giant rodent dragged the concrete coated pizza over to the original fallen rat. He placed it gently near the candles and other odd objects left in memoriam. Then he limped over to the parked car where his lover of another species hid, grabbing a piece of cheese someone had left on the sidewalk. He paused for a moment and then angrily shook his tiny paw at the crowd who had mocked the grave of this brother rat by taking selfies and getting married in front of it. They ran screaming in all directions.

The woodchuck waited for him, her blushing cheeks as red as the berries that would bloom on the soon to leaf out mulberry trees, welcoming spring with its warm breezes and long sunny days filled with bees and butterflies and love.

She was gonna get laid tonight.

*For our non-Chicago rat lovers, Pizzeria Uno boasts it invented deep dish pizza in 1943; and Pizzeria Due was opened to handle the overflow from Uno.

The woodchuck does not have a preference, as she eats mostly grass and bugs.

Piece on Earth, Good Will Toward . . .

At the time, going to the wedding seemed like a good idea—the woodchuck had needed some cheering up. She should have been deep into hibernation by now, but lately the state of the forest had made her anxious and depressed and she found herself wide awake and staring into the darkness of mid-December.

When the huge gold leaf had swirled into her burrow, she’d been impressed. The calligraphy scratched across the surface announced the marriage of her cousins Chip and Dale—to each other. She wasn’t sure how she felt about this. It was common knowledge that all her cousins mated with each other because really, how were you supposed to know if they were related to you or not? But actually getting married felt a little extreme. This must have been Chip’s idea—he had always pushed the envelope a bit more than the others.

An overheard conversation where a park ranger had mentioned traveling to her destination and a spur of the moment decision had led to her now being trapped in a leather satchel in an overhead bin. An announcement about landing jarred her awake, and she began chewing her way out of the carry-on, wondering why it smelled like cows and hoping it wasn’t anyone she knew.

Escaping the bag had been easy, but now she was locked in the compartment. There was a small space in the back, and she barely squeezed her furry butt through the hole. This extra hibernation weight was going to be a bitch to get off in the spring. The woodchuck poked her head out of the last bin and came face to snout with a human wearing a red scarf tied jauntily around her neck. A shriek filled the plane; and while the woodchuck wasn’t familiar with the finer points of flying, even she knew that this much noise from the flight attendant —now trying to stand on a drink cart—was going to send the rest of the seated passengers into a frenzy. She leaped to the floor and ran full speed up the aisle, the shouts of “Rat! Rat! It’s a rat!” taunting her. A panicked stew hit the emergency exit and a long yellow slide suddenly inflated in front of her. Not being a fan of playground equipment, she added her own screams to the chaos as she slid down backwards on her belly, her sharp toenails carving ragged slits in the rubber tube. By the time she reached the bottom, the limp yellow plastic was waving in the wind as she scampered away across the tarmac, gasping and shaking. She’d always been a nervous flyer.

The woodchuck found a nearby burrow and plunged into the darkness. She paused to compose herself, and as she took deep breaths, she thought about how the plane people had reacted when they assumed she was a rat. It was a ridiculous mistake—she didn’t even have a tail!—but their terror had been palpable. It had felt powerful to command such fear. At home when humans saw her on the golf course near her meadow, they usually started singing that dumb Kenny Loggins song. God, she hated Caddyshack.

The tunnel she was in lit up with headlights coming from both directions and a cacophony of enraged honking. This was not like the burrows she was used to. She serpentined between the metal beasts trying to avoid their wheels but the lights were so terrifying that she froze. She watched helplessly as Death by SUV approached, when suddenly hundreds of tiny paws reached up through a metal grate behind her and pushed it aside. They grabbed chunks of the fur on her haunches and pulled her through the hole into a freefall, where she landed in freezing water that had more than just a whiff of a sewage to it. As she tried to shake the sludge from her ears, she became aware of thousands of yellow eyes staring up at her. Terrified, she turned to flee, when all the watching rats began bowing and stroking her fur. 

“Oh, wondrous giant being, you have dropped from the dreaded Tunnel of Abe to lead our people in your ways of survival and lunch. We salute your girth and beg you to teach us how to become as large and powerful as you are.”

The woodchuck was annoyed at the crack about her weight—it was hibernation, damn it!—but if thousands were offering to worship her, who was she to argue?

