Trip Wires
The little habitat in the lower trunk of the tree proved unnoticed by all but the most intuitive and discerning eye. The opening was tucked near the base of a relatively young tree and consisted of a simple door in a cobbled up hole near the root system. I had taken the precaution of bringing a number of press cameras which I set up on custom built low tripods at regular intervals around the tree, fitted with special twenty four hour spring wound shutter apparatus, and hair trigger shutter devices connected by cat-gut threading to the twine. The twine in turn wound through the snow to the flex bolt and up to a tree branch. The twines traced their way down again to a green patch that had opened up in the snow where acorns were threaded onto copper wire, and smothered with a tempting dollop of blueberry preserve.
Lenore darted about, gathering the early wildflowers that had pushed their way up through the crisp and age-spotted maple leaves of the past fall. She carried to me a petite bouquet of anemones, spring beauties, and trout lilies whose nodding yellow heads looked down on me from her hand as I crawled about on my belly, wallowing in New England’s mud-season. As I adjusted the tension of the various wires, I accepted the little bouquet with a smile and placed the flowers in a band around the rim of my hat.
“Do we have to catch him?” Lenore asked.
As I slithered under of the trip wires my left foot caught a bit of winter detritus, which in turn tripped the shutter release, exposing the negative plate. I unceremoniously stood up to replace the negative holder.
“Well, I suspect we’ll have to – if it’s the only way to stop him from drilling holes in the buckets. Perhaps we can talk some sense into it and let it go again.” I dropped again to my belly and moved along to one of the other cameras – this one also triggered as an anemone from my hat brushed against the wire. I took a deep breath and counted to ten, swallowing the frustration that was building inside my head I went again to the box of quickly depleting plates and placed another into the holder.
Lucia emerged at my side and placed glass tubes of seeds and clippings into our black padded case, each sporting a label and number corresponding to an entry in her journal. Lenore went on to find more spring flowers while we strung and fine-tuned the trip wires. Lucia rearranged my wiring observing Margaret Fuller’s appendage to the laws of Brownian motion and placing the triggers in more efficient decahedron configuration. We used the silver ice pick to pierce and string more acorns until the sun was well above us, by which time we had baited most of the wires. We sat ourselves on the crumbling stone wall that marked the edge of the back-woods pastures and called for Lenore to join us for lunch. I pulled sandwiches out of the white canvas flour sack Molly had prepared for us. Hunks of bread were prepared with enormous spreads of pork gristle and cuts of hard cheese streaked with aromatic veins of blue. A canning jar brimmed with last fall’s canned sauerkraut and another with warm milk sporting a heavy layer of yellow cream. Lucia pushed contents of the bag away from her with a scowl and turned away holding a spoon and what was left of the blueberry preserves.
I pulled out the chocolate, and called again, “Lenore, we’re dividing up the chocolate!” The call brought her running from the woods, and before I could warn her she had tangled herself in the strings and wires of the photographic equipment. She floated an inch off the ground in a web of strings and acorns having tripped all of the camera shutters and splattering her spring jacket with blueberry preserves. We spent the remainder of the day resetting the photographic equipment.
Composed by Dr. G on Thursday, Apr. 10, 2008
Gentle Reader Responses
Rosemary Renlund says:
I suppose that *is* why they're called trip wires, after all.
I must admit I am firmly in Lenore's "do we have to catch him" camp. Rather than putting out bait, I would much prefer to persuade the ants that invade the Renlund residence this time of year. Alas, all exploratory attempts at verbal communication have gone down to defeat. Next on the docket is interpretive dance.
Loryienne says:
Even your esteemed Margaret Fuller had something significant to say that could very well fit the meetings of humans and the Other (but why is a poetress writing appendages to laws of Brownian motion?):
“…beings born under the same star, and bound with us in a common destiny. These are not mere acquaintances but are sharers of our very existence […]. These not only know themselves more, but are more for having met, and regions of their being burst into leaf and bloom and sing.” --Margaret Fuller, “Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli”
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