Dead Armadillo

by Donna Schoenkopf

There’s a dead armadillo in my yard.

It’s been here for about two weeks and shows no signs of decay. He lies on his back (yes, he’s a he, his tiny penis, dear and sweet, shaped like an unopened morning glory, proves the point) showing no signs whatsoever of decay.

I can study his unprotected underbelly. It has tough single hairs here and there. But otherwise his body is soft and vulnerable. He has little pink nipples. His head is beautiful, although his eyes have long ago been lost and his eyelids seem to cover empty sockets.

His armor is beautiful. The scales are geometric, subtly colored, as pretty as anything you’ll see.

I love him.

I wonder what happened to him. I suspect my dogs, of course, but hold no grudges against them, as I do about Che the Cat’s mangled leg. They are, after all, Protectors of the Land. And they take it seriously. There is nothing that gives them so much pleasure as to suspect there might be something around that DOES NOT BELONG HERE.

All you have to do is whisper, “Go get ’em!” and they streak through the door, tails high, deep growls, then sharp barks as they race down the hill toward conquest. I do this for their pleasure and mine. I have never said those words when there was really anything there.

Diego the Dog loves to bark the ducks off of the pond. This past week he walked all over its frozen surface, licking the ice. He slid a little before he got his “ice legs.”

Lest you think the dogs are completely bloodthirsty, please know that they love people. I think if a band of killers came to Chigger Lake with mayhem in mind, Diego and Angela Davis would wag their tails and lick their hands.

In fact, I know they would, if past experience can be proof.

It’s Sunday, and there’s a dead armadillo in my yard.

This morning I watched Liz Cheney on This Week with George Stephanopoulos. Have you ever watched her closely enough to see how much her mouth is the mouth of her father, Dick Cheney?

Her lip curls just like his, at the corner, lifting into that evil sneer. It’s not as pronounced as his, but it will be some day. To emphasize that sneer, the other side of her mouth turns down.

It is an exact replica of his mouth, including the soft, ugly words that come out. She is soft-spoken like he is, which seems to make the things she says more ominous. Darth Vader’s daughter. Smart, capable, and very, very evil.

Yes. I’ve said it. Evil. She criticized Obama this morning for NOT torturing prisoners in Guantanamo. She criticized him for wanting better health care for all, she wants no regulation for large corporations, she wants her father’s universe to prevail.

There’s a dead armadillo in my yard. It lies on its back. Its powerful clawed feet are helpless now.

My son paces the southern deck, phone to ear, talking of a potential job in L.A. He’s excited and happy. He’s got a million ideas, all clever, all interesting, all things I think will work.

He’s going back to California in about three or four weeks after spending almost five months with me. We’ve had good days and we’ve had bad. We’ve laughed and yelled and cried and sulked. We’ve been in the same big room for all this time, he on one side of the house, me on the other. We share the computer, the air, the bathroom, the kitchen. There is no privacy, but somehow, some way, we’ve figured out, like the Japanese, how to live in close proximity and genuinely give each other privacy.

He is conscientious about lights and sounds when I want to sleep, turning the sound off on the computer, having the TV low, turning off lights. He’s never quarreled about doing it.

I do the same for him, except in the morning, after two or three hours of tiptoeing around (the dogs and cats wake me EARLY, about 4 or 5 in the morning) drinking coffee and watching Morning Joe. Then, when I have had enough of bedded TV, I move to the kitchen area and start washing dishes and cleaning. For some reason this has never bothered John and seems to give him a nice start to the day. He wakes slowly and, seeing the house filled with morning light, begins to move in the daylight world. It’s nice and peaceful.

There’s a dead armadillo in my yard. It just lies there, whole, except for his eyes.

The snow has almost all melted except for a few patches in the shade and some on the deck. It’s been there since Christmas Eve. People in town say snow has never lasted so long. Some say it’s proof there is no global warming. When they say this I know they are uneducated on the subject. The science of climate change says that it’s not that the world is just getting warmer without interruption, but that the world’s climate is becoming more erratic, more dramatic, more extreme.

And even if, EVEN IF! The global-warming-climate-changing deniers are right, what, I ask, about pollution? Huh? The stuff that kills our water and our air and our plants and animals and US? Yeah. What about THAT?

The dead armadillo in my yard doesn’t have to worry about that anymore.

I think fundamentalists of any kind are capable of the things the “Crotch Bomber” did on Christmas Day. They think that the ends justifies the means.

Torture if you need information.

Kill if necessary.

Do an evil thing for the greater good.

But I remind them, mentally at least, that Jesus said, “Ye shall know them by their works.”

I wonder why the armadillo hasn’t decayed.

John King interviewed some customers in a café today in Wyoming. It was the last state on his list of fifty. He asked the three customers if any of them had voted for Obama. Nobody raised their hand.

An arm, a young woman’s arm, with leather and metal bracelets on her wrist and a coffeepot in her hand, reached across the interviewee’s face while she was talking to the camera, then stretched slowly further to pour coffee for the man next to her. Nobody stopped talking while their faces were obscured by the arm. Then the camera pulled back and you saw the waitress, young, blonde, pretty, as she walked behind the customers and poured her last cup for the final interviewee.

It’s was as though she was totally unconscious of anything.

Like the dead armadillo in my yard.

I have to get up soon to water all my plants. I water them every (almost) Sunday. They love me and I love them. I can feel their needs and hear their “voices” calling me. They bloom and thrive here in this house.

And so do I.

The dogs are stretched out on the rugs. Che the Cat is in his basket under my bed. Rosie the Cat is outside and will be home later, hopefully.

I have just finished watching The Talk of the Town with Jean Arthur, Ronald Coleman, and Cary Grant. It’s a story of an anarchist, a respected lawyer and a pretty young teacher. The two men talked about their respective philosophies. What a treat to have a Hollywood script about ideas.

It was released in 1942.

Two endings were tested on audiences about which man Jean Arthur would end up with. It was Cary Grant the anarchist.

I think I’ll try to sun dry tomatoes today. Out on the deck. Not far from the dead armadillo.

I love him.

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