“Um, teeming crowds of rodents who smell of typhoid and filth, you have earned my undying gratitude! I am only in your fair sewer for a short time, so you must choose a leader who knows the path of these tunnels and can lead your millions to less smelly living quarters.” 

The rats seemed moved by her modest suggestion that there were others more qualified to lead than she, so she added, “I seek a great tree, hundreds of feet in the sky and surrounded by a ring of ice, to attend the wedding of my cousin.”

Moving in unison as if they were a swirling swarm of garbage, the mischief of rats began to lead her through the subway system. They paused for a moment to consult Google maps, and then scampered up the steps at 47th Street. The woodchuck was once again amazed by the humans who ran screaming in all directions as the horde burst out of the subway opening. They came upon an open plaza and then abruptly stopped, their millions of amber eyes wide with awe. A magnificent tree soared into the clouds and was lit up and sparkling against the darkening sky. How her cousin had been able to pull this off was beyond her ken, but Chip sure knew how to throw a party.

“Here is your destination, O Great Woodchuck! And to prove our admiration for your style and substance, we got you a date!”

The swarm parted to make a path, and each rodent watched in admiration as a muscular rat dragging an enormous slice of pizza approached the woodchuck. He winked at her and nodded at the piece of pie; she blushed and then grabbed the other side. The two of them headed toward the ceremony, each of them wondering what the night might bring, as it began to softly snow. It was, after all, Christmas in New York.

Christine Broquet loves it when all the rats of New York and Chicago can come together to wish each other a happy holiday and a wonderful start to a new year!
God bless them, every one—or rather, six million.

State of the re-Union

As the woodchuck strolled through the crackle of maroon and burnt umber on the floor of the forest, she felt a deep appreciation for the changing colors. Autumn was the second-best time of year; a prequel to her favorite season, which was hibernation. The anticipation of napping for four months filled her with joy, and the confetti of falling leaves meant it was just around the corner.

Traveling above ground was a bit reckless because of the hawk situation, but to tunnel to the meeting place would have ruined her manicure. The minks had set up a salon down by the river and had rubbed sap on her claws that made them shiny. The woodchuck did not consider herself vain (even though every other animal in the forest did), but after gazing at her graying snout in a puddle, she had decided that a little help wouldn’t be a bad idea. The clever minks had pounded chestnuts and mulberries into a juice and made her roll around in it; when the solution dried, she was delighted to find her fur was now the reddish brown of her youth. The only drawback was that bees kept following her around. The minks promised that as soon as the juice fermented, they would get drunk and pass out.

The woodchuck had felt the need for a make-over because she was on her way to a reunion with the group of groundhogs she had grown up with and was feeling a bit overwhelmed. Going to this thing had been her friend Gert’s idea, and the two of them had been giggling and gossiping about old classmates for weeks now. Gert had talked her into this and should be here right now admiring her fancy nails; but Gert had gone to sleep in her burrow a few days ago and had not woken up.

Life in the meadow could be hard; there were always weasels and feral cats waiting to rip your head off or eat your latest litter. Dying in your cozy dirt hole after you had actually lived long enough to attend a reunion seemed like a pretty good way to go, but the woodchuck did not see it that way. She was furious at her friend for dying and had decided to attend the gathering out of spite, if only to prove to the other groundhogs that she was still vibrant and young with great claws. 

When she arrived, the crowded clearing in the forest was one big, undulating furry surface. No one looked familiar—each rodent was wearing a nametag, but most of them said Woody or Chuckie so it didn’t really help identify anyone. Maybe those were their married names.

She felt invisible as made her way through the crowd. No one seemed to realize she had been the famous groundhog who predicted when spring would arrive. She had assumed she wasn’t going to remember anyone, but she hadn’t counted on them not remembering her. The conversations she politely listened to seemed to be mostly about who had mated with the most woodchucks in attendance.

There was a pile of souvenir rocks with the initials “SHS73” scratched on them. The woodchuck had a vague recollection of an incident that had occurred their final year: a bird of prey had swooped down out of the sky during a game and carried away their quarterback. This happened fairly often, which was why they were called pick-up games. 

With one voice, the entire school had started screaming “S.H.S!” (Scram, Hawk, Scram!), enough to startle the bird into dropping their star player. The 73 referred to either the number of times they shouted or the number of players who needed to talk to a counselor after the traumatic event. She couldn’t remember which one.

