Even before yesterday's disturbing events, things in Bad Dog Alley...well, they just haven't seemed right somehow.
There have been eerie mists and snail slaughtering and circling hawks and oily crows and dismembered dollies (see figure 1 above.) There is also, lurking in the vicinity of the demented dolly, a little white plastic teacup (housing a snail at the time of discovery, since mysteriously emptied.) Remnants of a long ago Teddy Bear picnic...perhaps. Or clues to something more sinister.... I can't tell you. But I'm documenting the evidence, building the files.
And then there's the matter of the mysterious eggs. Tea-stained, speckled... and lonely. To what species do these eggs belong? I do not know. I have my theories, sure... and I've been consulting reknown bird expert Kate "Penguin" Hamilton... but we've yet to arrive at a reasonable explanation for this:
And then there is the Case of the Vanishing Duck Eggs. Further along the bunny trail, in the grasses atop the highest point of Bad Dog Alley, I discovered a duck nest. I know it's a duck nest because I've seen the Mallard Mommy (I'm reasonably sure it's a mallard) sitting in it three times and have been close enough that I could have reached out and stroked her back. Friday morning, I actually saw the eggs. Seven of them...arranged just so and snuggled in duck down that ruffled in the wind. Almost as big as chicken eggs and an eerie, almost-transluscent white... the luminescent white of plastic glow-in-the-dark toys.
Sunday morning, I returned to the nest again...and two of the eggs were missing, their shells, neatly halved and discarded on the trail just above. Licked clean. And today? Today there are only two eggs in the nest. No Mallard mommy. No egg fragments, save for the two aforementioned remnants which lay exactly were they were on Sunday. And most disturbingly, no ducklings.
And then there were two...
I'm worried about those eggs. I have half a mind to go sit on them myself. The other half of my mind realizes that my wee-ness does not necessarily apply to my bottom (it's more of a vertical smallishness than a horizontal smallishness) and I would most likely do more harm than good.
In all seriousness, though... I am a little spooked. I keep thinking about yesterday's weirdness and wondering... what kind of struggle could the mysterious caller have seen that would be so suspicious that it would warrant a call to the authorities? I can't think of any movement I would have made getting out of the car that could have been interpreted as unusual or distressed. Is there something going on in the park or its environs that I don't know about... a rapist on the loose? Unsolved murders? Cult activity? UFO sightings?
The idea that really haunts me occurred to me late yesterday afternoon...what if someone really did witness some sort of struggle or crime... but it wasn't my car they saw? What if there was another silver car parked in the vicinity that was the scene of something hideous but that the firemen didn't investigate, particularly after they seemed to resolve the mystery after talking to me? It's the sort of thing that happens in movies. It's the sort of thing that happens in real life. The authorities think they've found a reasonable explanation so they don't pursue that one tip...that one red hot lead... that would have stopped the mayhem.
Shudder. Most the time, out there walking with my wolf, I'm singing silly songs to myself, admiring my wolf and laughing at her antics, examining the environs for signs of spring and contemplating what sinful sumpin' to get at the grocery store. But sometimes... well, I'm out there alone, stepping through the snowy footprints of some unknown giant that went before me and i think about stuff... scary stuff, you know? Like what if I suddenly vanished? Would Jack even know what clothes I was wearing that day? I love him dearly, but he's not the most observant creature on the planet. How long before anyone noticed I was missing? How easy am I to track? What if I fell or was struck by an airplane engine or something? What would Finn do? Knowing her, she'd prance about laying sticks atop my prone form until she got bored and curled up somewhere to dismantle a pinecone and take a nap or set off after a squirrel and forget about me in the chase.
And today, sleuthing about the hills, ruminating on the many mysteries I felt a bit like the heroine in a murder mystery. Ordinarily, this would be a feeling I would relish. But today it felt a little too real... particularly after I came across the headless torso of some large bird, it's bare sternum protruding bloodlessly between the wreckage of wings. Probably an owl's hapless victim, but creepy all the same.
And the thunderstorms that have been rolling about the lakeshore these days have been doing little to alleviate the gloomy mood.
Cue spine-crawling theme music...
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