Surrounded by her past, the woodchuck felt old. Had she really laughed and possibly had litters with some of these groundhogs? Shouldn’t she have fond memories and hilarious stories to share? She was thinking about leaving when she noticed a list carved into the bark of a pine tree. It was the names of different classmates who had died in the past years, and there were a lot more than she had expected. The last name on the list was Gert’s.­

“You were her best friend,” a voice next to her said softly. The woodchuck swallowed hard and turned toward a young rodent who was also reading the list of dead. She was in her prime, her fur a rich, mahogany hue that owed nothing to mulberry juice. There were no bees following her. 

This teenager doesn’t have enough body fat to survive hibernation, thought the woodchuck meanly. Honestly, she had grudges older than this kid.

“You’re Phil, right? My Aunt Gert told me about you.”

The woodchuck gulped and immediately silenced all the snarky insults she had been formulating in her head.

“I was with her at the end, and she made me promise to find you. She said you were hilarious and brave and that you must tell me the story of “SHS73”. My aunt believed it was the elders’ duty to keep the young groundhogs safe, and that you were perfect for the job.”

The woodchuck didn’t particularly care for the term elder—she and Gert had argued about this before—but she couldn’t help but agree that she was the best rodent for that job. She had come to the reunion expecting nostalgia, but now she realized that her friend had a different purpose in mind. She wanted the woodchuck to teach Generation G how to survive.

She tucked her short, front paw into the crook of the young woodchuck’s arm, and as they strolled, began the final phase of her long life: she would be the wise storyteller and educator of the next generation.

“The 73 in “SHS73” refers to the number of sticks I used to single-handedly beat back the attacking hawk . . .”

She hoped Gert would be proud of her.

High school reunions are not as scary as hawk attacks, but they can both leave scars. Be careful with those talons! 

And To Think That I Wanted a Mulberry Tree!

(with apologies to Dr. Seuss)

When I was much younger and without a clue, 
I bought a big house with a big backyard, too. 
I gazed at the plants and the flowers and bees, 
And said “Look over there! It’s a Mulberry Tree!” 

How lovely the shade a Mulberry makes. 
Berries galore! All the pies that I’d bake! 
I’d hang colored lights in the twigs oh so tall – 
Such thoughts fill your head when you buy in the fall. 

But then comes the spring and the branches are full, 
Of the tiny green berries that soon will be mull. 
And you stare at the many and think “Surely not!” 
There can’t be — it couldn’t! — but it sure seems alot! 

And, finally, summer, and the fruit overhead,
Gets heavy and turns a dark ominous red. 
And before you can say “Happy Fourth of July!” 
Their stems all let go and they plunge from the sky. 

In bunches! In torrents! In great globs they fall! 
‘Till you can’t see the ground or the grass not at all. 
And you wonder if Prince wrote the song “Purple Rain”, 
When he witnessed his deck become one big red stain . 

Then the dog goes outside and they get tween her toes, 
In her fur! In her paws! On her head! In her nose! 
And so back in the house, she goes in a sprint, 
Leaving a trail of maroon doggie prints. 

And the birdies all come here to snack and to pick, 
‘Till the yard looks like some kind of Alfred H. flick. 
And they screech and they poop and they make such a mess 
That you wish they’d go find someone else’s address. 

So you get out the hose and you wash off the sauce, 
And you say to yourself “Guess I showed them who’s boss!” 
As you settle back into your deck chair to snooze, 
And they pelt you, you see they are laughing at you! 

“It’s a war you can’t win!” they all seem to say, 
As they merrily bounce both this and that way. 
“We’re with you till August and longer!” they tease, 
“And nothing you do can get us to leave!” 

And the sad thing is that you sure know they are right, 
As they land with a thud both by day and by night. 
You’ve tried pruning and cutting and various sprays 
That would kill buffalo but not a berry was fazed. 

And to think that I wanted a Mulberry Tree! 
Long ‘for I knew it would just bring debris. 
But I won’t let them win! I’ll lay down the law! 
My next major purchase will be a chainsaw! 

I may not have shade. I may broil in the sun.
But I have to admit just the thought of it’s fun! 
All those quivering berries as I cut down that tree, 
It’s the last time that fruit will be laughing at me!

 

The Blind Woodchuck does not enjoy being hijacked by some wannabe poet, and would like to emphasize that she quite enjoys mulberries; especially the ones that are so ripe that they explode when they hit the ground! The juice has a wide spatter range that attracts bees, and the bees give it an extra crunch when you pop it in your mouth. Yum!